Orality and Literacy (New Accents)

Book Description

This classic work explores the vast differences between oral and literate cultures and offers a brilliantly lucid account of the intellectual, literary and social effects of writing, print and electronic technology.

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Understand how writing changes everything.......2007-06-13

Delve into the history of human knowledge. Comprehend why oral cultures may be more pure than literate cultures. Writing down thoughts changes the way we think and look at the world.

Walter Ong express this and more in this easy to read, head slapping book. You will find yourself understanding everything you have ever read better. You will see knowledge and intelligence differently.

Your basic understanding of humanity will change for the better with Orality and Literacy.

Disappointing.......2007-06-10

This book is a simple summary of the works of other authors in the field of Orality and Literacy, with no proprietary originality whatsoever. I felt ONG often stated the obvious, such as the relation between books and death, as the content of books can be resuscitated after the author's death. Another such example is when for example one pronounces the word "orality", by the time he gets to "lity", "Ora" would have vanished....

What is quite strange is that a book about literacy, and one that devotes one third of its content to the invention of writing and the alphabet, there is no mention of the Phoenicians people in the index or anywhere in the book, (he talks about "some Semitic people"!!), though Phoenicians are known to have invented the alphabet (phonemic script as we know it today). "Not invented here" syndrome?

And although he admits that the invention of the alphabet is arguably the greatest mind transforming invention ever, he later conveys the argument that the addition of vowels to the alphabet by the Greeks was in itself far more important then the invention of the Semitic consonant alphabet, as -based on the work of another author - vowels "favor left hemisphere activity" and therefore allow for a higher level of abstraction (NLP?). Is it possible that ONG is unaware that the etymology of Semitic words are based almost always on three consonants stems, and that vowels in Semitic languages have a different function than in Greek?

In another passage, you get comments out of the blues with no connection to the core subject. In a paragraph discussing formulaic expressions used in oral cultures, you get undignified statements like "Khalil Gibran made a career of providing oral formulary products in print to literate Americans".

As to the Arab civilization, who by the end of the 10th century had produced over 10,000 titles in Arabic all catalogued in their "bibliotheca" (The Fahrast), - more than the work of all previous civilizations by that time- ONG claims that they have never really interiorized writing. To ONG, only the West apparently has fully interiorized writing, and this is what gives the West its "Westerness"... Maybe it's true...

Brilliant.......2007-06-08

Brilliant book. I was introduced to these ideas at NYU by Jesse Bessinger about the time this book was written. I don't think it's fair of that other reviewer to take Ong to task for not addressing how computers might shape communication and thought when he was writing at the dawn of the PC era. Its relevance to the digital age is huge as it suggests different, nonlinear approaches to storytelling. This line of study sheds a unique light on the development of human culture that every literate person should know about.

Stop reading and listen to this!.......2006-12-25

I wish I hadn't read this book... but heard it, for this is a book that deserves the delight that comes from the immediate business of listening to sounds in the air rather than the abstracted business of reading marks on a page (or dulled spots on a screen).

In it, Walter Ong makes a valiant attempt to take us back to a time before text, to a place where we might imagine language as something heard and existing only in its moment, language as something without thee concept of words and letters to chop it up, language as something we hear without imagined structures learned from print, language as something replete with revealing repetitions to aid memory and understanding, something that values the familiar over the novel. He then slowly winds us forward, textual innovation by [con]textual innovation, to the edge of the cyber age, the next unwritten chapter along this vast track.

If you're a reader of books, I'm sure you'll be transported by this adventure beyond your cultural assumptions of what language is and can be. You may find yourself yearning for some of the human experience our world of convenient published accessible text may be denying us, or even hoping some of that experience is still available in specialist forms such as live performance, as I do.

Either way, you'll never hear a book like it.

