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Orality helped bring religion to all the people of a tribe, and helped each generation appreciate and understand the importance of the tales and rituals. Many tribes used these methods of delivery, in fact, before writing was invented; they were the only way of preserving these important religious messages. The rituals themselves created spirituality and understanding of the world around the people. This is illustrated by the Native Americans, who, for the most part, had an enduring relationship with the natural world, and included many natural icons in their religions. Their orality included tales about animals and places, and how the people interact with these things on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many of them were lost when the oral traditions were lost or forgotten. Many tribes try to keep these traditions alive today, to preserve the spiritual beliefs and culture of the people.
There are many reasons writing does...
Writing can be so lofty that it becomes more important than the words themselves (such as the Bible, which has transcended storytelling to become a sacred and unquestionable text). When the words are concrete, they cannot be questioned or altered, and so, the telling becomes stale and meanings may alter or become lost. Oral traditions do not suffer from this fate, and so they remain fresher and more alive.
In conclusion, orality is a primary tool for primal religions by necessity, but also by choice. There is something quite magical about storytelling around a campfire, as any camper knows, and extending this to spiritual beliefs and rituals would help intensify the experience. Orality preserves traditions in a lifelike way, and encourages memory, participation, and awareness of the underlying message of the tale. It is vital for preserving early religious beliefs.
Stories were learned word for word, and natives viewed speaking as not only preferable to writing, but more effective. Even after introduced, literacy was considered a corrupting and less effective form of communication and this shows the incredible importance of orality in primal religions. An example shows the value of orality as according to this example, literacy "caused the decline of English village culture" (370). If literacy causes the decline of village culture, then orality encourages
features of residual (or "secondary") orality preserved in Voluspa, according to the criteria Ong (1982) advances? Ong (1982) talks about how cultures in the past were only able to preserve their heritage through stories that meticulously passed down through the years (41). He says that since type was invented, importance has moved from the wise old man or woman to someone who can "discover new things" (Ong, 1982, 41). However,
" (Pettersson, 2006) Oral and written verbal art languages are both used for the purpose of information communication as well as information presentation with the reader and listener receiving an invitation to consider the information. The Narrative & the Symbolic The work of Abiola Irele (2001) entitled: "The African Imagination: Literature in Africa & the Black Diaspora" states that Hampate Ba "...incorporates the essential feature of the oral narrative at significant points
Ancient Text With Modern Text Because written literature is capable of being transmitted from the person who wrote it across generations, it acquires the status of communal wisdom simply by being recorded. Yet there are limitations to the applicability of such stories, and to a certain degree wisdom consists in knowing that there are limitations to the theoretical knowledge one can acquire in this way, or human error can misinterpret the
Slave Narrative and Black Autobiography - Richard Wright's "Black Boy" and James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography The slave narrative maintains a unique station in modern literature. Unlike any other body of literature, it provides us with a first-hand account of institutional racially-motivated human bondage in an ostensibly democratic society. As a reflection on the author, these narratives were the first expression of humanity by a group of people in a society where