The Nature of Story

Abstract

As oral and written record reflects, throughout history humankind has vacillated between acknowledging its kinship with the natural world and denying it. A great deal of human culture has consisted of stories concerning animals, though modern literature has relegated animals, as a subject of imaginative writing, to children's fiction. One would be hard pressed to name many great works of the past two centuries which include animals as the focus of the narrative. The old animal stories, however, took place in a time and realm when humans and animals were able to communicate and thesenarratives constituted the mainstay of oral storytelling. This kind of story is an element of the "Golden Age" theme and refers to a time when the world was a harmonious place where people were happy, blessed and "without evil in their hearts." These stories of an ancient and oral character spoke of our place alongside the other animals.