Storytelling
A universal human activity of sharing stories across cultures.
Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics, or embellishment. Every culture has its own narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation, or instilling moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters, and narrative point of view.
- field
- Cultural and social activity
- known_for
- Sharing narratives across oral, written, and digital media
- earliest_form
- Oral, combined with gestures and expressions, predating writing
- key_elements
- Plot, characters, narrative point of view
Lore & Background
Storytelling, intertwined with the development of mythologies, predates writing. The earliest forms were usually oral, combined with gestures and expressions. Storytelling often has a prominent educational and performative role in religious rituals, and some archaeologists believe that rock art may have served as a form of storytelling for many ancient cultures, including the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. The Aboriginal Australian people painted symbols which also appear in stories on cave walls as a means of helping the storyteller remember the story. The story was then told using a combination of oral narrative, music, rock art and dance, which brings understanding and meaning to human existence through the remembrance and enactment of stories. People have used the carved trunks of living trees and ephemeral media to record folktales in pictures or with writing. Complex forms of tattooing may also represent stories, with information about genealogy, affiliation and social status.
Reader's Guide
Storytelling has been a fundamental human activity, serving entertainment, education, cultural preservation, and moral instruction. It predates writing and has taken many forms, from oral traditions with gestures and expressions to rock art, tattoos, and modern digital media. Oral traditions, found in several civilizations, were used to explain natural phenomena, and storytellers were regarded as healers, leaders, spiritual guides, teachers, cultural secrets keepers and entertainers. Albert Bates Lord's work on oral narratives revealed that a large part of stories consisted of improvised text, built from set phrases and themes. The 'rule of three' is a near-universal theme. Storytelling continues to evolve, with contemporary forms including digital storytelling, role-playing games, and interactive documentaries. It is used for educational objectives, political commentary, and therapeutic purposes. As Reynolds Price noted, a need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens, second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter.
Did You Know?
- The earliest forms of storytelling were usually oral, combined with gestures and expressions.
- Some archaeologists believe that rock art may have served as a form of storytelling for many ancient cultures, including the Aboriginal peoples of Australia.
- Albert Bates Lord found that across many story traditions, fully 90% of an oral epic is assembled from lines which are repeated verbatim or which use one-for-one word substitutions.
- One near-universal theme in storytelling is repetition, as evidenced in Western folklore with the 'rule of three'.
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