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- Title
Storytelling and Networking in a Breton Fishing Village, 1879-1882.
- Authors
Hopkin, David M.
- Abstract
Sailors' reputations as storytellers are born out by the collection of hundreds of folktales by Paul Sébillot in Saint-Cast, a village of terre-neuvas (North Atlantic cod fishermen) on the north Breton coast. Storytelling was not just an entertainment but was part of the machinery of communal life. The flow of narratives followed the same networks that allowed the community to function, including those used to recruit crews. Sailors and their families used stories to communicate with each other, to reflect on their lives, to express their desires, to negotiate their social position and to inculcate their values. For example, rivalries with other fishing villages were nurtured in legends about past encounters on the fishing grounds. Young sailors from Saint-Cast were socialised into the maritime world through storytelling, and, when their turn came to sail for Newfoundland, they used their repertoire of tales as cultural capital to buy their way into established crews.
- Subjects
BRETON (France); FRANCE; FISHING villages; STORYTELLING; SOCIAL networks; TALE (Literary form); FISHERS
- Publication
International Journal of Maritime History, 2005, Vol 17, Issue 2, p113
- ISSN
0843-8714
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/084387140501700206