Folkloristic Studies of the Oral Historical Narratives

Author

KOVAL-FUCHYLO IRYNA

a Ph.D. in Philology, a senior research fellow of the Ukrainian and Foreign Folkloristics Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).  ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4048-9114

Folkloristic Studies of the Oral Historical Narratives

Abstract

Folkloristic approaches to the study of oral historical memories are analyzed in the article. The attention of scholars from various humanities to oral history is caused by its informative, aesthetic, sociological potential, as well as the aspiration for the voice returning to a common person, change of approaches to the study of memory and subjectivity. In the post-Soviet reality, it is important to discover the silent, forbidden topics, a peculiar at least partial rehabilitation of those citizens, social strata who have been offended by the totalitarian epoch. Folkloristic experience is important in the ways of information gathering, analysis of folklore about a particular historical event, tracking communicative patterns that affect all oral evidences, especially recorded over some time distance. People tend to verbalize their thoughts, feelings, experiences according to certain schemes, laws, norms, canons, dominant ideas that exist in society at the time of recording. In addition, linguistic patterns and ready-made, stereotyped formulas, patterns form a canvas of reminiscence. Knowledge of traditional world-views and ideas of the tradition bearers helps the folklorist to reveal typical ways of nomination, unification of oral historical narratives, mechanisms of subject selection. Good erudition of the scholars about folk beliefs makes it possible to identify changes in the folk world outlook under the influence of various factors.  Researchers of the oral folk word find out the ways and mechanisms of nomination, selection of topics, strategies of self-presentation, detect generalized, folklorized fragments.

Keywords

oral history, folklore experience, generalization in oral memoirs, folklorization, nomination, concepts.

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