For my overall essay I’m currently leaning towards talking about oral storytelling traditions with a slight focus on welsh traditions and its strengthening of the use of welsh and welsh communities in general and how this could be compared to the modern audio drama movement and it’s strengthening of queer stories.
I went through a few sources for this, specifically looking for sources on oral traditions in wales. One I found was ‘The Recording of Oral Tradition in Wales’ by Vincent H. Philips. It talks about the study of Folk life and the history of recording Welsh folklore. It is overall an interesting read, it definitely puts the study of oral traditions into a perspective that I think will come in handy when it actually comes to writing the essay. One quote that stuck out to me was:
“The older folk of our communities are our best source of information. They have witnessed those customs we are investigating, used those very implements we see in the museum, and taken part in those processes which we are trying to place in proper perspective”
I think this very effectively encapsulates the soul of oral traditions, stories are passed down from elders who experienced the subjects of these stories, who know the sources of certain facets of culture and how they interact with a story or poem, the hermeneutic approach comes naturally as the story was originally told by someone who experienced that social/cultural environment. The source overall feels extremely useful, it really gets down to what is interesting and unique about oral traditions and talks about methods and philosophies around recording them, which I think will link really well to the topic of modern audio drama which is intended to be recorded from the beginning and does not mutate and evolve over the course of generations.