Two Tropes In One: Oral Tradition

Lumping them together ignores entirely that many, many myths did not originate in anything oral. Classical Mythology, for example, includes many works that were composed in writing from the very start, as well as visual artworks and theatre that have nothing to do with oral anything. Mythlogy can easily be non-oral. And Oral Tradition can easily transmit things that are not myth, such as jokes and music.

Overlap is not the same as identical. There are many works that don't overlap. Look at my list and you'll see them.

Indexing something in the wrong index just shouldn't be done.

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

And yet, any professional book covering those subjects tend to be labeled "Mythology and Folklore" or "Legends". I approve of the name, but it's not a split

I looked over your list and there's several points marking the same trope pages because, as in the bible's case, some of it is written, others were oral before transcription. Or, in the Greek myths case. Some are oral, some are not, yet they both link to the same damn page (aside from specific epics and the like).

I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner, but a page merger and renaming to the proposed new labels might be for the best rather than splitting them based on media form.

I mean, I know we do that a lot, but with this sort of material, it really isn't as distinct. Hell: Myth, Legend and Folklore might as well serve as their own pages.

But then I get paranoid about Christians and other major religions objecting to their works being labeled as myths, but it looks like we're going to do that regardless.

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

You mean that books about mythology call it mythology? How does that invalidate my claim that mythology is a genre?

Mythology is a genre that can be used in any of several media, and as I already pointed out, uses several different media. You haven't addressed this point at all.

Oral Tradition is a medium that can express nearly any genre, including many things that aren't myths: jokes, music, How To Grow Tomatoes, etc. You also haven't addressed this.

How can they possible be the same exact thing? Overlap doesn't make them identical. It does not erase the existence of things that don't overlap.

Um, yeah, because the specific epics are the entire point of that entry.

The Classical Mythology page is about the body of works within the Mythology genre. Some of them are theatre, some are literature, some were oral tradition that turned into literature, some were visual works.

Squares are rectangles.

Some Squares are blue.

I used the link to Squares on both lines. Should blue and rectangles be the same page now? Even though a bunch of squares are in fact red? And a bunch of rectangles aren't square?

The current page is confusing partly because people keep assuming that myth only exists in oral form and never any other medium, and that oral stories are always myth and can never be anything else. My point is that if you do some research, that assumption falls apart. It's incorrect.

And, also, your argument not to split goes against the crowner which has been called.

edited 3rd Apr '12 2:16:20 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

I still haven't worked on the sandbox draft like I promised — sorry for that, but it seems I just don't get the leisure to take it on.

About your disagreement: I think there is a certain ambiguity in the term "Oral Tradition" that repeatedly leads to problems (as we have just experienced in the last few posts), because it can be taken to mean the medium "oral literature" or "oral storytelling", as well as the contents traded down in this medium.

If we take it to mean strictly a medium, then I wonder if a works index with the title Oral Tradition is justified at all –- as long as a work is purely oral, we can’t trope it, and once it’s fixed in print, it’s no longer "oral". So maybe we should drop the idea of a work index under that name completely.

I'll have a go at the sandbox draft as soon as possible, but so far I'd like to throw in the following points:

• We already have the Fairy Tale index. This is a somewhat vague category, as the term “fairy tale” has no hard definition and folklorists therefore don’t use it; they prefer “folk tale”. On the other hand, “fairy tale” encompasses literary fairy tales, which were never folklore/oral tradition, thus are not folk tales. Besides, Fairy Tales also lists folk legends (like “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”), which are not considered folk tales in the stricter sense.

In any case, we already have an index for folk tales, so I'd rather not list individual tales like "Ara The Handsome", "The Liar", "Sleeping Beauty" etc on a "folklore" index, as then we would have to list most of the tales on Fairy Tale a second time — which feels quite redundant.

• The Great Flood is a trope, not a work. Maybe we should make a section, or a separate index for 'Mythic Tropes', 'Tropes of Myth'?

edited 3rd Apr '12 12:41:38 PM by LordGro

Let's just say and leave it at that.

Yes, one of the things I need to do is write a Sandbox for Oral Tradition pointing out that, once you write it down, it ain't oral anymore. It can continue circulating orally, and sometimes does. But the version you wrote down and analyzed is now Literature, and will henceforth circulate like Literature, and be subject to the rather different forces and types of adaptation that act upon Literature, rather than those which act upon Oral Traditions.

