Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature

by John D. Niles

Awarded second place in the 2000 Chicago Folklore Prize competition It would be difficult to imagine what human life would be like without stories--from myths recited by Pueblo Indian healers in the kiva, ballads sung in Slovenian market squares, folktales and legends told by the fireside in Italy, to jokes told at the dinner table in Des Moines--for it is chiefly through storytelling that people possess a past.

In Homo Narrans John D. Niles explores how human beings shape their world through the stories they tell. This book vividly weaves together the study of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture with the author's own engagements in the field with some of the greatest twentieth-century singers and storytellers in the Scottish tradition. Niles ponders the nature of the storytelling impulse, the social function of narrative, and the role of individual talent in oral tradition. His investigation of the poetics of oral narrative encompasses literary works that we know only through written text but that are grounded in oral technique--works such as the epic poems and hymns of early Greece, Beowulf, and the tales of the Grimm brothers.

That all forms of narrative, even the most sophisticated genres of contemporary fiction, have their ultimate origin in storytelling is a point that scarcely needs to be argued. Niles's claims here are more that oral narrative is and has long been the chief basis of culture itself, that the need to tell stories is what distinguishes humans from all other living creatures.

Genres: Nonfiction

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niles's book is multifaceted to say the least. As a confluence of his two main areas of research, Anglo-Saxon poetry and oral traditional storytelling and singing, particularly in modern Scotland, the book is an interesting exercise in multidisciplinary work. These two topics provide a jumping off point and raw data for a larger discussion of the role of storytelling as a socially constructive act. As Niles claims, its not language use alone that separates humans from the animals, its our ability to construct complex narratives of possible worlds that makes us unique. Taken in bits, Niles does an excellent job. His prose is crisp and clear and at times elegant. His knowledge and research is vast. Almost all the chapters are downright great. And yet, the book as a whole doesn't quite do the work he'd like it to, I feel. He ends up asking more questions than he answers in terms determining the poetics and anthropology of oral literature, and some parts feel padded. Niles's firsthand stories of his research in Scotland can be riveting, but also seem fluffed up a bit. He could have cut some things down and still achieved the same effect. Nevertheless, it was a thought-provoking and insightful read and helpful for my own studies.

[Tory S. Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some compelling ideas on narrativity being at the core of our humanity and moreover that storytelling is the source of all society. The book is heavily concerned with poetics and details of the performance, so highly sociological and only nods a little to narratology as a very different field of study.