Before Literature

The Nature of Narrative Without the Written Word

Sheila J. Nayar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000652352
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Before Literature examines storytelling that, whether due to historical, technological, or socio-economic circumstance, is neither shaped nor influenced by alphabetic literacy.

How does a story unfold when carried solely in memory, when it cannot be written down or externally stored? What structural and stylistic pressures are imposed when it must travel through space and time exclusively by word of mouth? In Before Literature, Sheila J. Nayar addresses these very questions, guiding the reader in a lively and accessible manner through the key features of storytelling that's been unaffected by writing. Even more, Nayar shows how the very norms that drove oral epics such as the Mahabharata and Homer's Odyssey can continue to shape contemporary forms like Bollywood masala films, Hollywood spectaculars, and comic books.

This clear and accessible guide is an ideal starting point for undergraduates approaching the study of orality. It offers a fundamentally different way of thinking about oral narrative, while also disclosing some of the "hows" and "whys" of written literature, leading to a much broader understanding and appreciation of our storytelling tradition.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Denaturalizing literacy
• 2 The story behind Before Literature
• 3 Existence without inscription
• 4 Myth and the mythical, epic and the epical
• 5 Why prelit matters
• 6 But there is always a but …
• 7 A beginning with no definitive beginning
• 8 A digression on the “once upon a time…” of Star Wars
• 9 Beginning in medias res
• 10 Ending anti-in medias res—and pro-status quo
• 11 “And this happened … and then this … and then …”
• 12 Epic examples of episodic epics
• 13 [[Boxes] within boxes] within boxes
• 14 Flashbacks, masala style
• 15 Lists, lists, and more lists
• 16 In defense of clichés and the formulaic (yes, really!)
• 17 Repeat, recycle—and repeat (and recycle)
• 18 Whence the “traditional”?
• 19 The acoustic landscape
• 20 Ancestors and alienation
• 21 Alienation and participation
• 22 The agon of audiences—but, even more, of actors
• 23 Blood and guts
• 24 Violence + veneration = a polarized world
• 25 When exteriority is not a bad thing
• 26 But, what of art? What of aesthetics?
• 27 Oral embodiment
• 28 Superhuman vessels
• 29 Is antipsychological necessarily unreal?
• 30 Animating abstract knowledge
• 31 The absence of irony, the pleasure of parody
• 32 Is there an oral chronosense?
• 33 Do intellectuals suffer from alphabetically literate elitism?
• 34 Why the humanities matter—to all of us
• Index