own stories. Yet they are generally not easy to tell. Nor would it be easy to contemplate
telling the Lake Wobegon stories of the contemporary American story-teller, Garrison
Keillor, unless you were the man himself. Some stories become integral with particular
people. However, the stories of genuine oral tradition are characteristically the property
of no one.
Anonymity differentiates the oral from the literary tradition and raises the many
problems which it has faced since the development of printing. Writing stories down
tends to harness them to the phrasings and viewpoint of the particular writer. The great
European folk-tale collectors such as Perrault in France, the Grimm brothers in
Germany, Afanasiev in Russia, Asbjørnsen and Moe in Norway, performed the great
service to humanity of recording many stories which might otherwise have disappeared.
(Loss is still acute today as parts of the world experience the change away from the
traditional that happened earlier in Europe.) At the same time, the publishing of folk-
tales inevitably changed some of the central facts of the oral tradition. When a story is
written down, it no longer needs to be remembered. Furthermore, what works in speech
does not always work on the page.
The Decline of Oral TraditionLiteracy and mass publishing were major reasons behind the worldwide decline of the
oral tradition. As collectors, such as Pitré in nineteenth-century Sicily, noticed, many of
the best story-tellers with the biggest repertoires were themselves illiterate. The advance
of literacy undermined the traditional tellers, taking away from the respect they were
accorded. The coming of television quickened the process. A story is told of a story-teller
in a pub in Ireland, in the middle of telling a tale when the television was switched on. He
stopped in the middle of what he was saying and never told again.
Changes in social structures furthered the processes of decline. As people moved into
cities, they left behind the natural venues for story-telling. As family units became
smaller they often no longer included grandmothers and other mainstays of domestic
tradition. The writing down of folk stories and myths, which was eventually to bear fruit
in the current renewal of story-telling, also had the great disadvantage that it led to a
misunderstanding of the stories themselves. When a story is written down, not only the
choice of words but also the choice of audience assumes a fixed and long-term
importance. Many collectors, such as Perrault with Cinderella, not only adopted an over-
literary style but decided that folk-tales and fairy tales were meant for children. Some
stories became typecast whereas, told and re-told orally, they are free to alter to take
account of different audiences, atmospheres and changing times.
The Renewal of Story-tellingThe contemporary revival of story-telling can be traced to a number of developments,
including the rise of psychoanalysis and the new understanding of symbol and myth
brought about by Jung and other writers such as Joseph Campbell and Bruno
Bettelheim. After a revulsion against myths and fairy tales on the part of many parents
534 THE CONTEXT OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE