1. Oral Traditions of Storytelling

Creation Stories (e.g. Rig Veda, Bible, Tseitsinako)

mythos (Grk.) = story or plot;
mythology = webs of sacred & traditional stories (deities, heroes, ancestors) shaping & preserving worldview.

Oral-performance epics (e.g. Iliad, Epic of Gilgamesh, Sundiata, Beowulf, Star Wars?)

Stories "emplot" life: interpret, explain, make meaning, educate, preserve & reaffirm community, pass on to next generations

2. Myth Theory/Literary Criticism

nAll cultures create & tell stories, myths – key human creative activity, fundamental way of "knowing," making sense of our world(s)
nTheory: literature & orature tap into, express universal mythic consciousness
nPrimal, emotion-laden, intuitive, experiential, imagistic
nJames Frazier, The Golden Bough (1890-1915) myth patterns recur across cultures
nCarl Jung (1875-1961, depth psychology): humankind has “collective unconscious” or “racial memory” of ancestors' repeated patterns of experience . . .
n. . . Jung: “archetypes” or “primordial images” survive as “psychic residue” of our ancestors’ repeated patterns of experience
n. . . Expressed in myth, religion, dreams, fantasies, literature
n Archetypes: recurring plots, character types, images, themes:  e.g.

ncycle of seasons, of death-rebirth;
njourney underground (into hell); ascent to heaven;
nSearch for the father
nQuest
nEarth goddess
nScapegoat
nFatal woman
nWise old man
nDivine child

nClaude Levi-Strauss: myth patterns > structures [not content] of human mind & “mytho- poetic imagination” (vs. Jung)
nNorthrop Frye: [Whatever their sources, however they got there,] mythic patterns exist and are expressed in genres & plot patterns of literature

Epic: Oral-Literary Genre
Source: Abrams, M. H.  A Glossary of Literary Terms.  6th ed.  New York: Holt, Rinehard, Winston,1993.

Epic Characteristics (or conventions of the genre):

Long narrative poem on serious subject
Elevated style, ceremonial performance
An elevated style and diction--deliberately distanced from everyday speech--is used throughout the poem

Heroic or quasi-divine figures w/great powers, on whose actions depend fate of group, nation, or all humankind

Action: heroic deeds in battle, long arduous journeys or quests
The actions described in the work are deeds of great valor, often requiring superhuman strength, intelligence, or endurance

Northrop Frye: Quest = central "mono-myth" of literature

Rene Girard: Ritual sacrifice = central (e.g. in Greek tragedy)
Sacrificial victim experiences violence that would otherwise be vented on group or world as a whole

Gods & other supernatural beings take active interest, role in human affairs
Supernatural forces (gods, angels, demons) take interest in the action and intervene from time to time

"Traditional epics" = written versions of originally oral poems, songs about cultural heroes of warring age (e.g. Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf)
"Literary epics" imitate Traditional epics

nThe epic hero has a double role. He/She is an individual person with an habitual virtue from which his/her exploits flow, and he is representative of the group to whom the exploit is important. Since the performance of the exploit is important because of the group rather than the person, the man may be destroyed, but the group may be saved. The hero’s habitual virtue is specific to the kind of exploit; his goodness is not specific—it simply means that he is serious, and he will cope with the problem. The hero need not be responsible for the existence of his task, but only for its performance.
 

n“The importance of personal glory and material wealth diminishes in modern epics (ironically, considering the current consumer-driven culture), which place more importance on a deeper, nobler motivation – eradicating Evil from the world”—Anna Roth

 

n

Genre Theory: (> Aristotle)

Genre (>French): a type of literary work with defining conventions & audience expectations

Genres develop in response to particular cultural, communication, & creative situations

Literary genres evolve like social institutions: their conventions/codes emerge, develop, & stimulate change over time, reflecting the (changing) values, imagination, spirit of an age, culture, artist

nAccording to Theodore Steinberg “…almost every age and almost every culture creates its own kind of epic.”

nIn turn, many consider Lord of the Rings as a whole to be our century’s prominent epic.

Genre History: Dialogues with Tradition

"Once you start making...rules, some writer will be sure to happen along and break every
abstract rule you or anyone else ever thought up, and take your breath away in the process. The word should is…dangerous.…It’s a kind of challenge to the deviousness and inventive-ness and audacity and perversity of the creative spirit."
--Margaret Atwood

Storytelling: living traditions

Stories are not just for children at bedtime….

Storytelling is a "shared experience" of tellers and audiences

Stories are "maker[s] of our identity--with the story we know who we are."

Stories "brin[g] incidents down to a level we can deal with. …If others have endured, so can we."

"The stories are always bringing us together, keeping this whole together…"
 --Leslie Marmon Silko
Source: "Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective" (1979).
In The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Compact 5^th ed.  Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1999.  856-862.

Storytelling > Margaret Atwood, "Reading Blind"
Source: "Reading Blind" [1989], in Charters pp. 842-846.

"Our first stories come to us through the air. We hear voices."

"Children in oral societies grow up within a web of stories, but so do all children. We listen before we can read."

Only when older do we learn some stories are "real" and others "mere invention."

In the "collision" of these two story types "original and living writing is generated."

What makes a good story?

Consider what children expect, says Atwood:

Hold my attention

Keep faith with promises made: at once be "completely unexpected and inevitable."

Most important: "a sense of urgency" Children "are longing to hear a story, but only if you are longing to tell one": "This is the story I must tell; this is the story you must hear."

The "Contract"

Audience must agree to "play" the imaginative game ("suspend disbelief")

Atwood: "...your life as the writer of each particular story is only as long, and as good, as the story itself."

"the speaking voice" mediates reader-listener’s access to the story, but it is a…

"double-voiced" dialogue (>Mikhail Bakhtin) between teller & listener, each with active roles in making meaning.

Atwood, cont.

The story is "inside the listener." The story-teller must "draw the story out of the reader"

"From listening to the stories of others, we learn to tell our own."

"We patch together for ourselves…a plot…; these, then, are the things that happen, these are the people they happen to, this is the forbidden knowledge."

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