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)
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionPan-Hispanic Oral Tradition
by Samuel G. Armistead
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Traditions in Greater Mexico
by Marcia Farr
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionFolktales
by Isabel Cardigos
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionPortuguese Narrative Poetry
by J. J. Dias Marques
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Tradition: A Definition
by Carlos Nogueira
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Tradition as a Worldwide Phenomenon
by J. M. Pedrosa
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionTowards Greater Collaboration in Oral Tradition Studies
by Suzanne H. Petersen
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionMedieval Spanish and Judeo-Spanish
by John Zemke
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionThoughts on Oral Tradition
by Mary-Ann Constantine
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionFrom Storytelling to Sermons: The Oral Narrative Tradition of Wales
by Sioned Davies
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Tradition in Medieval Welsh Poetry: 1100-1600
by Dafydd Johnston
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionFighting Words
by Joseph Falaky Nagy
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOrality in a Norse-Icelandic Perspective
by Michael Chesnutt
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionFolklore and Oral Tradition
by Lauri Harvilahti
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionReconstructing Old Norse Tradition
by Stephen Mitchell
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionMedieval Icelandic Studies
by Gísli Sigurðsson
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionMedieval English Oral Tradition
by Mark C. Amodio
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionHow the Beowulf Poet Composed His Poem
by Robert Payson Creed
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionMedieval Voices
by Lori Ann Garner
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Traditional Approaches to Old English Verse
by Heather Maring
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionPrizes From the Borderlands
by John D. Niles
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionLooking for an Echo: The Oral Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Literature
by Andy Orchard
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionBalochi Oral Tradition
by Sabir Badalkhan
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Narrative Studies in China
by Mark Bender
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionMinority Oral Tradition in China
by Naran Bilik
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionKorean p’ansori Narrative
by Chan Park
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionClassical Persian
by Olga Merck Davidson
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionTurkic Oral Epic
by Karl Reichl
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionA Living Shamanistic Oral Tradition: Ifugao hudhud, the Philippines
by Maria V. Stanyukovich
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionPerforming Off Stage: Oral Tradition Under the Radar
by Robert Cochran
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Tradition
by Thomas A. DuBois
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Theory and Medieval German Poetry
by Edward R. Haymes
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Tradition in Linguistics
by Joshua T. Katz
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionOral Traditions in Performance
by Della Pollock
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionPoetics and Translation Studies
by Burton Raffel
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionThe Search for Wisdom in Native American Narratives and Classical Scholarship
by William Schneider
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionThe Popular Ballad and Oral Tradition
by Mary Ellen Brown
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionThe Implicated Ballad
by William Bernard McCarthy
No_ecompanion Chinese_versionBallads and Bad Quartos: Oral Tradition and the English Literary Historian
by Tom Pettitt
  • 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

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