Storytelling in Bali

In Storytelling in Bali, Hildred Geertz makes a case for the importance of the role of informal storytelling as an engine of social change in Bali in the 1930s. This is a study of more than 200 texts dictated by the painters of the village of Batuan in 1936 to the anthropologist Gregory Bateson. It is completed by three years field work in Batuan in the 1980s.

The tales reveal a set of strong ambivalences about the magical powers of kings, priests and sorcerers, and about social strains within villages and families. These narratives were related in the daily settings of home and coffee shop and also in the spectacular dance-dramas of the time.

Hildred Geertz, Ph.D. (1956), Professor Emeritus, Princeton University, has published five books on Indonesian matters including Tales from a Charmed Life, an autobiography of Batuan painter, Ida Bagus Mad e Togog, and Images of Power, a study of the content of the Batuan paintings and texts collected by Gregory Bateson.

"L’étude que Hildred Geertz nous livre ici de la tradition orale à Batuan constitue un complément bienvenu à son travail précédemment publié sur ce village. Rigoureusement étayé et élégamment rédigé, appuyé sur une longue expérience de terrain, son dernier ouvrage fournit un accès inédit à l’univers mental traditionnel des Balinais."
– Michel Picard, in Archipel 97 (2019), p. 299-301.

"This book uses the unexpected tactics of approaching a hidden oral tradition by means of analyzing the tales related to paintings. […] I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Indonesian or Balinese folkloristics. The extensive databases in both appendices provide an essential reference for story-telling research in insular Southeast Asia."
– Aone van Engelenhoven, Leiden University, in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 174 (2018), p. 291–362.

"Hildred Geertz's study of sotrytelling in Batuan is a welcome addition to the work that she has previously published on this village. It is both rigorously researched and wirtten beautifully - with the assurance of an anthropologist who has a long experience of fieldwork on Bali. It will prove invaluable for readers of English who will have access, for the first time, to the tales that are still so much part of Balinese traditional lore."
– Michel Picard, Centre Asie du Sud-Est, in Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 33.1 (2018), p. 202-26.