Excellent summation of and introduction to Ong's thought!.......2006-07-30

Written to meet the specifications for books in the New Accents series in literary studies, Ong's _Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word_ provides a compendious summation of and introduction to Ong's own work and the work of numerous other scholars interested in studying media ecology, such as Milman Parry, Albert B. Lord, and Eric A. Havelock.

This book by Ong has gone through numerous printings in English and has been translated into 11 other languages. However, the 2nd ed. contains no new material. But it must be referred to as the 2nd ed. because the freshly reset book now contains pagination that differs slightly from the pagination in the 1st ed.

Even though many of the books in the bibliography are now rightly considered to be pioneering studies that should still be required reading for graduate students and scholars who are interested in studies of media ecology, many significant books related to the themes Ong discusses in _Orality and Literacy_ have been published over the last 25 years, such as Jeffrey Walker's _Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity_ (2000), Andrea Wilson Nightingale's _Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Contexts_ (2004), Marco Mostert's numerous edited collections of essays about medieval literacy, and David Michael Levin's _The Philosopher's Gaze: Modernity in the Shadows of Enlightenment_ (1999).

As the senior co-editor of _An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry_ (2002), I can wholeheartedly recommend it as a companion volume to read along with Ong's _Orality and Literacy_ as an accessible and sweeping introduction to his thought.

Those who wish to study Ong's thought about media ecology seriously will need to master his 1958 masterwork about visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought and other significant themes regarding media ecology in Western culture, _Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason_, which the University of Chicago Press brought out in a 3rd ed. in 2004 with a new foreword by Adrian Johns. This book by Ong is one of the pioneering studies of print culture and of media ecology in Western culture. But stand forewarned: this book is not as easy to read, as are _Orality and Literacy_ and _An Ong Reader_. I'd say to start with the latter two books and then work yourself up to reading Ong's 1958 masterwork.

--Thomas J. Farrell, author of Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (Media Ecology)

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William Safire on Language
William Safire
Manufacturer: Avon Books (P)
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ASIN: 0380564572

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One Interesting Concept, 179 Grueling Pages
Writing restructures consciousness
fascinating, but a slow read.
Orality and Illiteracy
Excellent book - fascinating content with clear form

Orality and Literacy (New Accents)
Walter J. Ong
Manufacturer: Methuen young books
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ASIN: 0416713807

Book Description

Is it possible that changes in rhetorical practice could alter not just how thought is expressed, but also how it is made? Through close stylistic and rhetorical analysis across contemporary feminist writing--from the cultural theory of Judith Butler to the newspaper journalism of Naomi Wolf--Lynne Pearce demonstrates how feminist thought is created as well as communicated by the frameworks in which it is presented. In linking rhetorical innovation with feminist epistemology in such a direct way, the author provides a book that will be of methodological interest as well as theoretical, providing invaluable insight into the "mysteries" of conception and composition.

Customer Reviews:

One Interesting Concept, 179 Grueling Pages.......2001-12-14

According to Ong, who wrote this book in 1981 (pre-WWW), writing is a form of technology that, through the act itself, changes the brain. By change, I mean that it compels one to think of the world in a whole different way. He doesn't so much as say that oral culture is inferior to literal culture, as he does take care to point out how humans are natural to both. It's actually interesting stuff.

I had to read this book for class. Otherwise, it's not light read, so unless you're just a tech-freak, leave the book on the shelf.

Writing restructures consciousness.......2001-04-26

"Sparsely linear or analytic thought and speech is an artificial creation, structured by the technology of writing."

"Alienation from a natural milieu can be good for us and indeed is in many ways essential for full human life. To live and to understand fully, we need not only proximity but also distance."

A guide to the transition between orality and literacy, the book deepens our understanding of our literary culture.

