Storytelling

Once upon a time, there was a king called Gilgamesh. He was king of Uruk in Babylonia, in the country now known as Iraq. He lived in about 2700 BC. Many myths and legends were written about Gilgamesh. One of these is the earliest story we have proof of. It was written in about 2000 BC on stone tablets. The only remaining recollection of the story is in Akkadian, an ancient language related to Hebrew. A summary in English can be found on the web of this, the earliest remaining story in the world. It can be found at the following link: http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/GILG.HTM

Storytelling is an ancient art by which one passes on knowledge of real or fictional events to another. It has been used down through the ages as a means of entertainment, excitement, and education. Every culture has embraced it and it is still common in the modern day. Stories would change down through the ages, as each person who tells a story changes a small part of it, and so in time small changes mount to one noticeable difference. There are many different forms of storytelling:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling

The earliest form of storytelling was oral. This involves two parties; the teller and his/her audience. This form of storytelling is done mainly by methods of improvisation. The teller learns particulars like the characters and events and improvises the rest. The audience also become a part of the creativity as they visualise their own depiction of what they hear. This creates the fact not no two tellings of the same story will be exactly the same. More on oral storytelling can be found at the link above.

The intrinsic nature of stories was described in A Palpable God, (1978) by Reynolds Price (Akkadine Press) when he wrote: "A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths."

Storytelling can be split into many different categories called genres. These include folklore, ballad, myth, superstition, legend, proverbs and material culture. The most popular of these genres is probably folklore:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore

• Definition: “Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, material culture, and so forth, common to a particular population, comprising the traditions (including oral traditions) of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The academic and usually ethnographic study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics.” Created in the 19th century as ideology for romantic nationalism, the term folklore was derived by William Thoms. It was Anglo-Saxon for “popular antiquities”. The tales of folklore are generic for different kinds of popular narrative. It is variable and contains elements of both the magic and religious, and the mundane. A good example of a folklore tale is the well known “Hansel and Gretel”, which is still popular in the world today. In the modern world however, the most common kind of folklore are urban legends. Unfortunatly, people often overlook them as folklore, and take a belief in the information.

A ballad is a story in song form. They are commonly made up of short, four line, rhyming stanzas, and create a narrative. 19th century peotry made great use of ballads. Many types of ballad include broadsheet, operatic, literary, border, and murder. In the modern day, “power ballads” have become well known in popular music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballad

However, the most famous type of storytelling today is within novels. Novels usually entail a narrative within them, which tells the tale of one or more characters, from their or another’s point of view. Novel has been, and still is, one of the leading literary genres in the world. The varied styles of novels make them appealing to all. Examples of different styles of novels would be “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Oliver Twist” and the work of world famous authors such as J.J.R.Tolkien and Roald Dahl. Refer to the following link for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novels

We hope that this article is a good brief summary to tell you about the art that is storytelling and we can all live happily ever after.

-Jay/Shane-