Oralidad y memoria: sobre los testimonios verbales del pasado Orality and Memory: On the Verbal Testimony of the Past

Under the heading of oral sources, different types of verbal testimony are used to learn about the past. Some of these sources are narrated and transmitted along a chain of witnesses and in this case, for theoretical and methodological purposes they are known as oral traditions. In contrast, oral history, as the oral source it also is, is characterized by its condition as direct testimony supposedly verified by witnesses of the events. In the United States of America, the study of oral tradition enjoyed the interest of culturalists, while in the United Kingdom, EvansPritchard was the first to pay attention to oral memory (history and tradition) and was followed by others, such as Goody. In continental Europe, the Belgian historian Vansina became a great scholar of African oral tradition. In oral history, the Annales School pioneered an increasing interest in collective memory, which was continued