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Oral Poetry - cover image

Book Series

Copyright

Ruth Finnegan;

Published On

2025-05-28

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-409-3
Hardback978-1-80511-410-9
PDF978-1-80511-411-6
HTML978-1-80511-413-0
EPUB978-1-80511-412-3

Language

  • English

Print Length

428 pages (xxiv+404)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 30 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.18" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 33 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.3" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback808g (28.50oz)
Hardback990g (34.92oz)

Media

Illustrations41

THEMA

  • JBGB
  • DSM
  • JHB
  • DSA
  • JHMC

BISAC

  • LIT020000
  • LIT022000
  • SOC002010
  • SOC011000

Keywords

  • Oral Poetry
  • Comparative Analysis
  • Transmission
  • Cultural Context
  • Social Phenomenon
  • Literary Tradition

Oral Poetry

  • Ruth Finnegan (author)
This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the vast field of 'oral poetry,' encompassing everything from American folksongs, contemporary pop songs, and Inuit lyrics, to the heroic epics of Homer, biblical psalms, and epic traditions in Asia and the Pacific. Taking a broad comparative approach, it explores oral poetry across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, and the Americas. Drawing on global research, Ruth Finnegan, the author of the seminal Oral Literature in Africa, sheds light on key debates such as the nature of oral tradition, the relationship between poetry and society, the differences between oral and written forms, and the role of poets in predominantly non-literate contexts.

Written from a primarily anthropological and literary perspective, this study contributes to the socio-cultural aspects of verbal art while also engaging with the literary dimensions of poetry which happens at any given moment to be unwritten. Finnegan's clear, non-technical language and extensive use of translated examples make this work accessible to a wide audience, appealing not only to sociologists and anthropologists but also to those with an interest in poetry, in comparative literature, and in global folk traditions.

The re-issue of this classic study is now augmented by further illustrations and a newly written Introduction and Conclusion, situating it in the context of the contemporary study of literature.

Additional Resources

[document]EPUB Accessibility Report

Contents

Foreword

(pp. xi–xii)
  • Mark Turin

1. Introduction

(pp. 1–38)
  • Ruth Finnegan

2. Some approaches to the study of oral poetry

(pp. 39–68)
  • Ruth Finnegan

3. Composition

(pp. 69–112)
  • Ruth Finnegan

4. Style and performance

(pp. 113–170)
  • Ruth Finnegan

5. Transmission, distribution and publication

(pp. 171–216)
  • Ruth Finnegan

6. Poets and their positions

(pp. 217–274)
  • Ruth Finnegan

7. Audience, context and function

(pp. 275–310)
  • Ruth Finnegan

8. Poetry and society

(pp. 311–344)
  • Ruth Finnegan

Concluding comment

(pp. 345–348)
  • Ruth Finnegan

Afterword

(pp. 349–355)
  • Ruth Finnegan

Contributors

Ruth Finnegan

(author)
Fellow at British Academy
Honorary Fellow of Somerville College at University of Oxford

Ruth Finnegan FBA OBE was born in 1933 in the beautiful fraught once-island city of Derry, Northern Ireland, and brought up there, together with several magical years during the war in Donegal. She had her education at the little Ballymore First School in County Donegal, Londonderry High School, Mount (Quaker) School York, then first class honours in Classics (Literae humaniores) and a doctorate in Anthropology at Oxford. This was followed by fieldwork and university teaching in Africa, principally Sierra Leone and Nigeria. She then joined the pioneering Open University as a founding member of the academic staff, where she spent the rest of her career apart from three years – and more fieldwork – at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and is now, proudly, an Open University Emeritus Professor. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, and is also an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. Ruth has published two books with OBP, Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation (2011), https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0012, and Oral Literature in Africa (2012), https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0025.