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Copyright

Ruth Finnegan;

Published On

2025-05-28

Page Range

pp. 275–310

Language

  • English

Print Length

36 pages

7. Audience, context and function

  • Ruth Finnegan (author)
Chapter of: Oral Poetry(pp. 275–310)
This chapter explores the complex relationship between oral poetry and its audience, highlighting how context and audience significantly shape the function and meaning of oral performances. It begins by acknowledging the parallels between oral and written poetry in terms of their societal roles, emphasizing that broad, abstract debates about poetry's reflection of or impact on society can lead to frustration. Instead, the chapter suggests that focusing on specific occasions of oral performance and the nature of the audience provides more insight into the immediate effects and purposes of oral poetry.
The chapter goes on to categorize various types of audiences involved in oral performances, ranging from participatory to specialist and passive listeners. It stresses that the audience's participation or reaction can deeply influence both the form and the delivery of a poem, as well as its broader social and cultural effects. Furthermore, the chapter highlights how oral poetry serves a multitude of functions—from reinforcing group solidarity in communal work or protest songs to offering personal reflection in solitary performances. Through these analyses, the chapter underlines the importance of considering audience and context in understanding the full impact and purpose of oral poetry in different societies.

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.