Teaching Oral Traditions (review)

The Modern Language Association has published over seventy volumes devoted to the teaching of world literature. In 1998, Teaching Oral Traditions joined this well-established series; it is an excellent resource book, for both those teaching oral traditions for the first time and those with considerable experience. John Miles Foley, Professor of Classical Studies and English and Director of the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri Columbia, is a fitting editor for the volume. Well known for his extensive publications on oral traditions (especially epic) and theory, he has brought 40 other specialists together in a thick volume that contains 39 essays addressing theoretical, topical, and generic issues pertinent to the teaching of oral traditions. Given the diversity of topics, perspectives, and authors (from Old Testament texts to contemporary storytelling, from graphic imaginings of how medieval scribes wrote to how ethnopoetics informs our understanding of performance, and from graduate students to major scholars in the field), the essays are at times uneven in their effectiveness and design. Overall, however, the book is insightful and practical; it is also the first such "handbook" in the field. I personally—and surely many others as well—warmly welcome its arrival.

Teaching Oral Traditions is divided into four parts, the first two relating to approach and theory and the last two addressing specific oral traditions and resources. Foley explains that the collection is "designed to acquaint generalists and specialists alike with a repertoire of pedagogical approaches to the world's oral traditions, past and present, by providing both an exposition of key issues and a digest of practical applications" (p. 1). Moreover, the "primary responsibility" for the volume is "to open up a new world of possibilities and to suggest how the worlds we think we know should in some important and basic respects be remapped" (p. 4) since, as he convincingly argues, "the authority of the text as object [in oral tradition] is productively called into question, and the relations among performer-writer, tradition, and audience-reader must be reassessed" (p. 5). Overall, Foley and the other authors in this work make a persuasive case for dispelling preconceptions about orality, literacy, and verbal art, especially to those who may be newcomers to the teaching and exploration of oral traditions.

Part 1—"Canon or Cornucopia?"—treats oral traditions within the humanities. Mapping out why oral tradition is incompatible with the concept of canon in the first essay, Foley considers not only the inherent "plurality" (or multiformity) of oral tradition, but also the significance of its performative dimension and "traditional referentiality," described as "the implied, unspoken tradition, the proverbial context of the speech act" (pp. 26-27). Traditional referentiality, a theoretical perspective that Foley developed starting in the early 1990s, has gained widespread recognition among scholars, which is clearly reflected in its frequent mention in Teaching Oral Traditions. Also in part 1 are Lee Haring's useful commentary on teaching oral traditions as comparative literature and Katherine O'Keefe's contemplations on performance and the "performing body" in "dead societies" (here, in Old English poetry). Elizabeth Fine offers insight on transcribing, editing, and translating the words of oral tradition.

All of the authors in part 2 ("Critical Approaches," the theoretical core of the volume) are prominent scholars, and their expertise is evident in the integrity of each essay. Rosemary Zumwalt provides a chronological glossary of approaches to the study of oral traditions, while Mark Amodio effectively connects oral theory with contemporary critical theory in his bid to subvert what he calls the "false dichotomy" (p. 104) between the oral and literate word. The ethnography of performance and how it informs the study of oral tradition forms the kernel of the excellent essay by Richard Bauman and Donald Braid; Thomas Dubois's piece on ethnopoetics likewise is an instructive introduction to modes of translating poetry in performance. Finally, Nancy Bradbury reads traditional referentiality into her analysis of a Child ballad.

Part 3 ("Praxis: Oral Traditions in the Classroom") contains 25...