Non-Fiction Books:

Homo Narrans

The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature
Click to share your rating 0 ratings (0.0/5.0 average) Thanks for your vote!

Format:

Paperback / softback
$74.99
Available from supplier

The item is brand new and in-stock with one of our preferred suppliers. The item will ship from a Mighty Ape warehouse within the timeframe shown.

Usually ships in 2-3 weeks

Buy Now, Pay Later with:

Afterpay is available on orders $100 to $2000 Learn more

Availability

Delivering to:

Estimated arrival:

  • Around 8-20 May using International Courier

Description

It would be difficult to imagine what human life would be like without stories-from myths recited by Pueblo Indian healers in the kiva, ballads sung in Slovenian market squares, folktales and legends told by the fireside in Italy, to jokes told at a dinner table in Des Moines-for it is chiefly through storytelling that people possess a past. In Homo Narrans John D. Niles explores how human beings shape their world through the stories they tell. The book vividly weaves together the study of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture with the author's own engagements in the field with some of the greatest twentieth-century singers and storytellers in the Scottish tradition. Niles ponders the nature of the storytelling impulse, the social function of narrative, and the role of individual talent in oral tradition. His investigation of the poetics of oral narrative encompasses literary works, such as the epic poems and hymns of early Greece and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, texts that we know only through written versions but that are grounded in oral technique. That all forms of narrative, even the most sophisticated genres of contemporary fiction, have their ultimate origin in storytelling is a point that scarcely needs to be argued. Niles's claims here are more ambitious: that oral narrative is and has long been the chief basis of culture itself, that the need to tell stories is what distinguishes humans from all other living creatures.

Author Biography:

John D. Niles is Frederic G. Cassidy Professor of Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is author and editor of many books, including Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition and coeditor, with Allen J. Frantzen, of Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity.
Release date Australia
March 19th, 2010
Author
Audience
  • Tertiary Education (US: College)
Illustrations
15 illus.
Pages
296
Dimensions
152x229x16
ISBN-13
9780812221077
Product ID
4013072

Customer reviews

Nobody has reviewed this product yet. You could be the first!

Write a Review

Marketplace listings

There are no Marketplace listings available for this product currently.
Already own it? Create a free listing and pay just 9% commission when it sells!

Sell Yours Here

Help & options

Filed under...