Readers interested in the ways technologies affect our thought processes should read this book.

fascinating, but a slow read........2001-01-30

"Orality and Literacy" is a scholarly work, which is the author's intent. Because of this, it requires a college level reading ability. With those warnings in mind, it is also a fascinating book on a somewhat remote subject: the way that our ability to write has changed our ways of thinking about ourselves and the world, our ways of remembering, and the progress of human development. It is a good introduction to this academic area as the author surveys the existing research and catalogs his sources very thoroughly. He gives particular attention to how oral cultures deal with thinking, remembering, and relating to the community in fundamentally different ways than literate cultures do. As a teacher, I found myself wondering if we could learn from oral cultures some of the old ways of relating to and remembering what we hear. Our literacy has allowed us to abandon these narrative and remembering techniques; to our impoverishment, I suspect.

Orality and Illiteracy.......2001-01-20

Read this book only if you are forced to do so by someone. Even that didn't do it for me. One of my main hang ups was that in early going Ong describes something as "thing-like". Is it possible for something to not be "thing-like"? I mean if it wasn't someTHING, then it wouldn't be anything and you couldn't talk about it. Then the rest of the thing is just boring. If you want an expensive fire starter or something to stop the teetering of some annoying table then buy this.

Excellent book - fascinating content with clear form.......2000-01-24

I recently became interested in media in their own right. I tried reading McLuhan, but found him to be dazzling and frustrating - he would drop these little sound bites and then move on. I wanted a more in depth exploration of media.

McLuhan brought to my attention how media are not just passive carriers of content, but powerfully shape and influence it. Even more startling, he stated that media shape consciousness itself - they change the very people who use it. The tail wags the dog.

McLuhan's probes have their strength in galvanizing thought, not in the patient, careful arguing of a point. It's in this context I found Ong exactly what I was hoping/looking for. He tries to evoke an understanding of what is what like to live in a culture that had never known writing. He discusses how this affects each aspect of life, how it structures personality and identity, community, etc. (Not surprisingly, Ong was a student of McLuhan.)Then he discusses the shift to literacy, and how it affected identity as well.

I am used to academics writing in such a dense, convoluted style. Happily, this was completely absent from Ong's style. He manages to drop little insights about without belaboring them.

The great thing about a book like this for me - a layman - is that he manages to comment on apparently trivial, mundane features of daily life like calendars, lists, clocks, title pages in books - and show how they really manifest these huge, typically invisible trends in the changing of how we think about life and ourselves.

I loved this book - I will certainly read his earlier articles, since Orality and Literacy is mostly a summing of all prior research (as of 1982).

I just finished it - but the weaknesses I felt were that toward the end, as he tries to discuss print (not just writing) specifically, it becomes a bit harder to follow, since much erudition is presumed at this point. It seemed less thought out, less imaginative here than the start and middle of the book. He himself states his treatment of print will be comparatively cursory, though.

I also wanted more concrete anthropological examples, since ultimately all discussion needs to be grounded in actual case studies of how oral cultures were affected by literacy. But this was not quite the slant Ong book. It isn't supposed to be social science, although it does incorporate some field research. (He's whetted my appetite for it - this is where I will turn next.)

Media studies like Ong, Havelock, McLuhan help to provide a fresh take on what so much literary criticism and philosphical postmodernism obscures and confuses over - the idea of the 'self.' A great book.

Ong doesn't pretend to have the last word on this topic. But it is a thought provoking, straightforward discussion of ideas that tend to be very abstract, remote, and certainly not mainstream. It added insight into an area I thought I knew very well.

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A Literate Revolution

a powerful book!

The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present
Eric A. Havelock
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Orality and Literacy (New Accents)

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ASIN: 0300043821

Customer Reviews:

A Literate Revolution.......2002-12-04

Havelock presents a picture of the crisis that occurred in Greece when orality transformed itself into literacy. He brings all of his previous works to conclusion in a single perspective covering the Greek literate revolution, the way in which the transformation took place, what it signified at the time, and what it has meant since. Where in earlier works Havelock posits that Homer's two epics were compositions of primary orality, their textual existence and shape representing a faithful rendering of purely acoustic laws of composition as they governed not only style but content, here Havelock contends that the works are the result of an interconnection between the oral and the literate.

