THE ORAL LITERATURE OF THE POLYNESIANS

Te Ao Hou, November 1964, Page 23

THE ORAL LITERATURE OF THE POLYNESIANS by Bruce Biggs we in the pacific world are heirs to a great literary tradition of which H. and N. Chadwick, in their world survey of oral literatures, could say— ‘A great and very varied amount of cosmological speculation has been recorded from Polynesia. The Polynesians seem to have devoted more attention, and to have exercised greater intellectual activity in connection with the whole subject than any other peoples included in our survey … The Pacific is rich in possession of a vast body of oral prose, which is distributed throughout the whole area … almost every kind of prose narrative is represented in all stages of development … Everywhere we meet with a great wealth of saga, and a high standard of art and technique.’ I hope that you may wish to read, either in the original or in translation, some of the songs and stories with which this article is concerned, and to this end I have added a reading list. Unfortunately many of the source books are out of print, and only obtainable at libraries with good Pacific and New Zealand collections. But some important books are in print and I have included them.