Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Elli Köngäs Maranda. "Individual and Tradition." In Folk Narrative Research: Some Papers Presented at the VI Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. Ed. Juha Pentikäinen and Tuula Juurikka. Studia Fennica: Review of Finnish Linguistics and Anthropology, 20. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. pp. 252-61.

After a brief review of scholarship on oral narrative, especially with respect to the role of the individual, she describes her own fieldwork and analysis among the Lau, a Melanesian group in Malaita, in the Solomon Islands. Couching her presentation in an ethnographic context, she offers a grid summary of storytelling modes or genres, including for each a category of ritual state, occasion, performer, audience, and intent. Goes on to compare performance and training to Lord's description of the Yugoslav guslar, to note the importance of a "supple" narrator who can mold the tradition, and to claim that oral tradition among the Lau is not fundamentally based on oral-formulaic technique.
Area: ML