25th anniversary

Welcome to Oral Tradition, a forum for discussion of the world’s oral traditions and related forms, from the ancient world to the present day. OT is freely available to all interested scholars, students, performers, and general readers without charge as an online, open-access resource. Here you will find both the current issue of the journal as well as all back issues from the inaugural publication in 1986 onward. In this electronic incarnation, OT reaches more than 20,000 readers per year in 216 countries and territories, and includes multimedia eCompanions to articles—audio, video, photographic, and other support for the article texts—that help to illuminate the traditions under investigation.

Along with the current Table of Contents and Master Index just below, the menu on the righthand side of the page contains various tools and options to facilitate use of the more than 500 articles and 10,000 pages on this site. The Search mechanism allows users to investigate the OT archive by author, keyword, or more advanced topics. The Summative Bibliography collates every reference or citation made throughout the history of the journal (more than 16,000 items) in a searchable data-base. We also offer a Chinese translation of volume 18 (2003), in which more than seventy authors address two questions: “What is oral tradition in your field?” and “What are the next few challenges in your area?”

As part of this welcome note, let us offer you three invitations. First, near the bottom of the righthand menu-bar you can sign up to receive notification of new issues via e-mail. Second, we hope that you will consider contributing to as well as reading the journal; manuscripts for possible publication are evaluated within ninety days, on the basis of their quality within the particular field and their more general pertinence for our highly diverse readership. Third, we invite you to join ISSOT, the newly launched International Society for Studies in Oral Tradition, an electronic platform that was created to facilitate communication among interested parties worldwide.

Oral Tradition Current Table of Contents

Ecompanion indicates availability of online multimedia for this article.

Oral Tradition Master Index

  • Oral Tradition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
  • Basque Special Issue
  • Bob Dylan’s Performance Artistry
  • Performance Literature (2)
  • Performance Literature (1)
  • Synopses of Oral Traditions (2)
  • Synopses of Oral Traditions (1)
  • Chinese Oral Traditions
  • Hebrew Oral Traditions
  • Native American Oral Traditions: Collaboration and Interpretation
  • South Asian Oral Traditions
  • Epics Along the Silk Roads
  • African Oral Tradition
  • Serbo-Croatian Oral Tradition
  • South Pacific Oral Traditions
  • Arabic Oral Traditions
  • Festschrift for Walter J. Ong
No_ecompanion Rahner on Sprachregelung: Regulation of Language? Of Speech?
by Frans Jozef van Beeck
No_ecompanion A Remark on Silence and Listening
by Paolo Valesio
No_ecompanion Orality and Literacy in Matter and Form: Ben Franklin’s Way to Wealth
by Thomas J. Steele
No_ecompanion Speech Is the Body of the Spirit: The Oral Hermeneutic in the Writings of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
by Harold M. Stahmer
No_ecompanion Peter Ramus, Walter Ong, and the Tradition of Humanistic Learning
by Peter Sharratt
No_ecompanion Orality and Textuality in Medieval Castilian Prose
by Dennis P. Seniff
No_ecompanion The Complexity of Oral Tradition
by Bruce A. Rosenberg
No_ecompanion Two Functions of Social Discourse: From Lope de Vega to Miguel de Cervantes
by Elias L. Rivers
No_ecompanion The Ramist Style of John Udall: Audience and Pictorial Logic in Puritan Sermon and Controversy
by John G. Rechtien
No_ecompanion Orality-Literacy Studies and the Unity of the Human Race
by Walter J. Ong
No_ecompanion Literacy, Commerce, and Catholicity: Two Contexts of Change and Invention
by Randolph F. Lumpp
No_ecompanion Characteristics of Orality
by Albert B. Lord
No_ecompanion “Voice” and “Address” in Literary Theory
by William J. Kennedy
No_ecompanion The Harmony of Time in Paradise Lost
by Robert Kellogg
No_ecompanion The Authority of the Word in St. John’s Gospel: Charismatic Speech, Narrative Text, Logocentric Metaphysics
by Werner H. Kelber
No_ecompanion The Cosmic Myths of Homer and Hesiod
by Eric A. Havelock
No_ecompanion Man, Muse, and Story: Psychohistorical Patterns in Oral Epic Poetry
by John Miles Foley
No_ecompanion Early Christian Creeds and Controversies in the Light of the Orality-Literacy Hypothesis
by Thomas J. Farrell
No_ecompanion The Making of the Novel and the Evolution of Consciousness
by Ruth El Saffar
No_ecompanion Coming of Age in the Global Village
by James M. Curtis

Center for Studies in Oral Tradition | 243 Walter Williams Hall | Columbia, MO 65211
573.882.9720 (ph) | 573.884.0291 (fax) | | Technical Support