Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- PART I IN MIND, CULTURE, AND HISTORY: A SPECIAL PERSPECTIVE
- PART II HOW DO MEMORIES CONSTRUCT OUR PAST?
- PART III HOW DO WE BUILD SHARED COLLECTIVE MEMORIES?
- PART IV HOW DOES MEMORY SHAPE HISTORY?
- PART V HOW DOES MEMORY SHAPE CULTURE?
- 12 Oral Traditions as Collective Memories: Implications for a General Theory of Individual and Collective Memory
- 13 Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission
- Index
- References
12 - Oral Traditions as Collective Memories: Implications for a General Theory of Individual and Collective Memory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- PART I IN MIND, CULTURE, AND HISTORY: A SPECIAL PERSPECTIVE
- PART II HOW DO MEMORIES CONSTRUCT OUR PAST?
- PART III HOW DO WE BUILD SHARED COLLECTIVE MEMORIES?
- PART IV HOW DOES MEMORY SHAPE HISTORY?
- PART V HOW DOES MEMORY SHAPE CULTURE?
- 12 Oral Traditions as Collective Memories: Implications for a General Theory of Individual and Collective Memory
- 13 Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter is about the cultural memory and transmission of oral traditions, especially those that use poetics and music. The latter include many of the best studied and most stable forms of oral traditions, including children rhymes, ballads, songs, and epic poetry. Oral traditions are of interest because, unlike written traditions, they depend primarily on memory for their survival. Thus, by examining the products of long periods of oral transmission, we can learn something about the processes of memory used. Working in the other direction, by using our knowledge of memory, we can better understand how the products came into being and what their likely limitations are. Although they are often viewed only as art forms in current times, oral traditions did, and often still do, transmit valuable practical and moral information and in many forms, such as the epics sung in the Balkans, give insight into major conflicts (Foley, 1991; Havelock, 1978; Lord, 1960; Ong, 1982).
In large part, this chapter is drawn from my earlier work on oral traditions (e.g., Rubin, 1995), but here I intend to show how it provides a more general view of memory as used in the cultural transmission of information. My goal is to show that current theories of memory need to be expanded in principled and theoretically well-supported ways if they are going to be maximally useful in helping us understand individual and collective memory.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Memory in Mind and Culture , pp. 273 - 287Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
References
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