Introduction Tracing the oral in Hispanic literatures

As Walter Ong asserts, most literary texts held in manuscript form up to the eighteenth century, and beyond, were for oral delivery in one form or another, as he terms it these texts were ‘marginally oral’ (1982: 154). Silent reading was uncommon. Reading aloud in family groups, or recitation of literary works, sometimes by the author, remained frequent practice. This means that texts thought of as literary today would have been far closer to the oral than seems possible to a modern reader. This article serves as the introduction to the collection Tracing the Oral in Hispanic Literature. It aims to review previous controversies such as the study of oral performance, the nationalistic overtones of the individualist and traditionalist debate, the so-called transition of the oral culture to a written one rather than the seamless inter-relationship between the two. The introduction draws together aspects of the oral previously studied in isolation: epic, Sephardic literature, folklore, preaching and its records, and the presentation of dialogue in narrative