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Anthropology, Hamlet and History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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“If anthropology and history once begin to collaborate in the study of … societies, it will become apparent that the one science can achieve nothing without the help of the other,” said Claude Levi-Strauss. This statement is so immediately sensible in a plain, common-sense way, that only an examination of historical and anthropological practices reveal that such a collaboration is neither as frequent nor as complete as it ought to be.
Anthropologists traditionally studied preliterate societies, historians, literate ones. Preliterate societies lack written documents (or such documents are rare and often unreliable since they are usually written by untrained observers from outside the culture) and anthropologists found themselves with only oral traditions from which to reconstruct the past. Oral traditions, myths, tales, legends and so on are part of every culture; but the value of such traditions as a source of historical information was considered doubtful by most anthropologists, and historians seemingly had no need of them. The functionalist school of anthropology contributed to our understanding by recognizing the value and importance of oral histories in terms of the functions such tales fulfill in a given society.
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- Copyright © 1977 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, Basic Books, 1963, p. 25.
2 R. B. Dixon and J. R. Swanton ("Primitive American History," American Anthropologist 16 [1914]), considered oral tradition valuable as a historical source, whereas R. Lowie ("Oral Tradition and History: Discussion and Cor respondence," American Anthropologist 17 [1915]; "Oral Tradition and History," Journal of American Folklore 30 [1917]), denied any historical value whatever. Most anthropologists who concerned themselves with the subject took a middle-of-the road position: oral tradition could be valuable if substantiated by other evidences. See, for instance, E. Sapir, "Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture," in Selected Writings of Edward Sapir, in Language Culture and Personality, ed. D. Mandelbaum, Berkeley, 1949, pp. 389-462; C. E. Fuller, "Ethnohistory in the Study of Culture Change in Africa," in Continuity and Change in African Cultures, ed. W. R. Bascom and M. J. Herskovits, Chicago, 1958; and Melville J. Herskovits, "Anthropology and Africa—A Wider Per spective," Africa, vol. 29 (1959), pp. 225-238.
3 Few historians studied the methodological problems raised by oral tradition. Those who did the main work on oral tradition's possible value as historical source material were E. Bernheim, A. Feder, and W. Bauer (J. Vansina, Oral Tradition. A Study in Historical Methodology, Chicago, Aldine, 1965, p. 3). This changed with contemporary historians who focus on preliterate societies, particularly African societies, for example the work of Roland Oliver.
4 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, "Social Anthropology Past and Present," Man (1950); A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, London, 1952; B. Malinowski, Sex, Culture, and Myth, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1962.
5 For instance, the Bunyoro; see Rev. J. Roscoe, The Bakitara or Bonyoro, Cambridge University Press, 1923; and John Beattie, Bunyoro, Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1960.
6 As the Ruanda; see J. Maquet, "The Kingdom of Ruanda," in African Worlds, D. Fordes, ed., Oxford University Press, 1965.
7 Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function, p. 3.
8 Vansina, Oral Tradition.
9 J. R. Vansina, "Recording the Oral History of the Bakuba," Journal of African History 1 (1960), p. 50.
10 Ibid.
11 J. R. Vansina, "Ethnohistory in Africa," Ethnohistory 9, no. 2 (1962), p. 132.
12 R. M. Carmack, "Ethnohistory: A. Review," in Annual Review of Anthro pology, ed. Bernard Siegel, Palo Alto, Calif. Annual Reviews, Inc., 1972, p. 230.13 Vansina, Oral Tradition, p. 1.
14 Thomas Kyd's play Hamlet, since re-named Ur-Hamlet, preceded Shakes peare, and there was also a German version called Der Bestrafte Brudermord. See, for example, A. L. Attwater, "Shakespeare's Sources," in Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. H. Granville Barker and G. B. Harrison, Doubleday Anchor, 1960.
15 Malinowski, Sex, Culture and Myth, p. 249.
16 "… Christianity … demonstrably produced changes in marriage institutions … with resulting modifications in social alignments and kinship terminology" (Murdock, Social Structure, Macmillan, 1960, p. 137 n.).
17 Hamlet, Act V, scene 1—Yorick has been dead for 23 years, and Hamlet well remembers not only being borne "on his back a thousand times," but also the man's personality, his wit, and other attributes. Therefore, he must have been at least six to eight years old when Yorick died. (The edition of the play used throughout is William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, T. Brooke and J. R. Crawford, ed., New Haven, Yale University Press, 1954. All citations hereafter will appear in the text.)
18 See below, p. 28.
19 A weakness of the university addition can be seen in the following. Hamlet asks Horatio what he was doing back in Denmark, to which Horatio replies that he had come to the king's funeral. The university could not have been so large that the two best friends and fellow Danes would be in ignorance of one another's whereabouts. Hamlet did not return on time for his father's funeral; indeed, he arrived after his mother's remarriage and possibly after the coronation of Claudius. If he heard of his father's death later than did Horatio, either he was farther away, at some other place, or perhaps no one knew where he could be reached. This would make it convenient not to notify him immediately of King Hamlet's death.
20 Premeditated in that he seized the opportunity, not that he planned the murder ahead of time.
21 See page 32.
22 Vansina, "Oral History of the Bakuba," p. 46.
23 I am indebted to Susan J. Shepard for the historical references used here.
24 For instance, Ethelbert of Kent becomes converted to Christianity by St. Augustine ca. AD 600. Upon his death in AD 616 his son Eadbald becomes king and rejects Christianity. Earcombert succeeds Eadbald in AD 640, orders the destruction of idols and the observance of Lent, rejecting the paganism of his father and returning to the Christianity which his grandfather adopted. See Adam Bede, A History of the English Church and People, Penguin Books, 1968, I.25 and II.5.
25 Oswy murders his brother Oswin (Bede, History, III.14).
26 Queen Osthryd of Mercia was either ruling alone following the death of her husband, or, she was ruling jointly with him. Joint tenancy was being practiced (Bede, History, V.24).
27 Pope Gregory's letter to St. Augustine, "It is … forbidden to marry a sister-in-law since by a former union she had become one with his own brother…" (Bede, History, I.27).