Narrating our pasts : the social construction of oral history
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Narrating our pasts : the social construction of oral history
（Cambridge studies in oral and literate culture, 22）
Cambridge University Press, 1995, c1992
1st pbk. ed
- : pbk
Available at / 23 libraries
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University of Tsukuba Library, Library on Library and Information Science
: pbk240:To-63951001650
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Note
Bibliography: p. 153-162
Includes indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This study looks at how oral histories are constructed and how they should be interpreted, and argues for a deeper understanding of their oral and social characteristics. Oral accounts of past events are also guides to the future, as well as being social activities in which tellers claim authority to speak to particular audiences. Like written history and literature, orality has its shaping genres and aesthetic conventions and, likewise, has to be interpreted through them. The argument is illustrated through a wide range of examples of memory, narration and oral tradition, including many from Europe and the Americas, and with a particular focus on oral histories from the Jlao Kru of Liberia, with whom Elizabeth Tonkin has carried out extensive research. Tonkin also draws on and integrates the insights of a range of other disciplines, such as literary criticism, linguistics, history, psychology, and communication and cultural studies.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on orthography
- Introduction
- 1. Jlao: an introductory case study
- 2. The teller of the tale: authors and their authorisations
- 3. Structuring an account: the work of genre
- 4. Temporality: narrators and their times
- 5. Subjective or objective
- 6. Memory makes us, we make memory
- 7. Truthfulness, history and identity
- Notes
- Bibliography.
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