ABSTRACT
This field research was carried out during the period 1985 to 1987 and covered a total of 65 storytellers in 37 places throughout Venezuela that included the capital city of Caracas and other cities of different kinds and sizes in 12 of the country's states. Because of the objectives of the investigation no narratives were compiled. Instead, reports about performances, events, contexts, and the narrators and their craft were made. Some fundamental goals of the research were:
To identify the social meaning and ways of existence of storytelling in each community instead of assuming any preconceived image of the ways in which it exists.
To identify the patterns of appreciation of storytelling in each community instead of using others from different cultural frames.
To identify the persons who are well known as storytellers in each community instead of deciding this based on external criteria.
Not to believe the existence of some “true” circumstances and of others that are “not true.” Every circumstance that occurs is, by virtue of its existence, true. Each performance acquires meaning in relationship to a kind of event. Each kind of event acquires its meaning in relationship to a certain cultural context. Of course, I am conscious that the fieldworker has an inevitable part in segregating these performances, events, and contexts from the continuity of everyday life.
To assume the cultural differentiation between researcher and community, rejecting the naïveté of believing that the mimesis with the members of any community is possible; it is not even desirable.
