Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature

Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature. by dint of John D. Niles. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Pres 1999 280 pp Illus. 3250 [pound sterling] (hbk) ISBN 0-8122-3504-5

In Homo Narrans John D Niles tenders a stimulating and compelling exploration of the character of oral literature in society. Implicit in Niles's argument is a celebration of humanity's aptitude for telling stories--a proclivity that distinguishes our species from all other life-forms: " as far as I know, no dog or wolf has at any time said to another one, 'A droll thing happened to me yesterday upon the way to the fare source...'" (p. 198). Niles examines by what mode society defines, celebrates, and re-creates itself from one side oral narrative: how the tales man computes possess a fundamental degree of "cosmoplastic power, or world-making ability" (p 3) He young oxs his focus away from what these stories are, to ask in what way and why they are told, initiating an investigation into the compound symbiotic relationship between oral literature and the society that shows it: stories that are shaped by means of their social conditions also posses "some power to shape, as well" (p 123) In introducing his conception of "wordpower," Niles foregrounds the quasi-spiritualistic and restorative powers of spoken/sung literature in its ability to diet a sense of identity for a community in providing the two links to the past and aspirations for the futurity However, Niles resolutely accentuates not single the conservative traditions behind storytelling rituals, on the other hand also how the dissemination of oral literature can act as a site of exert one's self between the past order and the not absent as a catalyst to inspire and assist changes within the society and to encourage an understanding of like transformations. He ascertains the character that individual storytellers and singers as "tradition-bearers" can play in the pair upholding folkloric customs and in disseminating change; in what manner oral literature can both aid and resist the preservation of the existing agriculture and its cultural artefacts. Niles places particular emphasis upon the somatic nature of oral literature--the importance of physical neighborhood and bio-social communication in the experience of storytelling, wherein ligatures of communal affiliation and affection are strengthened and the values of the community can be reaffirmed and/or redefined.

Niles oscillates between more erudite discussions of the early Anglo-Saxon oral literature traditions and the more readily accessible examples of traditional Scottish popular balladry, as mediated end folksingers and storytellers up to the at hand day. In his examination of Beowulf, he leaderships a thorough analysis of the matrix of sociohistorical conditions in which the "text" was produc contending that the period of its production was the tithe century, a time of radical national, ethnic, ecclesiastical, and cultural (re)formation. His respect to the more easily discernible social and cultural backdrop for the oral literature of twentieth-century Scotland reach forths his argument to a more contemporary words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following With a devout reverence for the skills of tradition-bearers as mediated [i]or[/i] part of to the other the songs of Stanley Robertson, Betsy Whyte and Lizzie Higgins, and the stories of Duncan Williamson, Niles situates their capacity for storytelling against a background of a nomadic "tinker" tradition. In certain cases, he analyses the event of the social marginalisation of these clans and their resulting ne to inspire a faculty of perception of communal solidarity through oral literature to counterbalance their social ostracism.

Niles places a brawny emphasis on fieldwork and the ne for "somatic communication" with the "folk" he implements as his controls of study, and he contextualises his research within a stout ethnographic and folkloric methodological tradition. His work is explicitly (although not emphatically) addressed to specialists in the fields of anthropology, folklore, and early English literature, on the contrary also to any reader who (as an affiliated human receptor of oral narrative) shares a zealous interest in stories and on what account and how we tell them.

through every part of his work, Niles contends that it is necessary to dispense with the ne to view "oral culture" and "literature" as sum of two units different entities. He continually turn backs to his assertion that the artificiality of the distinction between the "oral" nature of the true copy and its status as "literature" causes vexed questions by encouraging readers to assign a greater step of authority to one rather than the other. This is to the detriment of our appreciation of the oral because of the significance and cultural superciliousness attached to literacy as oppos to illiteracy. Niles stresse the ne to dispense with any modernist distinctions between orality and literacy, endorsing the necessity to perceive "oral literature" as a hybrid of one as well as the other The irony manifests itself end the perverse paradox that, in investigating the oral tradition, Niles is restricted to the textual bonds of the page. His discussion is lively and engaging, warm in tone, and illustrated with quirky and instructive anecdotes. However, Niles is making the greatest in quantity of what he can on the outside of his restricted "academic" medium and there are perhaps flashs when the articulation of his argument meet withs and his own erudite narrative slips (perhaps intentionally) into convolut auteur-biography. Occasionally his reflections may perhaps be seen to sacrifice academic integrity to emotive "personal subjectivity"--a pitfall that, ironically, he professe to avoid (p 5) He turn abouts between refined textual analysis and a more personal spirit of emotive reverie, which may divide readers into those who delight in the idiosyncratic and (at times) whimsical nature of his discussion, and those who are left feeling somewhat disorientated.