Question

In 100 words, discuss the importance of the oral tradition of reciting poetry and what it meant to ancient societies.

Answer 1

Oral tradition refers to the passing down of stories, myths, knowledge and information from one generation to the next by oral means. This is often done through legends, songs, folktales and poems. Before the invention of writing, this was the main way in which cultures could pass down knowledge over many generations.

Many literary devices that poems use nowadays, such as assonance, repetitions, parallelism and alliteration were developed as mnemonic devices in order to help listeners and storytellers remember the oral accounts. Many cultural expressions of people all over the world started as an oral traditions, such as most mythologies and religious traditions such as Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism. Oral tradition not only allowed ancient cultures to preserve knowledge, but it was also a way to maintain their religious and cultural traditions alive and to bring their community together.

Answer 2

Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved and transmitted orally from one generation to another. The transmission is through speech or song and may include folktales, ballads, chants, prose or verses. In this way, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledge across generations without a writing system, or in parallel to a writing system. Indian religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, for example, have used an oral tradition, in parallel to a writing system, to transmit their canonical scriptures, secular knowledge such as Sushruta Samhita, hymns, and mythologies from one generation to the next.

Oral tradition is information, memories, and knowledge held in common by a group of people, over many generations, and it is not same as testimony or oral history. In a general sense, "oral tradition" refers to the recall and transmission of a specific, preserved textual and cultural knowledge through vocal utterance. As an academic discipline, it refers both to a set of objects of study and a method by which they are studied.

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. Oral tradition is also distinct from the study of orality defined as thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to most of the population. A folkloreis a type of oral tradition, but knowledge other than folklore has been orally transmitted and thus preserved in human history.