This is an important distinction for troping, because the way the two mediums circulate and are changed over time differs. It also comes up in the style of the wording, for example the repetition in oral works, vs. the richer description, more detailed narration, and illustration that usually only shows up in written works. Once something is written, or an adaption is composed in writing, it's much easier for the author to look back over the work as a whole, removing contradictions and inconsistencies, before presenting it to any audience.

So I'd be fine with leaving out a list of works, especially if it would encourage more of this "mythology and oral tradition are the same thing" confusion.

About taking fairy tales and folktales off of the Myth Legend And Folklore page, I didn't know of that index. I agree that if there's already a Fairy Tales or Folktales index they needn't be indexed twice. Unfortunately I have difficulty telling which are these and which are legends, except where I'm familiar with the source material. Why don't I stick the list on the Sandbox, so it can be edited more easily. In any case, there are apparently some that are Folktales or Fairy Tales but not indexed under Fairy Tales yet?

For tropes, I personally don't see the need for an index of Mythology Tropes. It would probably just end up repeating whatever is in Older Than Dirt and Older Than Feudalism now. But I could be persuaded otherwise. If there would be enough difference to have a separate list, I wouldn't name it Tropes of Myth. That invites confusion with Tropes Of Legend, which is ... really unrelated.

edited 3rd Apr '12 1:06:32 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

"You mean that books about mythology call it mythology? How does that invalidate my claim that mythology is a genre?"

It doesn't, I'm working aloud what's going on because I'm not entirely sure of the process. I'm partially trying to clarify things by ignoring mediums, which can sometimes alter genre formatting principles.

"Oral Tradition is a medium that can express nearly any genre, including many things that aren't myths: jokes, music, How To Grow Tomatoes, etc. You also haven't addressed this."

And yet, most of the tropes listed/the focus of the trope page are not those things. Ergo, they were not under consideration at the moment.

Music has its own pages. Jokes and anecdotes do as well, I think.

"The Classical Mythology page is about the body of works within the Mythology medium."

Okay, what? What is the "Mythology Medium"? Genre is not medium. You appear to be thinking that it is, and that is where I'm getting a bit confused. The Sandbox page appears to be defining things as genre, and you're talking about medium?

Oral Tradition is a Medium. Literature is a Medium. Comics are a Medium.

Mythology, Legend and Folklore are Genres. That's how the sandbox has already defined them.

If there's any debate at all about it, I say we ignore medium all together and just go with the storytelling type, and include a few George Lucas Throwback stories for good measure.

"And, also, your argument not to split goes against the crowner which has been called."

Hence my lament, which you ignored. Don't be such a jerk about it, man. I'm just curious, sorry if it came out another way. (And sorry if I over-reacted to your response, The internet is damnable for its lack of vocal inflections)

edited 3rd Apr '12 2:12:17 PM by MajinGojira

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

I misspoke, I meant genre.

Mythology is a genre. Oral Tradition is a medium. They aren't identical, don't always overlap, and should not be lumped together in the same page. As far as I can tell from posts that frankly I find extremely confusing and hard to understand, you're arguing they should stay lumped, and that all my non-overlapping examples don't really exist. I disagree with (what I think) you (are saying), and also I think it's illogical. That's not supposed to be a straw anything, it's my honest best attempt to figure out what you're actually saying. I didn't notice any lament, just you being angry and then calling me names.

What? I don't even know what you're saying here. Which page do you mean? I had a list of work-groups... which aren't tropes.... and most of which include many non-oral works.

For example, Classical Mythology includes:

Literature: Virgil's The Aeneid, Appollonius Rhodius' Argonautica, Nonnus' Dionysiaca, Pindar's Odes, Plato's allegories that he possibly made up on the spot, and many others I don't know off the top of my head when I'm upset, all composed in writing with no oral origin.
Theatre: Everything by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. We know they composed those plays for the City Dionysiaca and that the plays did not originate in any oral form before being written.
Visual Works: Bazillions of vase-paintings. Plus paintings, statues, relief sculpture, and metalworks that we know existed because they were described in surviving accounts, although the artworks themselves are gone (along with the occasional surviving specimen.)

Obviously, Classical Mythology is not 100% oral. It should not be indexed in Oral Tradition, any more than it should be indexed under Theatre or Literature.

Ignoring those non-oral works, and pretending they don't exist, is the only way anyone can claim that all Classical Mythology is 100% oral.

