For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.
Interpretation
Literature has historically been shared orally, connecting us to the creativity of everyday people.
Angela Carter's quote emphasizes the significant role of oral storytelling in human history, asserting that literature, including fairy tales and folk tales, is deeply rooted in the traditions of common people. By focusing on the oral tradition, Carter highlights how these narratives preserve the imaginations and experiences of those who shape our world, showcasing their importance in connecting us to our collective history and culture.
In practice
During a lecture on the importance of oral history, I will quote Carter to emphasize the value of storytelling.
She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg: she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver.
Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.
Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves.
Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.
I haven't changed much, over the years. I use less adjectives, now, and have a kinder heart, perhaps.
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.
...in other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama Interview - March 1964
Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.
I think that an author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.
Throughout my career, when I have been rejected, there was sometimes subtext, and it was this: People will not read your work because these are not universal stories.
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