‘No story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old – it is the new combinations that make them new.’ (Salman Rushdie)
Where is the "Ocean of Stories" to be found, and who does it belong to? What kind of tales do different cultures choose to tell – what makes them relevant? Are there 'perennial favourite’s that robustly flower in a wide array of geographically distant cultures? Can every single story be transported and transposed to another culture? What is then 'lost in translation' (to use a still-useful cliché); what is gained? Are there exceptions? Do cultures have specific templates with which they can more easily identify? Or is this concept itself a tall tale? Taking as our material stories from various cultural spheres, we will be addressing these and further questions in the course of this summer lecture series. |
