American Literature / Unit 3 AML 0209 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Oral Formula, Repetition, and Performance
Captions available
The idea
Oral literature is built to be remembered and performed: repeated phrases, numbered sequences, animals with fixed characters, and endings that explain a present fact. A reader meeting such a text on the exam should expect a shape held by repetition, and should expect an explanation rather than a moral.
In practice
Repetition, sequence, and an explaining end.
Where people slip
The written version records a performance.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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