I'm taking a break so I don't get more angry.

edited 3rd Apr '12 4:51:55 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

Heh. I caught you in a slip of the tongue and go on to long about it, then you do the same.

God, I love irony.

Sorry, but we kind of moved on from that point, I'd rather hear about what we're going to be doing with the genre. (I mean, I could argue that it's hard to determine with ancient sources if the transciptions were created from text or based on older oral works—it can be done, but it's very hard. But that argument is pretty crappy.)

Sorry if I'm confusing you, but being in a confused state is partly the problem.

Though I'll cop that my lament could have been a lot stronger, as it only consists of "I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner".

You're kind of arguing against something I'm not supporting having listened and thought it out some. I'm not really focusing on the name change/merging stuff since that, as you pointed out that what's done is done.

I'm asking "Where do we go from here"? (with a bit of trepidation on if this is the proper direction to go in).

Sorry if that only showed up in later edits, I had to calm myself down first.

edited 3rd Apr '12 2:37:27 PM by MajinGojira

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

I wrote up a folklore section on the sandbox draft. As you see, it's quite lengthy, especially the "folk tale" section. I wonder if folk tales should be covered on the Fairy Tale index, though that may make that page too huge.

Another thing to consider is to split the whole complex Mythology-Legend-Folklore into several pages, though currently I am not sure what way to split them would be reasonable.

Let's just say and leave it at that.

Thank you Lord Gro, that is very good! I too wonder if Folklore should be a separate page, or if I just need to do more research and make the Myth and Legend sections equally long (I don't think I have the time, though) .

I am thinking that a lot of the second list of works on the sandbox, as well as the other works from Oral Tradition that don't belong on the new genre page, should be moved to the Fairy Tales page, like you said earlier. On that page the Traditional fairy tales or fairy tale characters list probably needs to be divided into Folktales and Folk Legends, or renamed Folktales and Folk Legends, since those are separate things.

It is hard, especially because the source may differ from sentence to sentence, or even word to word, within one text. Say it starts out oral and gets written down: subsequent copies have been altered deliberately or by accident, so bit by bit parts of the text are changed. That also makes dating the content tricky — usually you can say "This version was from YEAR, parts of it are probably older." The difficulty of knowing is part of why I don't want to have a page that assumes ALL of it is oral, full stop.

About where do we go from here, I am wondering if Folklore should have a separate page from Sandbox.Myth Legend And Folklore, or even if it is better to combine the Folklore info into the existing Fairy Tales page, and make Folklore a redirect or something.

I am sorry that I got upset earlier.

edited 21st Apr '12 12:45:33 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

My suggestion would be to make an index for Folklore that collects folk legends, folk ballads, folk tales etc, including traditional fairy tales, *additional* to the existing Fairy Tale index.

The Fairy Tale page/index treats "fairy tale" as a genre, not as a format; see the lengthy lists of literary fairy tales, fairy tale adaptations and other works based on/inspired by fairy tales. To merge this page with folk narratives/folklore would hopelessly clutter it.

Traditional fairy tales would be listed twice, on Fairy Tale and on Folklore. Folk legends (like "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", "White Witch Of Rose Hall") would be deleted from Fairy Tale but stay on Folklore.

edited 21st Apr '12 11:53:17 AM by LordGro

Let's just say and leave it at that.

1. Do you think the Folklore description you wrote should be moved to said index, or stay on Sandbox.Myth Legend And Folklore ?

2. I've gotten everything currently listed as "traditional fairy tales" on Fairy Tale currently, plus the stuff currently under Mostly Folklore and Legend on Sandbox.Myth Legend And Folklore, into an "unsorted" list on the sandbox. Since you know this stuff and I don't, will you please sort them when you get the chance?

edited 21st Apr '12 1:24:42 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

I thought of making the Folklore section into a separate page, yes.

Edit: OK, I will do that.

edited 22nd Apr '12 11:30:24 AM by LordGro

Let's just say and leave it at that.

I like the idea as well.

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

I sorted the list on Myth Legend And Folklore. I also made some other changes in structuring and formatting.

The folktale list needs further attention — I did not check for every story if it is a literary or a traditional fairy tale, and the subdivision I made is somewhat arbitrary — as you see, I made some subdivisions for "Beast Fables", "Tall Tales" and "Nursery Tales", but lumped the rest together under "Fairy Tales". This of course is a bit of a cop-out, but it became to difficult to sort them all into categories (they don't all fall neatly into a category, as categories can overlap).

