PROMPTS

The following passage is an excerpt of a dialogue between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza from Cervantes' Don Quixote (Chartier, 1989, p. 7) illustrating the differences between the spoken tale and the written text.

"To pass the time of day the night before battle, Sancho Panza offers to tell stories to his master. The way he tells his tale, interrupting the narration by commentaries and digressions, repeating himself and pursuing related thoughts-all of which serve to place the narrator in the thick of his tale and to tie it to the situation at hand-throws the listener into a fit of impatience. 'If that is the way you tell your tale, Sancho,' Don Quixote says, interrupting him, 'repeating everything you are going to say twice, you will not finish for two days. Go straight on with it, and tell it like a reasonable man, or else say nothing.' A bookish man par excellance and to mad excess, Don Quixote is irritated by a tale that lacks the form of his usual readings, and what he really demands is that Sancho Panza's story obey the rules of written style: clear expression, linear development and objectivity. There is an insurmountable distance between the reader's and the listener's expectations and the spoken practice that Sancho Panza is familiar with. Sancho replies, "Tales are always told in my part of the country in the way that I am telling this, and I cannot tell it any other, nor is it right of your worship to ask me to adopt new customs." Resigned but disgruntled, Don Quixote agrees to listen to a text so different from the ones presented in his precious books. "Tell it as you will," he exclaims, "and since fate ordains that I cannot help listening, go on with your tale."

Storytelling Prompt

(From Sari Tales Storyteller)

Storytelling Blanket

Each group will receive a piece of material with assorted items. These items will become your props as you take turns collectively telling a story together. The last person telling in the group will add closure to the story.