There was a lot of information packed into the first half of Walter J. Ong's book Orality and Literacy. From my initial impressions I took note of the author's first intent, to be able to describe a completely illiterate frame of mind, to a completely literate society, or in this case, reader: me. I understood illiterate to mean that the person in question couldn't read. Ong, however, quickly pointed out that illiteracy was without text, not just a lack of understanding the text. In fact, Ong writes that "in antiquity it was not common practice for any but disgracefully incompetent orators to speak from a text prepared verbatim in advance."
I was in 6th grade when we read the Illiad and the Odyssey, by Homer. I don't remember much of the book (mostly because that was about sixteen years ago.) It was quite facinating when reading Orality and Literacy to see just how often Homer's work was brought up. Ong states, "for over two millennia literates have devoted themselves to the study of Homer." My question was, "why?"
With further reading question was answered. Ong claims that the origins of the Iliad and the Odyssey were unknown, or imprecise, unlike other Greek poetry. Ong also states that these works, "have been commonly regarded from antiquity to the present as the mot exemplary, the truest and the most inspired secular poems in the western heritage." Even while others like Francois Hedeline attacked Homer's works as badly plotted, with poor character development, even going so far as to say "Homer" had never existed. "The Battle of the Books thought that there was indeed a man named Homer but that the various songs that he 'wrote' were not put together into the epic poems until about 500 years later," Ong cites.
Despite the debateability about Homer's existence, Ong states that these works, "were so well structured, so consistent in characterization, and in general such high art that they could not be the work of an unorganized succession of redactors but must be the creation of one man."
One of the fascinating things that I learned about these poems was the variety of language used. For instance, Ong states that there were a multitude of words used just to describe wines. He references that this was probably to meet the specific metric of the phrase. Ong talks about illiteracy not in reference to text as illiteracy suggests (illiterate, meaning not-literate), but in terms of the strengths, the orality or oral culture of the peoples. One of the key points that I learned was that oral cultures used cliches, phrasing, and formulas to help tell stories in place of word for word memorization.
Ong suggests that perhaps Homer stitched together the poems based on the formulas and themes of his oral culture. "In an oral culture, knowledge, once acquired, had to be constantly repeated or it would be lost: fixed, formulaic thought patterns were essential for wisdom and effective administration."
Formulas provide a mnemonic aid for oral cultures, some of which still exist today including, "Red in the morning, sailor's warning; red in the night, the sailor's delight." As well as others such as, "the sturdy oak." These formulas are also the reason that stories include a beautiful princess, instead of just a princess, a brave warrior, weary traveler, or a noble steed, etc. These epithets are all part of the oral cultures.
Ong suggests that oral cultures strewn together stories based on these formulas, but that there were never the same verbatim story every time though each contained the same themes. I wonder how different the poems Iliad and the Odyssey would have been if they had never been inked to paper to lock in the wording of the phrasing.
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