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This Chicago Humanities Forum talk is given by Haun Saussy, University Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature. Professor Saussy’s interests include Classical Chinese poetry and commentary, literary theory, comparative study of oral traditions, problems with translation, and pre-20th-century media history. This talk explores oral literature. Oral literature—songs, stories, poems, jokes, epics—is presumably almost as old as human language, but interest in it is far younger. Saussy will examine when the nature of oral recitation and transmission becomes an important problem for philologists. Sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Chicago Humanities Forum is a series of free public talks by renowned University scholars.