Storytelling is the act of relating a narrative. It is an ancient practice as old as humanity itself, perhaps; in any case, the practice of telling stories long predates writing. The earliest forms of storytelling combined oral retelling of fictional or actual events with exaggerated gestures and expressions. Storytelling is also a method of entertainment, education, and cultural preservation. A story or narrative will include a plot, characters, and a point of view. Without these three basic elements, the story will typically be unsuccessful.
What started as an oral tradition became a pictorial art form. Ancient people, including the Australian aboriginal people, painted symbols from stories on cave walls as a means of helping the storyteller remember the story. Other prehistoric people also used cave writing as a way to tell a story. Ancient civilizations have erected monuments as an act of storytelling. For example, the pyramids were built not only to house the bodies of Egyptian rulers and their families but also to serve as a symbol of the pyramid’s respective ruler. When the progeny of those builders saw the pyramid, they would be reminded of the great deeds of their departed ruler. Ancient civilizations erected monuments as places to tell stories; such venues included Greek amphitheaters, the Nazca lines of Peru, animal effigy mounds in North America, and many more.
As humanity developed, so did storytelling. When people started making clothing, pottery, and tapestries, these became a canvas upon which the artisan could tell stories. Religious and ritual clothing is symbolic, which provides still another way of telling a story. Instead of a painting or a written text, symbolism could convey an entire story simply and efficiently. Ancient pottery often depicts stories of cultural heroes or gods performing great feats of strength and power. Even the pottery’s shape could transmit a story. Another form of storytelling is tattooing, in which case the human skin can become the canvas with which the artist, or storyteller, can convey something meaningful to the person being tattooed that could inspire courage, solidarity, or even reproof.
With the advent of written language, stories became more easily transmitted among people within a culture, between different cultures, and even over periods of time. Stories are often records, transcribed and shared over wide regions of the world. Stories were recorded in scrolls and later in books. Music can be a form of storytelling as well, in which the story is depicted through rhythm and rhyme. In medieval times, knights and nobles were often accompanied by minstrels while traveling for the purpose of entertainment and archiving the journey. Jesters were also professional storytellers employed by nobles and royals. Throughout modern history, the practice of oral storytelling is still a popular form of entertainment. In the United States, a popular form of storytelling is called cowboy poetry, in which a story in conveyed through rhythm and rhyme, usually to music, but is not often sung.
Storytelling is not just a means of entertainment; it is a tool used to educate and to motivate people. It allows the teller and the listener to experience vicariously emotions similar to those of the story’s subject. Richard Posner, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, wrote in his essay “Against Ethical Criticism” that when people read they gain experiences through the character of a given story. The listener feels what the character feels, sees what the character sees, and so on. Posner says, “This can engender the reader with emotional responses they are otherwise incapable of feeling, or have not felt yet.” In essence, the participants are empathizing with the characters of the story and learning as though they were the subject or subjects of the story told. A person is entertained when he or she is able to empathize or sympathize with the main character or characters of a story. An audience often will not be entertained by a story in which it is difficult to relate to the main characters, or in other words, when the audience cannot empathize or sympathize with the main characters.
Theater is another form of storytelling in which the audience watches the story being portrayed as though they were watching the actual events. With the invention of film and motion pictures, the realistic depiction of events, both fictional and nonfictional, has become the most popular form of storytelling. Film and motion pictures allowed storytellers who had been limited to what the stage environment could provide a chance to develop even more realistic settings and scenes. Film can transport the audience into the story as participants rather than bystanders watching a story unfold. The development of 3D motion pictures makes this difference even starker because 3D movies can cause people to react to actions, flying debris, or other movements.
While storytelling continues to develop through different media, it will also continue to serve as a method of entertainment, education, cultural preservation, and even as a means of cultural transformation.
Zachary Q. Metcalfe
See also Folklore and Folktales; Written or Printed Traditions
Further Reading
Bauman, Richard. 1986. Story, Performance, and Event: Contextual Studies of Oral Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bruchac, Joseph. 2003. Our Stories Remember: American Indian History, Culture, and Values through Storytelling. Golden, CO: Fulcrum.
Gottschall, Jonathan. 2012. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Sobol, Joseph. 1999. The Storytellers’ Journey: An American Revival. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.