The term “literature,” presupposing the use of 
     letters, assumes that verbal works of imagination are 
     transmitted by means of writing and reading. The 
     expression “oral literature” is obviously a contradiction in 
     terms. Yet we live at a time when literacy itself has 
     become so diluted that it can scarcely be invoked as an 
     aesthetic criterion. The Word as spoken or sung, together 
     with a visual image of the speaker or singer, has 
     meanwhile been regaining its hold through electrical 
     engineering. A culture based upon the printed book, which 
     has prevailed from the Renaissance until lately, has 
     bequeathed to us—along with its immeasurable riches—
     snobberies which ought to be cast aside. We ought to 
     take a fresh look at tradition, considered not as the inert 
     acceptance of a fossilized corpus of themes and 
     conventions, but as an organic habit of re-creating what