The deeper problem (which I already mentioned) is that the distinction between literary and "traditional" folktale/fairytale is somewhat fluid. Once a tale is printed and most people learn it from books, it has, very strictly speaking, ceased to be "folklore" and become "literary". Essentially, true folktales/folk legends have no "codified" versions — every teller used to tell them slightly (or not so slightly) different. Sorting literary from traditional fairy tales could become somewhat tricky. (We may try, though.)

As you see, I also unilaterally opted for a sorting principle by genre/format within the Folklore section, not by region of origin (except within certain subsections, like "Creatures of Folklore", which btw is much underdeveloped). How do you feel about it? We could go the other way and make "regional" sections with genre/page type subsections, but I liked this way better.

Other changes:

• I deleted all redlinks from the list — the number of possible pages on the index is infinite, but I think it's enough to list those we actually have.
• I removed The Farmer and the Viper, Afterlife Express, "Famous Gunslingers", which was a pothole to The Gunslinger. All three are tropes, not works or characters. But as I suggested, we might make a separate section for "folklore tropes".
• Conspiracy Theories is a useful notes page, which is why I removed it as a subpoint under Urban Legends. I also think that conspiracy theories are not strictly Urban Legends.
• I filled in a "Heroic Legend" works list.

I'll have a futher look at the mythology and legend sections, though I need a break for now. So far waiting for your feedback and opinions ...

Let's just say and leave it at that.

Gro that looks excellent! I don't think the mythology section needs any more looking at — I'm just going to remove the second Kalevala ref.

Separating by type works for me though I still prefer region personally. As for separating Literary from Traditional fairy tales, I get you. It is an inherently tricky line. If we are going for a separation, I would divide between things that have a known first author who composed them as Literature, vs. things that are known to originate in Oral Tradition, or where the oldest known texts evince multiple versions from multiple sources.

edited 22nd Apr '12 5:03:59 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

I listed Kalevala twice consciously. Its opening sections are concerned with the creation of the world and thus, “mythology” in the narrow sense. Later, it moves on to heroic legend.

Some thoughts on the current state of affairs:

• I wonder if I am making the folktale indexing too complicated: Maybe we should only collect those folktales in the "folklore" section that are not listed on Fairy Tale, and put a link to the Fairy Tale page on the list.
• I’m not sure what works exactly should be listed in the “Heroic Legend” section. I started with all kinds of heroic epics, which seemed pretty unambiguous. But now that I added all the ancient Greek tragedies that deal with legendary heroes to the list, where do we draw the line? Wouldn’t we have to add Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida to the list, or even Hamlet under "Norse heroic legend"? And if we do, what about modern fantasy retellings?
• I got aware of the existence of another genre of literature that belongs into this complex: Wisdom Literature. Hesiod’s Works and Days, certain parts of The Bible and The Talmud, and Bhagavad Gita would fall into this class, rather than under "myth(-ology)" or "legend". If you agree, I'm going to make a section for these.

edited 28th Apr '12 6:29:42 AM by LordGro

Let's just say and leave it at that.

Ehh.. I'm more of a lumper than a splitter. The Wisdom Literature at first look seems to me like it could be included in the Largely Religious section, but it could also be separate instead. Aside from Plato's writing, Works And Days, and the Bhagavad Gita, what else here would qualify?.

The thing is, if we list omnibus works twice and divide them up into sections that relate to different genres, then we'd be listing The Bible two or three times, some Greek plays twice, Bhagavad Gita twice, Kalevala twice, etc. That's why I headed the sections as "Largely Foo," since the boundaries are fuzzy and most works are not 100% This or That.

On the other hand, there seem to be separate articles for various sections of The Bible: The Talmud, etc. So it's possible we could link to smaller parts that are Largely Legend or Largely Wisdom Literature. Listing both Bhagavad Gita and Mahabharata is basically the same.

As for Shakespeare's plays, I don't think they count. To me they seem more like modern retellings of myths. Their subject is derived from Classical myth, but treated as largely fictional. We take Mary Renault's books about Greek myth to be fiction, not works of myth, because she's writing them as fiction inspired by myth, not as newly re-interpreted religious works for the faithful. There are neo-pagan writers who do just that, but they don't seem to present their work as fiction.

