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Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context
This classic study is an introduction to oral poetry, a broad subject which Ruth Finnegan interprets as ranging from American folksongs, Eskimo lyrics, and modern popular songs to medieval oral literature, the heroic poems of Homer, and recent epic compositions in Asia and the Pacific. The book employs a wide comparative perspective, to consider oral poetry from Africa, Asia, and Oceania as well as Europe and America. The results of Finnegan's vast research suggest fresh approaches to many current the nature of oral tradition and oral composition; the notion of a special oral style; possible connections between types of poetry and types of society; the differences between oral and written communication; and the role of poets in nonliterature societies. The reissue of this text, widely used in folklore, anthropology, and comparative literature courses, comes at an appropriate juncture in interdisciplinary scholarship, which is witnessing the breakdown of traditional disciplinary boundaries and an increase in the comparative study of oral poetry. Finnegan provides a new foreword relating the text to these recent developments.
- GenresFolklore
324 pages, Hardcover
First published April 28, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 4, 2011
I know this is old and the field’s gotten huge, but Finnegan’s still good for knocking the cobwebs out of the attic of folklore theory, taking on Romantic Evolutionists, Finnish School variant analysts, Parry-Lord oral formulaists, and folksinging Lefties (maybe a little thicker on the ground when she wrote this) alike. Her aim’s not so much ‘seek and destroy’ as ‘drop in water and expand’; all along the line, she argues for a broad, empirically sensitive approach to what counts as “oral” and “poetry” that opens up the field to include lots of orality hidden right under our literate urban noses. In a field fond of distinctions, Finnegan prefers blurring lines, so that ‘primitive’ and ‘modern’, print and performance, bards and the Beatles don’t look as far away from each other as we once liked to think. The result’s a thoughtful return of oral expression to the extended family of human verbal experience, brought up from the kid’s table and invited to join the group sing.
November 22, 2008
Ruth Finnegan calls into question the idea that oral poetry is necessarily composed in performance and questions many of the assumptions that are made by scholars dealing with orality. She outlines the implicit and explicit assumptions that many scholars carry: from romanticism, historical-geographic methods, and sociological theories. I find her questions concerning the nature of orality to be especially thoughtful: she wonders if there clear divisions between oral and written forms. She questions the oral-formulaic theory on its insistence of composition in performance. There are many brief examples, but she does not truly expand on them. Her work is thought provoking, especially in her questioning of received tradition on orality.
I also find her discussion in chapter 4 thoughtful – she demonstrates that different cultures/traditions have different poetic styles, casting doubt on the validity of one single model of defining oral poetry by features.
I find Finnegan’s understanding or even misrepresentation of Lord’s work disturbing (cf. 53). Notably, she discusses terms like “word for word, and line for line” as if Lord was saying that rather than it being the understanding of the poet himself. I feel horrible saying this but I begin to wonder if she truly read Lord’s work (it becomes evident later that she did). Maybe she is correct in her assessment of romantic views of oral composition, but such a misrepresentation makes it difficult for me to buy her arguments, especially where she uses the work of others – is she representing their views correctly? I feel like she occasionally takes such a scattered approach and strings together examples not unlike armchair anthropologists. It should be noted that the book was researched and written in the late 1960s and early 1970s: it is dated, especially from a modern folklore perspective, but it is a reaction to the rigid and all encompassing application of Albert Lord’s oral-formulaic theory to all poetry without concern for context and genre.
I also find her discussion in chapter 4 thoughtful – she demonstrates that different cultures/traditions have different poetic styles, casting doubt on the validity of one single model of defining oral poetry by features.
I find Finnegan’s understanding or even misrepresentation of Lord’s work disturbing (cf. 53). Notably, she discusses terms like “word for word, and line for line” as if Lord was saying that rather than it being the understanding of the poet himself. I feel horrible saying this but I begin to wonder if she truly read Lord’s work (it becomes evident later that she did). Maybe she is correct in her assessment of romantic views of oral composition, but such a misrepresentation makes it difficult for me to buy her arguments, especially where she uses the work of others – is she representing their views correctly? I feel like she occasionally takes such a scattered approach and strings together examples not unlike armchair anthropologists. It should be noted that the book was researched and written in the late 1960s and early 1970s: it is dated, especially from a modern folklore perspective, but it is a reaction to the rigid and all encompassing application of Albert Lord’s oral-formulaic theory to all poetry without concern for context and genre.
January 18, 2016
This is a wide ranging, sociological review of oral poetry offering invaluable answers to what is poetry, what is a poet, and what is the poet’s role. It takes poetry out of the contemporary Western role of literature, and places it back in society as entertainment, religion and instruction.
How do you define poetry? Some would say it is impossible. Poets spent the 20th century deliberately confounding every possible definition of poetry.
Stepping from those smoky ruins, and into an oral, pre-literate world, what is poetry? What distinguishes it from prose? What does all oral poetry world-wide have in common?
Here is Finnegan’s answer:
“The most marked feature of poetry is surely repetition. Forms and genres are recognized because they are repeated. The collocation of line or stanza or refrain are based on their repeated reoccurrence; metre, rhythm of stylistic features like alliteration or parallelism are also based on repeated patterns of sound, syntax or meaning. In its widest sense, repetition is part of all poetry. This is the general background against which the prosodic and other features of oral poetry must be seen. It has also been taken by some scholars as constituting one of the differentiating characteristics of oral as distinct from written literature.” (p. 90)
Let’s look at that last sentence. Why? Why should repetition not be a key element of poetry? It is certainly true that many things called poetry today would not meet this definition. But does that make the definition wrong? Or is contemporary “poetry” something other than poetry?
Though not intended as such, Finnegan’s book is a fantastic exploration of the definition of poetry and the poet. It’s not for the faint of heart – it is a dry, scholarly exploration, but to the poet and the lover of poetry it touches on many compelling issues.
Also, uh, the author's name is Ruth, not Stephanie. (At least on my book.)
How do you define poetry? Some would say it is impossible. Poets spent the 20th century deliberately confounding every possible definition of poetry.
Stepping from those smoky ruins, and into an oral, pre-literate world, what is poetry? What distinguishes it from prose? What does all oral poetry world-wide have in common?
Here is Finnegan’s answer:
“The most marked feature of poetry is surely repetition. Forms and genres are recognized because they are repeated. The collocation of line or stanza or refrain are based on their repeated reoccurrence; metre, rhythm of stylistic features like alliteration or parallelism are also based on repeated patterns of sound, syntax or meaning. In its widest sense, repetition is part of all poetry. This is the general background against which the prosodic and other features of oral poetry must be seen. It has also been taken by some scholars as constituting one of the differentiating characteristics of oral as distinct from written literature.” (p. 90)
Let’s look at that last sentence. Why? Why should repetition not be a key element of poetry? It is certainly true that many things called poetry today would not meet this definition. But does that make the definition wrong? Or is contemporary “poetry” something other than poetry?
Though not intended as such, Finnegan’s book is a fantastic exploration of the definition of poetry and the poet. It’s not for the faint of heart – it is a dry, scholarly exploration, but to the poet and the lover of poetry it touches on many compelling issues.
Also, uh, the author's name is Ruth, not Stephanie. (At least on my book.)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews