On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 12:33 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/7/2008 12:03:29 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
There are topics that we unquestionably should have articles about that one cannot write a general overview of without relying on that oral tradition. >>
Actually, imho, we should not. If by oral tradition you mean "the Sun is hot" doesn't need a source I would agree. If by oral tradition you mean "James Joyce was the best writer ever" doesn't need a source, I have to disagree.
Will Johnson
I mean neither, in practice - or, more accurately, I think the oral tradition in question contains statements more obvious than "the Sun is hot," but does not include matters of opinion. It would, I think, include statements like "Joyce is one of the most significant authors of the 20th century," a statement that is, I think factually true and that is true on a level that goes beyond any given guy who says "Joyce is one of the most significant authors of the 20th century." It's a statement that has to do not with Joyce's aesthetic merits but with his importance and notability. There's probably, for this, plenty of people who have incidentally commented on Joyce's importance in an introduction, but this is a profoundly sloppy way to do it - yes, we can find people who incidentally note Joyce's importance, but for the most part the importance of Joyce to literary studies is not something that is thoroughly documented in written literature.
(I am, notably, not a Joyce scholar, and this may not be true of Joyce as such - perhaps there is an article on "How Joyce became significant" that traces this fact thoroughly. But you can replace Joyce with a hundred other authors, and I am sure not all of them have thorough overviews of their sociological importance to literary studies from good sources.)
And the amount of stuff that exists largely in the oral tradition of what is assumed within the humanities extends well beyond things like that. We are still an oral culture in many ways.
-Phil