ORAL LITERATURE

Oral Literature is quite often studies as one of the genres of Literature. Elsewhere it may be studied as one of the fields of folkloristic, that is, that study of folklore. Still to others, oral literature is a discipline and has many different genres. This course will examine genre as an organizing frame of performance, study, classification and analysis of oral literature. By invoking notions of performance, the course will highlight how performance shapes our understanding of oral literature genres. Furthermore, the course will also attempt to relate the study of oral literature to contemporary issues in society.