Today, many of those same stories continue to be compelling enough to retell, from the epics like “The Odyssey” and “Beowulf” to more comparatively modern European fairy tales. The oral tradition aspect of these stories, however, has somewhat faded with the modern era.
Populations and communities have become for the most part less geographically centralized, making physical gatherings for the sole purpose of storytelling hardly easy to arrange. Industrialization is also probably partly to blame; when working becomes possible in all weathers and conditions, gathering for the purpose of gathering becomes something only suited for special occasions. The oral tradition still thrives on the small scale – family legends and lore are a staple of any gathering. I know I’ve heard stories of the kind of shenanigans my uncles got up to as teenagers at least half a dozen times, or to reach further back, the trek my great-grandparents made from the coast of France to Canada and eventually to the U.S.
Even so, there’s often a push to validate those stories, to find tangible evidence and physical proof, to consolidate and collaborate and record. Digitizing photo albums is probably one of the most common expressions of this phenomenon.
Still, defaming the written word in favor of memorization is only as old as Socrates and Plato, at least. Personally, I don’t think the oral tradition is dead, nor that recording things in a more permanent form is a bad thing. There are a lot of classic poems and stories we have today that wouldn’t be here if someone hadn’t written them down, and a lot of family histories that are going to be remembered for longer than they might have otherwise because new, accessible methods of storing information exist now.
The reason the oral tradition, the reason any kind of storytelling exists at all, is because it evolves with the times. In a world of mass media, where so much of what people see and experience is filtered content performed by professionals, the ability for an individual to Thursday, February 4, 2016 tell and retell stories has found a new niche on the Internet. It may not have achieved the same kind of legitimacy yet, but it’s there, and can only grow from here.
Humans have a compulsion to tell, and more tellingly, retell, anything that holds and catches our interest. The subject matter can range from office gossip to Herculean epics, and the mode from a comedian on-stage to a writer who self-publishes online to children hearing stories from their grandparents, but stories have a way of being passed down.
— Nina Collay is a junior at Thornton Academy who can frequently be found listening to music, reading, wrestling with a heavy cello case, or poking at the keyboard of an uncooperative laptop.
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