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The Literature of Primitive Peoples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Paul Radin
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To speak of oral narratives or song-poems, particularly those of primitive peoples, as constituting true literature has until recently met with the greatest suspicion not only from the general public but from students of literature and, indeed, from most ethnologists as well. Their objections are basically of two kinds. No literature is possible, they contend, without writing, and the languages spoken by primitive peoples are inadequate both in vocabulary and the range of ideas which can be expressed in them to permit the development of what we call true literature. Both of these contentions are, I feel, quite incorrect. One has only to read such studies as those of F. Boas and Edward Sapir to realize on how slight a basis of fact such statements rest. There is no need, consequently, to spend any time refuting the theories of philosophers like Lévy-Bruhl or E. Cassirer concerning the structure of primitive languages. The only thing that can be said in defense of their generalizations is that, given the manner in which many of the recorders of these languages presented their data and the many loose statements they made, it is easy to see how Lévy-Bruhl and Cassirer and those who were influenced by them arrived at their unsound generalizations. The first objection, particularly, that without writing no substantial literature can possibly develop, will, I am certain, be adequately disproved by the examples of prose and poetry which I am presenting in this essay.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 3 , Issue 12 , September 1955 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © 1955 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1. Handbook of American Indian Languages, Bull. 40 (Wash., D.C., Bureau of American Ethnology, 1911-1935).

2. Language: an introduction to the study of speech (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1921).

3. Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures (5th ed., Paris, 1922), pp. 151-257. Eng. ed.: How natives think (London, Allen & Unwin, 1926).

4. Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Vol. I, Die Sprache (Berlin, 1923). Eng. ed.: The philosophy of symbolic forms (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1953).

5. P. Radin (Berkeley, University of California Publications in American Archeology & Ethnology, 1920), Vol. 16, pp. 381-473.

6. The Netsilik Eskimos, Report on Fifth Thule Expedition (Copenhagen, 1931), Vol. VIII, p. 321.

7. Grönlandsagen (Berlin, 1922), p. 229. Translated from the German. Cf. his The Eagle's Gift (New York, 1932), pp. 8 ff.

8. R. C. Thumwald, Profane Literature of Buin (New Haven, Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1936), pp. 3-15.

9. Translated from the French. Cf. Blaise Cendrars, Anthologie Nègre (Paris, 1947), p. 24.

10. P. H. Trilles, "Les légendes des Bena Kanioka et le Folklore Bantou" in Anthropos (Vienna, 1909), Vol. IV, p. 965. Translated from the French.

11. Unpublished.

12. J. R. Swanton, Tlingit Myths and Texts (Wash., D.C., Bureau of American Ethnology, Bull. 39, 1909), p. 410.

13. Ibid., p. 411.

14. P. Radin, op. cit., p. 423.

15. F. Densmore, Chippewa Music II (Wash., D.C., Bureau of American Ethnology, Bull. 53), p. 129.

16. Ibid., p. 254.

17. Ibid., p. 83.

18. J. R. Swanton, op. cit., p. 415.

19. K. Rasmussen, ov. cit. in n. 6, p. 511.

20. P. Radin, manuscript.

21. P. A. Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush (London, 1912).

22. African Folk Tales (New York, 1953).

23. J. Torrend, Specimens of Bantu Folklore from Northern Rhodesia (London, 1921), pp. 24-26.

24. African Folktales and Sculpture, pp. 186 ff.

25. Ibid., pp. 229 ff.

26. Ibid., p. 305.

27. Ibid., pp. 73 ff.

28. J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Staemme (Leipzig, 1906), pp. 834-836.

29. Translated from the French of the unpublished essay by A. Kagame, La Poésie au Raunda, kindly placed at my disposal.

30. "La Poésie chez les Basuto," Africa, Vol. III (London, 1930), pp. 523-535.

31. D.Westermann, "Gottesvorstellungen in Oberguinea," Africa, Vol. I, pp. 195, 204. Translated from the German.

32. J. Spieth, Die Religion der Eweer (Göttingen, Vanderhoeck & Rupprecht, 1911), pp. 236 ff. Translated from the German.

33. K. Rasmussen, op. cit. n. 6, p. 509.

34. K. Rasmussen, Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos, Report on Fifth Thule Expedi tion, Vol. VII (Copenhagen, 1929), p. 27.

35. Ibid., p. 47.

36. K. Rasmussen, Grönlandsagen, text-translated into German by J. Koppel (Berlin, 1922), p. 238. Translated from the German.

37. K. Rasmussen, Rasmussen's Thulefahrt, translated into German by F. Sieburg (Copen hagen, 1926), p. 430. Translated from the German.

38. Ibid., pp. 235-236. Translated from the German.

39. K. Rasmussen, The Eagle's Gift.

40. K. Rasmussen, Grönlandsagen, p. 230. Translated from the German.

41. R. M. Berndt, Kunapipi (Melbourne, Cheshire, 1951), p. vii.