Memory, Folktales, and Fiction - A Dialogue on Story and Writing
Gioia Timpanelli
January 11-13
In the beginning there was story, always story, since, as the anthropologists
say, "We humans are story animals." And the stories we told ourselves were
about the place where we lived, about the animals, spirits, and gods that
inhabited both place and people, about the heroes and heroines who saved
the people by bringing fire and teaching them to hunt and fish and grow
corn. Since all these were "gifts" from the spirit of the place, they were
immortalized in story, passed down by storytellers from generation to generation.
These ancestral stories are everywhere and told by all people. They are
a significant mythic history of human life. There was also legend and folktale
to tell us how to be human in this specific culture. The stories also were
humorous and sly, metaphorical, and full of wise observations. With the
advent of individual writing, the great arts of poetry and fiction gained
a powerful place in the new world of letters. Now there is again a re-thinking
of the art of story.
As storytelling was once lost, the art of talk is mostly lost today.
We'll sit together and talk deeply, as was once done in salons, hoping
for lively talk, with silences that allow us to focus and unfocus. The
world will be brought to us as we discuss (not decide) some of the following
ideas:
-
Is there any longer a difference between fiction and non-fiction?
-
All non-fiction has fiction, and all fiction has some non-fiction in it.
The only difference between fiction and non-fiction is that, in fiction,
you change the names.
-
When "history" was shown to be the history of only one group in a culture
it was discredited.
-
What is the connection between memoriy and history?
-
What do the models of science (and the cultural and pseudo sciences) have
to do with this topic?
-
What part do imagination and fantasy play in this?
-
What is the role that memory and memoirs have in this discussion?
-
What does it mean to have a Muse?
If these questions, and a thousand related questions, catch your imagination,
please join us in engaging conversation.
Gioia Timpanelli is one of the world's foremost storytellers,
widely respected as both a scholar and master of the ageless art. To be
in Gioia's dynamic presence is to participate in the mystery of story.
She has performed for over thirty years and taught with Robert Bly, Joseph
Campbell, James Hillman, Nor Hall, Gary Snyder, and many others. An early
and central figure in the worldwide storytelling revival, she won the National
Woman's Book Association award for bringing the oral tradition to the American
public. She's taught at CUNY, Pace University, and The New School and was
founder of Storytelling at Art Park and a co-founder of the New York City
Storytelling Center. She wrote Tales from the Roof of the World: Four
Tibetan Folk Tales, and Sometimes the Soul: Two Novellas of Sicily
won the American Book Award for 1999 and is a beautifully written book.
"Maybe the finest storyteller I've ever known." - Andre Gregory
"When one finds a story that makes one giddy with wonder, measured with
poetry, then one can agree with the poet W.B. Yeats that art is made from
hope and memory, two venerable parents of the art of storytelling." - Gioia
Timpanelli - The Italian American Heritage