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urn:uuid:7c258197-4377-449b-a307-bcdf194b6b34 03 15 9781805114123 00 EB E101 10 10 02 2054362X 01 02 World Oral Literature Series 01 01 Oral Poetry 1 A01 Ruth Finnegan Ruth Finnegan FBA OBE was born in 1933 in the beautiful fraught once-island city of Derry, Northern Ireland, and brought up there, together with several magical years during the war in Donegal. She had her education at the little Ballymore First School in County Donegal, Londonderry High School, Mount (Quaker) School York, then first class honours in Classics (Literae humaniores) and a doctorate in Anthropology at Oxford. This was followed by fieldwork and university teaching in Africa, principally Sierra Leone and Nigeria. She then joined the pioneering Open University as a founding member of the academic staff, where she spent the rest of her career apart from three years – and more fieldwork – at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and is now, proudly, an Open University Emeritus Professor. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, and is also an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. Ruth has published two books with OBP, Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation (2011), https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0012, and Oral Literature in Africa (2012), https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0025. 01 eng 00 428 03 10 LIT020000 23 Literature 23 Oral Poetry 04 PN1341 23 Anthropology 23 Comparative Analysis 10 LIT022000 23 Folklore and Ethnology 10 SOC002010 23 Transmission 23 Cultural Context 10 SOC011000 23 Social Phenomenon 23 Literary Tradition 01 06 03 00 This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the vast field of 'oral poetry,' encompassing everything from American folksongs, contemporary pop songs, and Inuit lyrics, to the heroic epics of Homer, biblical psalms, and epic traditions in Asia and the Pacific. Taking a broad comparative approach, it explores oral poetry across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, and the Americas. Drawing on global research, Ruth Finnegan, the author of the seminal Oral Literature in Africa, sheds light on key debates such as the nature of oral tradition, the relationship between poetry and society, the differences between oral and written forms, and the role of poets in predominantly non-literate contexts. Written from a primarily anthropological and literary perspective, this study contributes to the socio-cultural aspects of verbal art while also engaging with the literary dimensions of poetry which happens at any given moment to be unwritten. Finnegan's clear, non-technical language and extensive use of translated examples make this work accessible to a wide audience, appealing not only to sociologists and anthropologists but also to those with an interest in poetry, in comparative literature, and in global folk traditions. The re-issue of this classic study is now augmented by further illustrations and a newly written Introduction and Conclusion, situating it in the context of the contemporary study of literature. 04 00 Acknowledgements Foreword Mark Turin Preface to the 1977 edition Preface to the 2025 edition 1. Introductory 1.1 The importance of oral poetry 1.2 Some forms of oral poetry 1.3 What is ‘oral’ in oral poetry? 1.4 The ‘poetry’ in oral poetry 1.5 Performance and text 2. Some approaches to the study of oral poetry 2.1 Romantic and evolutionist theories 2.2 The ‘historical-geographical’ school 2.3 Sociological approaches and the sociology of literature 2.4 Two ‘ideal types’ of society and poetry 3. Composition 3.1 Is memorisation the key factor? 3.2 Composition-in-performance and the oral-formulaic theory 3.3 How valid is the oral-formulaic theory? 3.4 Prior composition, memorisation and performance 3.5 Conclusion 4. Style and performance 4.1 The relevance of style and performance 4.2 Prosodic systems 4.3 Repetition, style and structure 4.4 Language and diction 4.5 Performance 4.6 Is there a special oral style? 4.7 Conclusion 5. Transmission, distribution and publication 5.1 Oral transmission over space and time: some striking cases 5.2 Inert tradition, memorisation or re-creation? 5.3 How do oral poems reach their audiences? 5.4 ‘Oral transmission’ and writing 5.5 Conclusion 6. Poets and their positions 6.1 The poet: five examples 6.2 Some types of poets: specialists, experts and occasional poets 6.3 Are oral poets anonymous? 6.4 The poet as seer 6.5 The poet as individual genius 7. Audience, context and function 7.1 Some types of audience 7.2 The effect and the composition of audiences 7.3 The purpose and meaning of poetry: local theories 7.4 Some effects of oral poetry 8. Poetry and society 8.1 The link between poetic and social institutions 8.2 Does one type of poetry always go with a particular form of society? ‘Heroic age’, ‘ballad society’ and ‘oral culture’ 8.3 Literature as the reflection and consequence of social forms 8.4 Literature as social action Concluding comment Afterword Web links Bibliography List of Illustrations Index Open Book Publishers 01 Open Book Publishers 04 01 20250528 02 WORLD 06 15 9781805114093 06 15 9781805114109 06 15 9781805114116 06 15 9781805114130 06 15 9781805114123 WORLD 09 Open Book Publishers 20 02 5.99 GBP WORLD