21ST CENTURY FOLKLORE: ACCEPTABILITY OF A NEW FOLKLORE COMPILATION

FOR LITERATURE-BASED INSTRUCTION

Interpreting works of literature whose roots lie in oral tradition is unanswerable.

However, awareness of the vast prehistory tradition as the necessary precursor of

manuscript and print culture is, ironically enough to find out that stories produced orally

forms the basis of narratives that enabled humans to learn about themselves and the

world that they inhabited. In other words, oral tradition served as the sole means of

communication available for forming and maintaining societies and their institutions. 

Oral lore or “oral tradition” is a form of human communication wherein

knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved and transmitted orally

from one generation to another. The transmission is through speech or song or may

include folktales, ballads, chants, prose or verses. In this way, it is possible for a society

to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other oral knowledge across

generations without a writing system, or in parallel to a writing system.

For millennia prior to the invention of writing, which is a very recent phenomenon in the

history of humankind, oral tradition served as the sole means of communication

available for forming and maintaining societies and their institutions.