Stroytelling, Novel And Information

Storytelling, Novel and Information

Why is it that our ability to exchange experiances is becoming extinct? One reason for this phenomenon is obvious: experience has fallen in value and with this we have become poorer with communicable experience. This, however, was a phenomenon that that took many years to develop and spread with the evolution of the narritive forms from the story, to the novel, to the information.

The story teller is imagined to be someone who comes from afar, yet it is noless someone who has stayed at home, making an honest living and who knows the local tales and traditions. It is an art in which is shared amoung the listeners to give them stories in which there is a moral to be learned.The very nature of every real story, as Walter Benjamin states, in his essay �The Storyteller’, contains openly or covertly, something useful. The usefulness may, in one case, consist in a moral; in another, in some practical advice; in third, in proverb or maxium. In every case the storyteller is a man who has consel for his readers. He is often viewed as the teacher in a sense. It is the notion that the storyteller shares truth and wisdom to be heard, retained and passed on from generation to generation and from place to place.

However, the art of storytelling is reaching its end because truth and wisdom are dying out due to the growing influence of moderism, and is a process that has been going on for a long time.The earliest contrabution to the declination of storytelling is the rise of the novel. As W. Benjamin states, the novel differs from all other forms of prose literature- the fairy tale, the legend, even the novella- is that it neither comes from oral tradition nor goes into it. The reader of a novel,however, is isolated, more so than any other reader. The moral has even taken a different form in the novel as the �meaning of life’. The �meaning of life’ is really the center about which the novel moves. The reader experiances this quest, for �meaning of life’, by seeing himself living this written life. The story has this same quest, yet it is better known as the quest for the �moral of the story’.

But today, this retention of a moral or wisdom is beginning to lose sinificance in the communities, because the communicability of experience is decreasing. With the uprise of the novel we start to see this transition of experience, being from a community colaboration to an individualistic event. A man listening to a story is in the company of the storyteller, and even the man reading one shares this companionship. The storyteller takes what he tells from experience, either his own or that reported from others. And in turn make it the experience of those who are listening to his tale.The novelist, however, has isolated himself therefore disminishing experience for him self and others. W. Benjamin explains that this is because the birth place of the novel is the solitary individual, who is no longer able to express himself by giving examples of his most important concerns, is himself uncounseled, and cannot counsel others because he lacks authority. The intelligence that came from afar possed an authority which gave it validity, even when it was not subject to varification.

The experience of memory has also evolved in its own way. Memory creates the chain of tradition which passes a happening on from generation to generation. In storytelling, the listener is to assure himself of the possibility of reproducing the story. However, with the uprise of the novel, the gift for listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears, for storytelling is always the art of repeating stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained. This is because boredom is nolonger present, which essentially is the relaxation of the brain. When the brain is relaxed, then the people can retain the story. The process of storytelling forgoes psychological shading in which the story claims a place in the memory of the listener, and the more relaxed or bored the listener is, the more completely the story is intergated into his own experience, the greater will be his inclination to repeat it to someone else someday .

The novel is linked to the meomry in a different way. It uses �perpetuating remembrance’ as W. Benjamin puts it. It is a unique process because it contrast to that of the story telling of taking over, retaining, and repeateing. This is because the novel does not continue the tradition and there is an impossibility of repetition. The novelist experiances a rememberance that perpetuates within the self-enclosed world of the novel.

The experience of story telling goes beyond the sense of companionship and the sharing of morals to the community but it also has a sensory aspect to it as well. It is the connection of the words, soul, eye and hand that must not be over looked. Storytelling cannot be done by the voice alone, rather it needs to be supported