[Bards] Storytelling - Performing Prose Resource

[Scott Barrett]

This particular subject has been a hobgoblin for many a performer in the
SCA, especially those of us who are storytellers - was the performance of
prose, the spoken word without poetics, verse or rigid memorization, a
period practice?

Now common sense says yes, but that doesn't pass academic scrutiny, and it
shouldn't.

 

So for years we have picked around for evidence, finding tiny references
from the Tain and the Mabigoni to Chaucer and the Decameron, passable
evidence, but hard to find and not very detailed at all. Most SCA performers
understand that vocal stories were not described verbatim, and so we've
settled for what scant mention in period literature we can locate, and while
it does appear obvious that formal and informal storytelling were a regular
part of medieval life, details are almost nonexistent.

The subject has been explored on the Bards list in the past, but I thought I
might offer something for those looking to increase their libraries on this
issue..

 

http://www.amazon.com/Performing-Medieval-Narrative-Evelyn-Birge/dp/18438403
91/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345624832&sr=8-1&keywords=performing+medieval+nar
rative

 

Now this thing is expensive, but I had a chance to look through a copy
recently, and I will be buying it soon.

The topic has been largely ignored by academic circles until just recently,
and the book is extremely comprehensive. It gives example after example of
storytelling as an interpretive personal art enjoyed by all social classes,
as well as showing how stories were not held to a standard of memorization
like poetics, but were enjoyed as an individual performance and with praise
given to a storyteller that could breathe new life into a well-worn tale, or
who composed originals with style, structure and quality.

 

The book was the foundation of an NYU workshop that received serious
participation and attention from historians, literary scholars and
performers, and I'm beginning to think it may be as important to the SCA as
Theophilus' "On Divers Artes" or Cennini's Craftsmans Handbook ("Il Libro
dell Arte").

I can tell you from experience that documenting a story, including the
performance, is a titanic task. I only attempted it once for a Kingdom A&S.
This book may change the tide in a really positive way.

 

 

Just something to pass on to the vocal talent in your area.

 

~Finnacan