Storytelling revivalism in England and Wales : history, performance and interpretation.

This study discusses the storytelling movement in England and Wales as an
example of the traditional arts "revival." "Revivals" are qualitatively different
from mature traditions, but this distinction eludes theorisation. This creates
shortcomings in the literature, which are identified and discussed. It is
concluded that mature traditions and "revivals" are both subcategories of
traditional milieu. The "revival" is distinguished, firstly, by its attenuated
diachronic chains of transmission and synchronic bonds of social cohesion,
resulting in a loss of deep aesthetic consensus in the participant group; and,
secondly, by its self-traditionalisation: its selfconscious self-presentation as a
traditional form socioculturally opposed to a traditionless mainstream
modernity. The "revival" is therefore often understood as a nostalgic and
symbolic re-enactment of desired sociocultural conditions.
The study is an inductive, transparent consideration of storytelling revivalism
in England and Wales in the light of this preliminary conclusion, considering
three issues: the history of the movement; the whole-group performance of
storytelling events; and emic interpretations and understandings of
involvement, elicited in interview. The evidence is that storytelling revivalism
is part of a long-lived appropriative process transcending sociocultural
distinctions; that its performative idioms do not express but mediate -
eventually, undermine - its iconoclastic separateness from modernity,
integrating the formally "revived" form into the informal mainstream; and that
interviews demonstrated nostalgic sociocultural beliefs to be contingent and of
secondary importance to aesthetic experience. In conclusion, revivalistic
communities indulge selfconscious self-traditionalisation sparingly and
reluctantly. Emically, it is an uninteresting implication or a necessary
cognitive and behavioural stopgap facilitating a deeper experiential familiarity
with the form itself "Revival," although occupying an intellectually
enfranchised milieu, is properly a nascent non-intellectual, aesthetic and social
form. This conclusion overturns the preliminary conclusion, and suggests the
general fallaciousness of assuming that cultural forms are primarily coded
representations of sociocultural conditions.