He adds that the history of Greek orality plays into today's world. Just as Greece's "crisis in communication" changed not only the Greek means of communication but also Greek consciousness, so does a "crisis in communication" seem to be taking place in the world today as modern technology changes the way we communicate and the way that we think. While Havelock's conception of the Greek transformation is quite convincing, his application to modern culture is a bit vague. Nevertheless, his arguments definitely give those of us who are growing increasingly dependent upon modern communications technologies fuel for thought.

a powerful book!.......1997-04-01

despite its size, havelock's concise summary of his own work , as well as that of some of his peers, is one of the most penetrating and powerful books on language in recent years. with a lucid style truly worthy of a student of classics, havelock recounts a revolution in the study of human language that involved diverse fields such as classics, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, etc.. and as a wonderful classicist, he shows, with authority, just how much the study of classics matter. this is a book you must read

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Literacy and Orality

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521398509

Book Description

In this study of the social and psychological implications of literacy, sixteen distinguished scholars provide a sustained and detailed examination of the relations between orality and literacy, the traditions based on them, the functions served by them, and the psychological and linguistic processes recruited and enhanced by them. By shedding the romantic view that literacy is the road to rationality and modernity, the volume provides a more functional view of literacy. The articles place new emphasis on the relationship between speaking and writing and highlight the different ways in which people exploit the particular resources of speech and writing for special purposes, such as building communities, creating records, and specializing genres, such as prose fiction, enhancing private study and meditation, and enhancing the specialization and organization of knowledge.

Orality, Literacy, and Colonialism in Antiquity (Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies)

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Orality, Literacy, and Colonialism in Antiquity (Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies)

Manufacturer: Society of Biblical Literature
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ASIN: 1589831314

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Orality and Literacy in Hellenic Greece
Tony M. Lentz
Manufacturer: Southern Illinois University Press
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Sterne's Whimsical Theatres of Language: Orality, Gesture, Literacy (Studies in Early Modern English Literature)

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Sterne's Whimsical Theatres of Language: Orality, Gesture, Literacy (Studies in Early Modern English Literature)
Alexis Tadie
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0754630765

Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe (Poetics of Orality and Literacy)

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Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe (Poetics of Orality and Literacy)
Thomas A. DuBois
Manufacturer: University of Notre Dame Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0268025894

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"Thomas DuBois's new book demonstrates an extraordinary range of languages and cultural traditions and should appeal to a correspondingly broad readership. He writes, too, for Everyman—a skillful elucidator of lyric in the clothing of a theory-oriented folklorist. DuBois's schema for tracking the various forms of reception and how they govern 'meaning,' especially in performed literature, is comprehensive, but the lover of individual poems will not find that they have been sacrificed to theory." —Joseph Harris, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature and Professor of Folklore, Harvard University

"In his ground-breaking book, Thomas DuBois draws on studies in oral tradition and on literary approaches to make the case for a European lyric mode of wide-ranging breath. Students of medieval studies, literary studies, and folklore all will benefit from his work." —John Miles Foley, Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, University of Missouri

Focusing on particular characters, situations, or emotions—usually with little or no explicit plot—lyric song poses interpretive challenges to the listening audience. By looking at the ways in which cultures in Northern Europe interpret lyric songs, Thomas A. DuBois illuminates both commonalities of interpretive practice and unique features of their musical traditions. DuBois draws on sets of lyric songs from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland to explore the question of meaning in folklore, especially the role of traditional audiences in appraising and understanding nonnarrative songs.

