Can I read Oral Tradition : A Study in Historical Methodology on EtoBox?

Oral Tradition : A Study in Historical Methodology by Robert Loring Allen is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Oral Tradition : A Study in Historical Methodology about?

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that with knowledge of the language and of the society, the anthropologist and historian can extract or deduce the historical content of oral testimonies.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

Author

Robert Loring Allen

Publisher

Routledge

Published

2017

Language

EN

ISBN

9781351501347

Subjects

History, Humanities

Updated

2026-03-24