(Same as Scandinavian M271.) Seminar, three hours. Exploration of scholarly and literary attempts to study, define, analyze, promote, and/or appropriate oral traditions, from Homer and ancient Greece to origins of vernacular literatures, European romantic (re)discovery of oral tradition, 20th-century heuristic models of oral composition, and modern-day electronic media and popular verbal genres such as joking and rapping. S/U or letter grading.