Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature

Folklore, August, 2006 by Kelly V. Jones

Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature. By John D. Niles. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. 280 pp. Illus. 32.50 [pounds sterling] (hbk). ISBN 0-8122-3504-5

In Homo Narrans John D. Niles offers a stimulating and compelling exploration of the role of oral literature in society. Implicit in Niles's argument is a celebration of humanity's aptitude for telling stories--a proclivity that distinguishes our species from all other life-forms: "... as far as I know, no dog or wolf has ever said to another one, 'A funny thing happened to me yesterday on the way to the food source...'" (p. 198). Niles examines how society defines, celebrates, and re-creates itself through oral narrative: how the tales man tells possess a fundamental degree of "cosmoplastic power, or world-making ability" (p. 3). He steers his focus away from what these stories are, to ask how and why they are told, initiating an investigation into the complex symbiotic relationship between oral literature and the society that produces it: stories that are shaped by their social conditions also possess "some power to shape, as well" (p. 123). In introducing his concept of "wordpower," Niles foregrounds the quasi-spiritualistic and restorative powers of spoken/sung literature in its ability to nurture a sense of identity for a community in providing both links to the past and aspirations for the future. However, Niles resolutely accentuates not only the conservative traditions behind storytelling rituals, but also how the dissemination of oral literature can act as a site of struggle between the past order and the present, as a catalyst to inspire and assist changes within the society and to encourage an understanding of such transformations. He ascertains the role that individual storytellers and singers as "tradition-bearers" can play in both upholding folkloric customs and in disseminating change; how oral literature can both aid and resist the preservation of the existing culture and its cultural artefacts. Niles places particular emphasis on the somatic nature of oral literature--the importance of physical presence and bio-social communication in the experience of storytelling, wherein bonds of communal affiliation and affection are strengthened and the values of the community can be reaffirmed and/or redefined.

Niles oscillates between more erudite discussions of the early Anglo-Saxon oral literature traditions and the more readily accessible examples of traditional Scottish popular balladry, as mediated through folksingers and storytellers up to the present day. In his examination of Beowulf, he conducts a thorough analysis of the matrix of sociohistorical conditions in which the "text" was produced, contending that the period of its production was the tenth century, a time of radical national, ethnic, ecclesiastical, and cultural (re)formation. His reference to the more easily discernible social and cultural backdrop for the oral literature of twentieth-century Scotland extends his argument to a more contemporary context. With a devout reverence for the skills of tradition-bearers as mediated through the songs of Stanley Robertson, Betsy Whyte, and Lizzie Higgins, and the stories of Duncan Williamson, Niles situates their capacity for storytelling against a background of a nomadic "tinker" tradition. In certain cases, he analyses the effect of the social marginalisation of these clans and their resulting need to inspire a sense of communal solidarity through oral literature to counterbalance their social ostracism.

Niles places a strong emphasis on fieldwork and the need for "somatic communication" with the "folk" he implements as his subjects of study, and he contextualises his research within a strong ethnographic and folkloric methodological tradition. His work is explicitly (although not emphatically) addressed to specialists in the fields of anthropology, folklore, and early English literature, but also to any reader who (as an affiliated human receptor of oral narrative) shares a zealous interest in stories and why and how we tell them.

Throughout his work, Niles contends that it is necessary to dispense with the need to view "oral culture" and "literature" as two different entities. He continually returns to his assertion that the artificiality of the distinction between the "oral" nature of the text and its status as "literature" causes problems by encouraging readers to assign a greater degree of authority to one rather than the other. This is to the detriment of our appreciation of the oral because of the significance and cultural superciliousness attached to literacy as opposed to illiteracy. Niles stresses the need to dispense with any modernist distinctions between orality and literacy, endorsing the necessity to perceive "oral literature" as a hybrid of both. The irony manifests itself through the perverse paradox that, in investigating the oral tradition, Niles is restricted to the textual fetters of the page. His discussion is lively and engaging, warm in tone, and illustrated with quirky and instructive anecdotes. However, Niles is making the most of what he can out of his restricted "academic" medium and there are perhaps moments when the articulation of his argument suffers and his own erudite narrative slips (perhaps intentionally) into convoluted auteur-biography. Occasionally his reflections may perhaps be seen to sacrifice academic integrity to emotive "personal subjectivity"--a pitfall that, ironically, he professes to avoid (p. 5). He veers between refined textual analysis and a more personal spirit of emotive reverie, which may divide readers into those who delight in the idiosyncratic and (at times) whimsical nature of his discussion, and those who are left feeling somewhat disorientated.