Oral tradition
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- sound culture, oral tradition
Oral tradition or oral culture is a way of transmitting history, literature or law from one generation to the next in a civilization without a writing system.
It can be contrasted to print culture and visual culture in the visible realm and sound culture in the invisible realm.
An example that combined aspects of oral literature and oral history, before eventually being set down in writing, is the Homeric epic poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In a general sense, "oral tradition" refers to the transmission of cultural material through vocal utterance, and was long held to be a key descriptor of folklore (a criterion no longer rigidly held by all folklorists). As an academic discipline, it refers both to a method and the objects studied by the method. (The study of oral tradition is distinct from the academic discipline of oral history, which is the recording of personal memories and histories of those who experienced historical eras or events.)
