Oral Tradition, 1/1 (1986):66-109 Performed Being: Word Art as a Human Inheritance
Year: 1986
Type: article
Abstract: The study of the oral tradition presently lies at the crossroads of several new lines of research that promise to transform the shape of literary criticism and critical theory forever. The nature of this change may perhaps be indicated by an analogy with the revolution in the study of biology which was wrought by the theory of evolution. Before Darwin and Wallace proposed the mechanism of natural selection, biology was essentially disconnected from the other sciences of the physical world. Various strategies or approaches existed for the pursuit of biological studies: the descriptive (corresponding to the common or “garden-variety ” descriptive criticism one fi nds in the standard surveys of literature), the taxonomic (corresponding to classical genre study), the functional (corresponding to the study of rhetoric and reader response), the developmental (corresponding to biographical and historical criticism), the anatomical (corresponding to the New Criticism and Structuralism), the mystical/vitalist (corresponding to Deconstructionism), and the ecological
Author: Frederick Turner
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2141494507