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Advait Dange
11a
Storytelling is an art that consists of conveying messages, truths, information, knowledge, or wisdom to an audience in an entertaining manner. Music, art or props can be used to make the audience enjoy or understand more the message being conveyed (Dudley). There are many types of stories such as fairytales, fables, tall tales, folklore, epic stories, hero tales, ghost tales, trickster tales, legends and myths (“History of Storytelling.”). Storytelling has been an essential aspect of human culture since its beginnings. Storytelling can be considered the root of psychology, lecture-style teaching and religion. The roots of storytelling can be traced all the way back to the cave drawings done by primitive men. As they had not developed verbal communication yet, they used cave drawings as the means of communication to retell their everyday stories, such as a great hunt, to the people who had not participated and for later generations to remember all the glory of the stories those drawings portrayed.
Over the centuries, storytelling has continued to develop. When the first civilizations arose, storytelling began to be used in the form of oral communication and stories were passed down this way from generation to generation. Storytelling also began to be used in written form and the first short stories were written in Egypt over 4000 years ago. Professional storytellers also began to appear, who travelled from place to place telling stories usually in sung form. Storytelling was also developed in Ancient Greece in the form of live theatre. Different stories developed in different parts of the world, also known as folklore, all shared one common theme, they were didactic stories used to teach what was right and what was wrong usually by showing the effects of each, which is why they were particularly used to educate children. During the Middle, storytelling continued to develop. As in Europe most people were
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