Orality and LiteracyThis classic work explores the vast differences between oral and literate cultures offering a very clear account of the intellectual, literary and social effects of writing, print and electronic technology. In the course of his study, Walter J. Ong offers fascinating insights into oral genres across the globe and through time, and examines the rise of abstract philosophical and scientific thinking. He considers the impact of orality-literacy studies not only on literary criticism and theory but on our very understanding of what it is to be a human being, conscious of self and other. This is a book no reader, writer or speaker should be without. |
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | 1 |
Introduction | 2 |
1 The orality of language | 5 |
2 The modern discovery of primary oral cultures | 16 |
3 Some psychodynamics of orality | 31 |
4 Writing restructures consciousness | 77 |
Common terms and phrases
abstract Adam Parry agonistic alphabet analytic ancient Greek art forms audience century character Chinese Chinese characters chirographic Clanchy classical antiquity commonly communication Concrete poetry consciousness context contrast developed dialects discourse earlier effects electronic English epic epithets formulary formulas genre Goody grammar grapholect Greek alphabet Havelock Homeric human lifeworld Iliad kind language lengthy linguistic literate logocentrism Luria’s Manuscript culture meaning medieval memory Milman Parry mind mnemonic modern Mwindo Mwindo Epic narrator never objects Odyssey old oral oral literature oral narrative oral performance oral speech oral tradition oral world orality and literacy orality-literacy organization Parry’s persons Plato plot poems poetic poetry present primary oral culture processes psyche psychodynamics reader residually oral rhetoric script secondary orality Semitic sense simply sound spoken word story structures style term textual textualists thinking thought and expression typographic University Press utterance verbal verbatim visual writing and print written text