- Also called:
- folklore or oral tradition
- Related Topics:
- ballad
- urban legend
- folk theatre
- folk song
- folk tale
folk literature
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What is folk literature?
Folk literature is oral literature passed down through generations within a culture. It relies on speaking, singing, and listening, and its survival depends on a living culture to carry on the tradition. Skilled storytellers, minstrels, and ritual specialists contribute to its preservation. Though it changes through retelling, folk literature provides entertainment, conveys information, and explores the relationship between humanity and higher powers. Myths, legends, folktales, songs, and proverbs are all forms of folk literature. Folk literature differs across regions and cultures, with themes and forms varying based on people's interests, religious beliefs, and environment.
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What are some common types of folk literature?
Folk literature, also known as oral literature, encompasses various forms such as myths, folktales, legends, and tall tales. Myths often deal with cosmological themes and are deeply embedded in cultural action. Folktales, virtually universal, include fairy tales and nursery tales meant for children. Legends are traditional stories, sometimes unfounded, that explain customs or natural phenomena. Tall tales are narratives depicting the wild adventures of extravagantly exaggerated folk heroes. These forms reflect a people’s self-image and are subject to continual changes by tellers, singers, and performers.
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How is folk literature usually passed down between generations?
Folk literature thrives on orality, distinguishing it from written forms. Passed down through speaking, singing, and listening, its existence hinges on a living culture and human memory. Tradition bearers, whether skilled orators or ritual specialists, transmit tales, songs, and practices. Though they strive for accuracy, each performance subtly evolves through forgetting, additions, or substitutions.
While skilled individuals may maintain prodigious memories, the material remains fluid, with storytellers often adding their own creative improvements. This constant evolution ensures folk literature's endurance across generations and geographies, adapting to the needs and expressions of diverse communities.
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Why do stories and traditions in folk literature often change over time?
Folk literature, being primarily oral, changes over time due to its reliance on memory and retelling. As stories and traditions are passed down, they are subject to alterations through forgetting, additions, or conscious substitutions. Skilled storytellers might aim for exactness but still introduce variations, and these changes can start new traditions if they appeal to other tellers. The constant retelling and adaptation ensure folk literature remains relevant and engaging to its audience, making it fluid and ever-evolving.
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What are some themes or lessons often found in folk tales and legends?
Folk tales and legends often carry significant themes and lessons, reflecting the values, beliefs, and customs of the cultures from which they originate.
Common themes and lessons:
* Moral instruction Fables, a type of folk tale, often teach a general principle of conduct through a specific example. Many contain morals that embody advice on how to navigate social interactions and the realities of life.
* Explanatory narratives Some legends and traditions explain the origins of customs, natural phenomena, or even the world itself, often ascribing these origins to the actions of animals or magic transformations.
* Social commentary Folk tales can reflect social structures and power dynamics, sometimes using satire to unmask the "beast" within us.
* Cultural identity They can reinforce a culture's worldview, ethics, and social norms.
* Cautionary tales Many legends describe the consequences of heinous offenses or social crimes, such as attempting to deceive the gods or committing murder or incest.
* Heroism and courage Legends frequently recount the struggles and miraculous adventures of heroes, inspiring courage and reinforcing faith.6 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How does folk literature help us understand different cultures and societies?
Folk literature, deeply rooted in oral tradition, offers insights into the values, beliefs, and experiences of diverse cultures and societies. Passed down through generations, folk tales, songs, and myths reflect a community's history, social structures, and worldview.
Regional and ethnic variations in folk literature highlight the unique interests and concerns of different groups, shaped by their environment, religious concepts, and historical experiences. Whether it's Russian epic songs, Irish storytelling, or Native American animal tales, folk literature provides a window into the distinct cultural identities of communities worldwide.
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folk literature, the lore (traditional knowledge and beliefs) of cultures having no written language. It is transmitted by word of mouth and consists, as does written literature, of both prose and verse narratives, poems and songs, myths, dramas, rituals, proverbs, riddles, and the like. Nearly all known peoples, now or in the past, have produced it.
Until about 4000 bce all literature was oral, but, beginning in the years between 4000 and 3000 bce, writing developed both in Egypt and in the Mesopotamian civilization at Sumer. From that time on there are records not only of practical matters such as law and business but increasingly of written literature. As the area in which the habitual use of writing extended over Asia, North Africa, and the Mediterranean lands and eventually over much of the whole world, a rapid growth in the composition of written literature occurred, so that in certain parts of the world, literature in writing has to a large extent become the normal form of expression for storytellers and poets.
Nevertheless, during all the centuries in which the world has learned to use writing, there has existed, side by side with the growing written record, a large and important activity carried on by those actually unlettered, and those not much accustomed to reading and writing.
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Origins and development
Of the origins of folk literature, as of the origins of human language, there is no way of knowing. None of the literature available today is primitive in any sense, and only the present-day results can be observed of practices extending over many thousands of years. Speculations therefore can only concern such human needs as may give rise to oral literature, not to its ultimate origin.
The nature of oral traditions
Nor can any evolution in folk literature or any overall developments be spoken of explicitly. Each group of people, no matter how small or large, has handled its folk literature in its own way. Depending as it does upon the transmission from person to person and being subject to the skill or the lack of skill of those who pass it on and to the many influences, physical or social, that consciously or unconsciously affect a tradition, what may be observed is a history of continual change. An item of folk literature sometimes shows relative stability and sometimes undergoes drastic transformations. If these changes are looked at from a modern Western point of view, ethnocentric judgments can be made as to whether they are on the whole favourable or unfavourable. But it must be remembered that the folk listening to or participating in its oral literature have completely different standards from those of their interpreters.
Nevertheless, two directions in this continually changing human movement may be observed. Occasionally a talented singer or tale-teller, or perhaps a group of them, may develop techniques that result in an improvement over the course of time from any point of view and in the actual development of a new literary form. On the other hand, many items of folk literature, because of historic movements or overwhelming foreign influences or the mere lack of skillful practitioners of the tradition, become less and less important, and occasionally die out from the oral repertory. The details of such changes have been of great interest to all students of folk literature.
The beginnings of written literature in Sumer and Egypt 5,000 or 6,000 years ago took place in a world that knew only folk literature. During the millennia since then written literature has been surrounded and sometimes all but overwhelmed by the humbler activity of the unlettered. The emergence of the author and his carefully preserved manuscript came about slowly and uncertainly, and only in a few places initially—the literary authorship that flourished in the Athens of Pericles or the Jerusalem of the Old Testament represented only a very small part of the world of their time. Nearly everywhere else the oral storyteller or epic singer was dominant, and all of what is called literary expression was carried in the memory of the folk, and especially of gifted narrators.
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All societies have produced some men and women of great natural endowments—shamans, priests, rulers, and warriors—and from these has come the greatest stimulus everywhere toward producing and listening to myths, tales, and songs. To these the common man has listened to such effect that sometimes he himself has become a bard. And kings and councillors, still without benefit of writing, have sat enthralled as he entertained them at their banquets.