Olrik’s book is called Principles of Oral Narrative Research. It contains the standards and the definitions that are either missing, minimized, or ignored in DH. That is the first thing that makes it superior to DH.
Let’s start with the obvious definition. What is an oral narrative?
An oral narrative is material passed along by word of mouth, face to face, person to person(s), that tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It has at least one character who plays a role in the action. It has at least one episode. Most of the time it goes more than one hop (transmission between at least two people) before somebody records it. At that point its content and expression are fixed and, unless somebody continues transmitting it orally, its life as an oral narrative ends. It always illustrates one or more facets of the culture in which it transmits and which it purports to be about. It is never possible to consult the people who were the first to transmit an oral narrative at the time that questions arise about the truth of its contents.
Olrik defined three kinds of oral narrative based on the Danish narratives he was familiar with.
A lay is told in verse, often with elaborate expressions, at some length, even though it may tell of only one episode in a much larger story. It tends to undergo leapwise changes compared to other versions of the same narrative.
A saga is not told in verse, goes to some length, often has multiple episodes. Olrik classed the simple tale here, as well as historical sagas which may span centuries, and the heroic tale in the sense of a tale about a reputed ancestor displaying superior or superlative forms of the habits or morals of the culture transmitting the tale.
A legend is often one episode, with one character. The legend ends with an exclamation by the character that encapsulates his situation, his character, or the issue expressed by the legend. Origin legends tend to relate to a specific location and tell about the origin of a people or a custom. Olrik termed all other legends anecdotes.
The first thing to notice is that Olrik’s principles apply only to narratives. They don’t apply to legalistic material. Trying to find examples of the Epic Laws in the “thou shalts” of Torah is work done in vain. But the narratives in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, such as the death of Nadav and Avihu, or the Talmudic story of the four sages who saw Paradise, might have features that correspond to Olrik’s principles.
It’s pretty obvious that the Iliad, with its hexameter, ought to be a lay, and it indeed tells a very small part of the entire 20 years of the war, but goes on for 12 books.
It’s also pretty obvious that Genesis is an example of a saga, and a heroic saga at that.
In among that, the two Lemekh stories that I discussed a long time ago are examples of legends. Read them again and notice the closing exclamations.
You can imagine narrators of past millennia, taken over all of human history and prehistory, telling millions of tales, but a relatively small number have survived. Olrik confirms that, and provides a reason that affects important issues internal to each narrative. That's for next week.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights Reserved
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