DuBois's examples range from the medieval and early modern periods to the late twentieth century. His nuanced study explicates folk practices of interpretation—a "native hermeneutics" existing alongside folk songs in North European oral tradition. He examines lyric songs—particularly formal laments—embedded with prose or poetic narratives; the ritual use of lyric as charms and laments in premodern Europe; the development of personalized meanings within hymns and devotional prayers of the high Middle Ages; Shakespeare's lyric songs and their demands on the audience; and the ways in which professional lyric singers encourage certain interpretations of their songs. The only study to examine a range of northern European lyric traditions as a unified group, Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe will be of interest to scholars in medieval studies, literary studies, and folklore.

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An ideal template for the study of other medieval poetry

Reading The Medieval Book: Word, Image, And Performance In Wolfram Von Eschenbach's Willehalm (Poetics of Orality and Literacy)
Kathryn Starkey
Manufacturer: University of Notre Dame Press
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ASIN: 0268041091

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"In this path-breaking book, Kathryn Starkey explores the ways—oral, visual, performative—in which Wolfram's Willehalm epic communicates with its audience. Her astute analysis of a richly illustrated earlyWillehalm codex provides insights into the live performance the text does not preserve. Versed in communication theory, manuscript studies, and art historical scholarship, Kathryn Starkey draws our attention to an epic masterpiece in which Wolfram struggles to give meaning to religious war and celebrates marital love across cultural boundaries, concerns that resonate in our age." —Eckehard Simon, Harvard University

"Reading the Medieval Book makes an exciting contribution to the history of vernacular reading. Most of the work on the reading of secular vernacular literature has concentrated on the late Middle Ages and beyond, and neither Wolfram von Eschenbach's Willehalm nor the illustrated Munich-Nuremberg manuscript have received the attention they deserve. Kathryn Starkey's persuasive exploration of this mysterious and fragmentary thirteenth-century manuscript captures an important transitional moment in the development of reading culture and the literary manuscript. Intended for a court audience that was familiar with the conventions of oral delivery but still rather unfamiliar with literary texts, the illustrations provided a sophisticated commentary on the role of the self-conscious narrator and helped the reader visualize the text's literary structure." —Andrew Taylor, University of Ottawa

"Original in its insights, lucidly argued, and rigourously coherent, Reading the Medieval Book makes a major, original statement on the relationship between text and image in medieval books." —Sarah Westphal-Wihl, Rice University

Reading the Medieval Book examines one of the most important epic poems in thirteenth-century Germany and its redaction in a richly illustrated manuscript created just fifty-five years after the poem's composition. Starkey's book reveals that the Munich-Nuremberg manuscript (c.1270) of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Willehalm (c.1215) was compiled with both oral performance and the written medium in mind.

Wolfram contrasts the visual language of the court with the auditory one of the battlefield, drawing attention to the position of the narrator and the interpretive frame that he provides. The manuscript reflects Wolfram's clear interest in the oral and visual communication that played such a dominant role in court society of the thirteenth century. Starkey argues that rather than merely depicting the events of Willehalm's plot, the Munich-Nuremberg artists also visualized nuances and shifts in the text that may otherwise have become lost when the oral text was committed to the page. The Munich-Nuremberg redaction of Willehalm provides insight into the critical transition in the literary culture of lay people in the West from a primarily oral to a literate experience.

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An ideal template for the study of other medieval poetry.......2005-05-12

Also available in a hardcover edition (0268041083, $50.00), Reading The Medieval Book: Word, Image, And Performance In Wolfram Von Eschenbach's Willehalm by Kathryn Starkey (Assistant Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill), examines one of the most important epic poems in 13th Century Germany and its redaction in a richly illustrated manuscript created just fifty-five years after the poem's composition. Professor Starkey's meticulous research reveals that the Munich-Nuremberg manuscript (c. 1270) of Woflram von Eschen-bach's Willehalm (c.1215) was compiled with both oral performance and the written medium in mind. A seminal work of flawless scholarship, Reading The Medieval Book would serve as an ideal template for the study of other medieval poetry, and is particularly commended to students of Medieval era art history, culture, and literature.

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