Literature Among the Primitives

In this context, we are not to quarrel with the term "Literature". It simply means what would be written down, in the way of imaginative verbal constructions, if the primitive authors could write and if their audience were also readers. We are to distinguish "Primitive Literature" from folklore. Primitive Literature belongs to primitive peoples, who have no other kind of literature. When such a people acquires civilized techniques and associates, they develop a new sort of literature, in emulation of the most civilized, and their old oral literature degenerates into folklore, a process that can be seen happening now in parts of Africa. Mr. Greenway, who is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, and editor of the Journal of American Folklore, is concerned with the original primitive thing, the imagination that still shares with its society the one center of gravity.