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Similarities between Oral and Literary Traditions

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When thinking of oral traditions and literary traditions they both have their own similarities. Oral tradition is information that is passed down from generations by words that is not written down. On the hand literary tradition would be a language that is written and well spoken. It also makes whatever is written down permanent. Both are similar but slightly different from another. Before the literary tradition of written texts, oral tradition passed tales of gods, heroes, and other memorable mortals and their lives from generation to generation. These tales were then transcribed in the literary tradition through the use of pictographs, and later, alphabets, reproducing these tales and others that became “etched in stone.” In others, telling stories, myths about gods was faster to know but difficult because each individual had to remember what the other person had told them. The oral tradition was a memory game. In some cases the person telling the story would change the story slightly different from the original tale because they forgot what they remembered.
Oral tradition leads to lots of confusion when it comes to stories that are being told. Given what is said, the story of Iliad was important because it starts out as an oral tradition when Schliemann was told this by his father. Later the Iliad would speak the truth about Homer’s work. Schliemann’s the archaeologist who found the city of Troy made it possible for people to trace back their lineage to the Trojans. By

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