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Copyright

Ruth Finnegan;

Published On

2025-05-28

Page Range

pp. 39–68

Language

  • English

Print Length

30 pages

2. Some approaches to the study of oral poetry

  • Ruth Finnegan (author)
Chapter of: Oral Poetry(pp. 39–68)
This chapter explores the various approaches to the study of oral poetry, highlighting the influence of entrenched assumptions and theoretical models on the field. To properly assess claims about oral poetry, it is essential to understand the underlying assumptions behind these approaches. The chapter examines four major approaches to oral poetry: romantic and evolutionist theories, the Finnish historical-geographical school, sociological approaches to literature, and the relationship between society type and communication modes. Each approach, with its own theoretical background, contributes to understanding oral poetry but also carries inherent biases.
The romantic and evolutionist theories, discussed in detail, emphasize the natural, spontaneous nature of poetry as a primal human expression, often tied to nationalism and folklore studies. This approach glorifies ‘primitive’ societies and their oral traditions as pure, natural forms of artistic expression, fostering assumptions about poetry as artless and instinctive. This chapter critiques these assumptions, noting how they continue to shape the field of oral poetry while recognizing their historical roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European thought. Ultimately, the chapter sets the stage for subsequent discussions on how these theories influence the analysis of oral composition, transmission, and the relationship between poetry and society.

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.