Encounter with Oral Literature

Download or read book Encounter with Oral Literature written by Simon Okumba Miruka and published by East African Educ. Publ.. This book was released on 1994 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author has undertaken extensive research in oral literature and is the author of A Dictionary of Oral Literature. Here he uses an anthological approach to examine the various genres of oral literature both at the theoretical and analytical level. The anthology emphasises the areas of definition, classification, style and themes. The book is essentially an analysis of the four genres of riddles, proverbs, oral poetry and narratives. It introduces a new way of looking at oral literature, particularly in the case of riddles and proverbs which have received little analytical attention locally in terms of classifying them and discussing their styles and social functions. The author contends that the four genres exist in a continuum rather than as disparate phenomena.