What is the biggest feature of early oral literature?

Oral literature is generally considered to have the following characteristics:

Maintain close contact with the people

People's oral creation has its great advantages. The broad masses of the people are producers of social material wealth and many ethnic cultural wealth. They are creators and witnesses of history. As an important part of literature and art, people's social life, struggle, thoughts, feelings and hopes are all experienced by themselves. Because they themselves are experiencers or witnesses of literary content, some scholars call this popularity "direct popularity". It contains and radiates people's lofty thoughts and precious virtues such as heroism, patriotism, optimism, humanitarianism and dedication. Oral folk literature not only shows the pain and hope of millions of people, but also shows their eternal model personality and lofty quality. This spiritual wealth will always be an inexhaustible source of thought and character cultivation for members of all ethnic groups!

oral sex

In the long historical period in the past, working people, including their professional artists or semi-professional artists, were excluded from the use of words. Therefore, their literary creation can only be conceived, expressed (including performances) and disseminated in oral language or even in local dialects. People in the new society, although most of them have learned writing and some can still use it, still have to sing or speak in oral language on many occasions. Moreover, in order to obtain the qualification of folk literature (new folk literature), we must basically adopt literary forms that are familiar to the broad masses of the people and have been circulated among the people for thousands of years, such as stories and ballads, and they can be circulated orally among the masses. Therefore, oral creation and communication with oral language is a major feature of oral literature.

collective

Professional writers' writing is mostly the product of individuals, and folk oral literature works can be said to be the collective creation of the masses. The so-called collective creation, compared with the works of professional writers, has unique collective problems in the thoughts, feelings and imagination of content, in the form and artistic expression, and in the ownership of works. But the important performance of this collective lies in the process of creation and circulation. Some works are collective participation from the beginning, but more and more often, after becoming "the initial blank", they are processed and pondered by countless singers in the process of singing or telling. In this kind of processing and pondering, not only the thoughts, feelings, imagination and artistic talents of those singers are infiltrated, but also the views and interests reflected by those listeners. This is very different from the works of professional writers who mainly belong to individuals. Therefore, folk oral literature works are generally unable to be signed. Some (perhaps excellent) folk oral literature works are the result of the creation and processing of singers and storytellers with outstanding talents and rich experience among the masses. It has a certain personality. However, due to the similarity or similar relationship between life experience and literature education, his personality can be integrated with the collectivity of mass oral creation. Collectivity is another feature of folk literature.

changeability

The structure, form and theme of oral literature works have a relatively stable side in the long-term oral circulation. However, due to the instability of oral language, the works are often different in the process of circulation and specific singing, due to the differences in time, region and nationality, as well as the subjective thoughts and feelings of the communicators and the emotional changes of the audience. This variation is frequent and rich in language, and other things, such as the plot, structure, characters and even theme of the work, will change. Especially when the society changes greatly, the masses often change their traditional works to express their new life and thoughts and feelings, which is also a reason for the emergence of some new works. This universal phenomenon is rare in the written literature of general professional writers. In writers' works, although there are cases where the words used in the former and the latter versions are not exactly the same, especially in classic writers' works, there are often cases where the words are inconsistent. But after all, this is an isolated case, except for my own modification or tampering by others, which is mostly caused by technical errors such as copying, engraving and typesetting. It is not as frequent and massive as the variation of folk oral literature.

The variability of oral literature contains the thoughts and talents of history, society and narrators, which is of positive significance to researchers. This feature is closely related to its oral and collective nature, or it is the natural fruit they produce. This is another feature of folk literature.

heritage

In the past, because people were at an economic and political disadvantage, they could not record and preserve their own knowledge, experience and various cultures through words, but generally relied on actions and language to spread and inherit them. So are customs and habits, and so are oral literature. This popular culture may not last as long as literature or antiquities, but its vitality should not be underestimated. We have some stories or proverbs now. It was recorded by scholars two thousand years ago, but it can still live in the people's mouth in basically the same or similar form today.

As for this kind of work, which has been produced for about 1000 years, it is still circulating among the people, not to mention. Naturally, this kind of oral story or ballad will inevitably change in form or content. But it is still alive and has become a part of our modern life culture. Due to the great changes of the times and society, some genres of oral inheritance literature that used to be the only literary form of working people in history may gradually disappear, and the contents and forms of some genres have to change, and there will be new genres that we are not familiar with. All these are possible, even inevitable. However, the whole oral literature will never disappear. Because its expression medium is the most common, vivid and dynamic oral language. As long as language exists, oral literature that expresses people's thoughts, feelings and experiences through language will continue to produce, exist and pass on.

Among the general public, besides the traditional oral literature, there are new oral literature, namely revolutionary legends, new jokes, new folk songs and new proverbs.

artistry

The superiority of oral folk literature is by no means limited to its content and ideas. It is a special kind of literature and an art of using language and performing at the same time. It must and must have artistic characteristics in some ways.

General literary genres can be divided into three categories, namely, poetry, prose and drama. In this respect, oral folk literature and professional writers are basically the same. Prose stories, narrative poems, etc. Most of them have characters and plots, long poems, short ballads and some proverbs and riddles, and most of them have certain sentence patterns and rhythms, while small plays have story plots and duet forms, which are roughly the same as writers' literature. But these alone cannot fully prove its artistry. Many folk works also have unique and superior artistic features and achievements. In recent years, our country has discovered and collected a large number of brotherly national epics, and the length and content are magnificent (such as The Biography of King Gesar). ), amazing the world. Countless love narrative poems and all kinds of lyric songs, including songs about political life, social life, family life and sexual life, often surpass or at least are not inferior to our writers' similar works in expressing people's resentment, love and pain. Many stories and legends of extraordinary people who sacrificed their lives to save lives and bravely defend their homeland and motherland have their indelible charm in concise and refined artistic expression. Endless stories-animal stories, jokes, etc. They are all humorous and ironic, which will almost make many professional writers feel ashamed. Especially those short and pithy proverbs and allegorical sayings really condense thoughts, experiences and wisdom like fists squeezed by five fingers (Gorky's semantics). Stylistically speaking, conciseness is an important feature of general folk oral literature. However, some types of works, such as opera, often subtly depict the psychology of the characters.

In a word, the artistic characteristics and advantages of folk oral literature, like its extensive content, are multifaceted, and some are unattainable.

The above characteristics are not isolated, on the contrary, they are interrelated.