Storyteller
One calls storyteller or narrator, that or that which tells orally a history without support other than its knowledge, his imaginary and his talents of improvisition. The art of the storyteller is thus different at the same time from that of the writing, the reading with high voice, and the simple recitation.
The place of the storyteller in the Western company
In Occident, since the Aède and the Greek Rhapsode to the storyteller of the modern time, while passing by the bards Celtic and the Troubadour of the Middle Ages, the oral tradition of the tale perduré until the fall of illiteracy, starting from the end of the eighteenth century, makes disappear the need from one automatic appeal to the memory of the storytellers to remember a history. The repertory of the traditional storytellers, upset during the history by the contributions external of the immigration and the literary history, and of the interior by the risks of the memory and imagination of the storytellers, was the object of scientific investigations only starting from the nineteenth century, whereas the oral tradition was on the way to rarefy and to die out. But it is only since the middle of the twentieth century that the anthropologists are interested not only in the tales, but also with the art of the storytellers.
In parallel, as from the years 1970, one attends in France as in the United States an renewed interest for the art of the storyteller, who takes the form of a Renouveau of the tale. Distinct from the traditional oral tradition, this new art of the storyteller is based more on the writing. In this new art of the storyteller, social functions disappeared: transmission of certain religious rites, warning of the dangers incurred by the community (famine, wolves…); others perdurent while being passably transformed: education of the children, social link within the same community of work, construction of collective stories; and finally some appear: expression artistic, moral, political, cultural cement within the same urban community.
The storyteller, traditional or modern, deploys his talent in meeting places, of user-friendliness. In a report/ratio of proximity with its audience, it came to animate the family circle at the time of the taken care rural ones, and from now on animates the afternoon or the evenings of a more heteroclite public, very often within public institutions like the school or the library. The lights of the chimney those, often filtered replaced, of the projectors, but always remains the preoccupation with an intimate relationship with a restricted number spectators.
Characteristic of the traditional companies
In Africa, Griot S and " griottes" occupy this function of storytellers. They have as a trade, in addition to the conservation and the diffusion of the oral tradition, to compose and report a gesture family, clannish or tribal at the time of the ceremonies, for example the marriages. One could thus compare them with the Greek Rhapsode S, with the bards S Celtic, with the Troubadour S of the south of France or with the trouveres who exert their talent in France between XIe and XIVe centuries, with the Ménestrel S, or the German Minnesänger .
With the Japan, modern society very attached to its traditions, the Geisha S can be regarded as narrators.
In Arménie, the storytellers, peddler-professionals, took part in all the festivities of the country. Thus the oral tradition circulated. They are called Gousani.
But the role of the storyteller is not reduced to a function a " conservation of the patrimoine" , since each one prints with its account its own leg. And that is particularly visible in the current of the Western revival of the tale.
Today still, by the participation in the rebuilding of social fabric, the storytellers, tellers and tellers are present and are often in the center of new spaces of life. These social functions were always accompanied by a strong artistic will to make it possible to always carry the stories in evolution and performance, with those for which they are intended.
See too
-
Tale
- Reader (nobody)
* Category: sociology of the culture