Gwyn Prins’ Oral History is an excellent essay that tries to bolster support for the valuable contribution to history provided by actual, living persons (i.e., oral versus written accounts). While Prins is not out to prove oral history is a supremely valid form of historical record, she does argue that its lack of significance to many historians is based on the fears and emotions of historians who typically ignore its contribution to a better understanding and analysis of history, “The opposition to oral evidence is as much founded on feeling as on principle. The older generation of historians who hold the Chairs and the purse-strings are instinctively apprehensive about the advent of a new method. It implies that they no longer command all the techniques of their profession” (Prins 115). Prins is not as biased as these historians because she explains she does recognize valid historian criticisms of oral history, such as recollections by the powerful and famous being too easily open to self-vindication.
However, she argues that traditional historians undervalue oral history’s contribution to a greater and fuller understanding of history. For example, in many nations where high degrees of literacy were not in evidence, oral history is one of the few windows into the past we have for these cultures. The poor, disenfranchised, dominated and illiterate often had no historical voice but an oral one. Further, Prins points out that oral history is often a means of uncovering facts that would never be in documented form. For example, the oral recordings of Richard Nixon continue even today to reveal deeper insights and a greater level of understanding about that era in politics and government. The oral recollections of Monica Lewinsky, as taped by Linda Tripp, have certainly had a major impact on adding to some future historian’s understanding of the Clinton administration and modern American s
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