Teaching Oral Traditions

Research is beginning to unearth the astounding wealth of oral traditions that have served as a vital cultural activity and verbal art for peoples throughout the world, from antiquity, to the present. In this volume of the MLA series Options for Teaching, forty-two scholar-teachers bring these discoveries and rediscoveries from the scholarly forum to the classroom.

Part 1, "Canon or Cornucopia?, " provides an introduction to the nature and scope of oral traditions; part 2, "Critical Approaches…