- 226 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
Oral traditions are historical sources of a special nature. Their special nature derives from the fact that they are ""unwritten"" sources couched in a form suitable for oral transmission, and that their preservation depends on the powers of memory of successive generations of human beings. In many parts of the world inhabited by peoples without writing, oral tradition forms the main available source for a reconstruction of the past. Do the special characteristics of oral traditions u ""unwritten"" information dependent on the memory of successive generations u invalidate them as sources of historical data? If not, are there means for testing their reliability? Professor Vansina shows in Oral Tradition that with knowledge of the language and of the society, the anthropologist and historian can extract or deduce the historical content of oral testimonies. Based on the author's many years of fieldwork in Africa, this definitive work explores the possibility of reconstructing the history of non-literate peoples from their oral traditions, surveys existing literature, offers a typology of oral traditions, and evaluates methods of collection and interpretation. On first publication, Daniel McCall in the American Anthropologist called Oral Tradition "" a tour de force. Indeed this may well be the most significant work written on the relation of oral tradition to history in thirty yearsafor any field worker who intends to collect oral traditions, this work is indispensable.
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Yes, you can access Oral Tradition by Robert Loring Allen,Jan Vansina in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Historiography. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Index
abacurabwenge (Rwandese genealo-ists), 32, 67
abaganwa (Rundi royal family), 166
abasizi (Rwandese rhapsodists), 32
abateekerezi (Rwandese memorialists), 32
abiiru (guardians of Rwandese traditions), 32, 38, 67, 78-9, 166, 167
Aesop’s fables, 20, 158
African history and archaeology, conference on, 7
Akan States, 15, 33, 38, 39, 84, 85, 149, 189, 200, 209 n.48
Alur, 13, 101
amazina poems, 89, 167
Bachwezi, 174-5
Bantu, 66, 180-1, 213 Ch. VI, n.5
Bariba, 12
Barnes, J. A., 67
Bauer, W., 3, 5, 51, 53, 148
Baumann, H., 158
Beier, EL U., 11, 17
Benin, bronze plaques of, 37
towns of, 171
Bernheim, E., 3-4, 51
Bieng, 84, 106, 123, 124, 145
Boas, F., 10
Bokila, 29
Bono-Mansu, 31, 38
Buganda, 38, 85
buloji (Luba ‘witchcraft’), 66
Burundi: attitude towards Europeans in, 93-4
conception of history in, 103, 104-5, 107
references to in Rwandese poetry, 69, 70
traditions of, 2, 43, 49-50, 57 ff,, 62, 83, 92, 107, 117-18, 153, 155, 157, 163-4, 164 ff., 174, 195, 211 n.48; see ...
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Content Page
- ALDINETRANSACTION PREFACE
- ALDINETRANSACTION INTRODUCTION
- PREFACE
- I. Oral Tradition and Historical Methodology
- II. Tradition as a Chain of Testimonies
- III Understanding the Testimony
- IV The Testimony as a Mirage of Reality
- V The Evaluation of Testimonies
- VI Historical Knowledge
- VII The Interpretation of History
- NOTES
- BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED
- INDEX