Overview

What is the essence of story? How does the storyteller convey meaning? Leading scholar Harold Scheub tackles these questions and more, demonstrating that the power of story lies in emotion. While others have focused on the importance of structure in the art of story, Scheub emphasizes emotion. He shows how an expert storyteller uses structural elements--image, rhythm, and narrative--to shape a story's fundamental emotional content. The storyteller uses traditional images, repetition, and linear narrative to move the audience past the story's surface of morals and ideas, and make connections to their past, present, and future. To guide the audience on this emotional journey is the storyteller's art. The traditional stories from South African, Xhosa, and San cultures included in the book lend persuasive support to Scheub's. These stories speak for themselves, demonstrating that a skilled performer can stir emotions despite the obstacles of space, time, and culture.

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9780299159344

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Story is as sound and original a piece of scholarship as we have been waiting for in the study of oral narrative performance. . . .written by one of the best scholars who have anything to say on the subject of storytelling. --Isidore Okpewho, author of African Oral Literature

<p> Story is as sound and original a piece of scholarship as we have been waiting for in the study of oral narrative performance. . . .written by one of the best scholars who have anything to say on the subject of storytelling. --Isidore Okpewho, author of African Oral Literature

Story is as sound and original a piece of scholarship as we have been waiting for in the study of oral narrative performance. . . .written by one of the best scholars who have anything to say on the subject of storytelling. Isidore Okpewho, author of African Oral Literature

Author Information

Harold Scheub is the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Humanities in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of many books, including Story, The Poem in the Story, The Tongue Is Fire: South African Storytellers and Apartheid, and The World and the Word, all published by the University Of Wisconsin Press.

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