Jan Vansina on Oral Tradition

Having mentioned in my previous post the importance of understanding how oral and primarily oral cultures deal with sources, attribution of “authorship,” “quotation” and other aspects of passing on tradition, I thought I would share two classic books by Jan Vansina that are on Google Books. Vansina’s work on oral tradition and history is well known, and I presume that some readers may find the previews available online interesting and beneficial. He also discusses some of the criteria that historians can use to sift through traditions and attempt to assess their historicity or antiquity.