As to Folklore I think it's entirely up to your judgement whether you consider traditional Fairy Tales sufficiently distinct from Folktales. I'm really totally ignorant of the whole genre.

edited 28th Apr '12 8:26:07 AM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

I'd lump the categories together to make things simpler if there is that much overlap.

Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.

OK, this post is going to be somewhat long and rambling, but there are several issues to resolve, so I'll just list my points without any particular order.

I wrote up a sandbox draft on Legends. I think the concept/genre of "legend" is so broad and diverse enough to deserve its own page; and besides, a page for mythology, legend, and folklore all in one simply gets too huge.

"Wisdom Literature" is literature that teaches moral behavior/ethics, but based in a mythological/religious worldview; not (yet) in philosophy (which implies emancipation from mythology and religion). It would encompass, besides the aforementioned, parts of The Talmud (I think) and "Havamal" from the Poetic Edda (no page yet). Plato's writings would not count, as these are philosophy proper; they are not connected to a mythological or religious worldview.— The thing is that Wisdom Literature doesn't have to contain any mythological/cosmological material at all. Works And Days, for example, is not actually a mythological poem, despite being from the same author as Theogony.

Maybe it boils down to that I am something more of a 'splitter'... just like I'd prefer to list works by genre rather than origin. I think the primary "hubs" for all mythological/legendary/folkloric pages connected to a specific mythology, religion or region should be on the "X Mythology" page for that specific mythology. (Like the works list that I made on Classical Mythology some time ago.)

About The Bible — the Bible is such a massive and diverse chunk of texts that it falls into a whole spectrum of genres; I don't think it's in itself a problem if it turns up in a lot of genres/indices. But we'll see.

As it looks like we are going to split off the Folklore section, we should consider which pages/titles we actually want to have. It's more or less like this:

Folklore — many branches, of which one is:

• Oral Folklore a.k.a. "Oral Tradition", which mostly consists of:
  • Folktales: Like fairy tales, but include certain genres like Beast Fable, Tall Tale and Joke Story that are usually not included in “fairy tales”.
    • Fairy Tales: A somewhat vaguely defined subgroup of folktales.
  • Folk legends
  • Folk ballads: Folk narrative (tale, legend or history) meets folk song
  • “Short" forms of oral folklore: folk songs, nursery rhymes, riddles, proverbs, jokes.

In other words, "Folklore" is becoming the new Oral Tradition, with its issues of being about the medium "oral storytelling/oral literature" as well as the works passed down in that medium.

Then we got the whole complex of creatures/beings of folklore, myth and legend. Such creatures are treated rather uneven on the wiki — while some of these are seemingly regarded "tropes" in itself — see Selkies and Wereseals, Kitsune, Leprechaun — others don't have, strictly, pages for the creature itself, but rather for the way(s) it is depicted, with a focus on modern fantasy; as in Our Elves Are Better, Our Vampires Are Different, Our Dwarves Are All the Same etc. I'm not entirely sure if, for example, Our Banshees Are Louder is actually a page about the banshee of Irish folklore, or rather about the stereotypical banshees of modern fantasy works.

A YKTTW for Heroic Epic was started some time ago, though it didn't outgrow its infancy. I wonder if it could be made fit to cover Heroic Legend in general.

edited 11th May '12 2:00:39 PM by LordGro

Let's just say and leave it at that.

So guys, anything happening here?

Also, would Myth Legend And Folklore be a good place to list mythology tropes? (e.g. A Mythology Is True, Crossover Cosmology, Chekhovs Myth)

I apologize, I've been very burnt out on tvtropes from grinding away so many hours of my life fixing wicks and usually not finding anyone to help me with them. I just had to take a vacation.

Gro, I promise I'm going to read and respond to your post, hopefully soon.

Brent Labs, I would not put tropes in these pages. Those should go in a trope index, although tropes used in myths should be a separate index from tropes of how myths are used. And then again, the former (tropes used in myths) would have so much overlap with Older Than Dirt and Older Than Feudalism that it may not be worthwhile.

The pages we're working will remain collections of works, not tropes.

edited 2nd Jun '12 10:56:27 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

Cool. I went ahead and made a Mythology Tropes YKTTW.

Clocking as inactive.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

Reviving this. Maybe we can bring this to an end, after we have already done so much.

I submitted my Legend draft to YKTTW. Let's see what tropers think about it.

Let's just say and leave it at that.