Oral tradition
form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another
An oral tradition or oral culture is a way of transmitting history, literature or law from one generation to the next, without a writing system, by voice. People tell stories. Often the stories are made into poems and songs to make remembering easy. For example, the Homeric poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined oral literature and oral history. Eventually they were written down.
Related pages
changeOther websites
change- The Center for Studies in Oral Tradition
- The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Online Archived 2007-10-24 at the Wayback Machine
- Oral Tradition Journal