Orality and Literacy

The image to the left models primary orality, the age of literacy, and then secondary orality-- something the book, Orality and Literacy, attempts to explain the differences of.
The following is my response/thoughts about the book's ideas:


I find it really interesting that theories exist which claim Homer was not a real man and did not write the Iliad and Odyssey; it reminds me of the theories that claim Shakespeare did not write all, if any, of his plays. I do not know what to believe anymore. However, I agree with Wood in thinking that, if there was a Homer, he was able to produce his poetry because of his great memory.
Basically, oral poets were capable of retaining a lot of information by using technical devices, like cliches, over and over. I do not need to have a great memory or use cliches to remember things because I write things down. Funny enough, I do seem to forget something as soon as I write it down. I have the confidence that writing will not disappear, like how sound dies, and so the information I take notes on from videos, for instance, go in one ear and out the other. Thus, this is where primary orality has an advantage(what happens if I lose my notes?!).
However, whereas people that only know primary orality probably have a better memory than others, I do think people who are literate, or also live in the age of secondary orality, have an advantage as well. Take my brother, for instance. He was always reading as a child and still reads today. I think he has a quick mind when it comes to word associations and different meanings. The following are jokes he made all from yesterday at the family dinner:
My dad: Yeah, he went into the hospital to get heart surgery and came out of the operation without an appendix.
*Less than a second later*
My brother: That's what he gets for telling them he's an open book.



Get it? You know, books have appendixes...

Okay well try this one.
Me: I have to finish my math homework so don't bother me.
My Brother: I don't know why you take math. Math teachers always gave me Problems! That's all they ever do!


No? Still not funny?
Okay one more, I promise...


My mom (upstairs looking for the camera, making lots of noise): If only you guys knew what was going on up here!
My brother: I don't want to picture it. I shudder (shutter) to think of the possibilities.
Me: Yeah, the things that can develop


It took me more time to come up with my response to his joke. I am guessing it is because I never read as much as he did.


Now, this brings up another point that I wanted to get at. As is clear, my brother uses a lot of cliches or common phrases in his jokes. However, he does it in a clever way. I remember reading in Orality and Literacy that scholars were upset when they discovered Homer (if he did exist) used cliches, pre-written formulas in a way. I think Homer also did it in a clever way, and that is what matters. Nothing, I believe, is completely original. Another one of my Honors professors, Professor D'Andrea, once said that everything in literature is stolen from something else in literature. He said stolen. That is right. I think it makes sense, too, because we act a certain way because of our past experiences(I am a Determinist). We only know something if we are taught something, by teacher or book (or nowadays Internet/TV/etc. and in the future maybe some sort of telepathic device, who knows). And, of course, what distinguishes piece of art from another piece of art is rearranging the pieces of the puzzle; something new arises using the tools/literary devices/etc. that one has learned in a different way. There are a lot of love songs, for instance, and so one may ask why artists continue to make love songs when the concept is the same-- the answer is, of course, because it can be expressed different ways and the pieces of the puzzle were arranged differently-- on page 22 of Orality and Literacy, Alexander Pope is quoted as writing that a poet can express "what oft was thought" as "ne'er so well expressed." Essentially, I do not see Homer as less of a poet than before just because it is most likely he used cliches.


Additionally, of course, the other advantage to literacy is it gives a different, perhaps more logical, flow of thought since writing is linear(Orality and Literacy mentioned Plato, as an example, who was the first to seemingly use his brain for analytic purposes). I hold the opinion that society could not have advanced as far as it is now if it were not for writing.
I would write more but I think I have written too much already. Perhaps I will put up a separate/additional response on the reading later!



I will conclude, however, that I find both orality and literacy to have advantages. Do I think one is better than another? I lean towards literacy since the only-literary culture was more advanced than what it used to be, but I think it is obvious that both orality and literacy together are necessary for an even greater society. Today we have a "secondary orality" and our society is seemingly greater than the only-oral and only-literary societies combined. That is probably the formula that promises the most success-- orality and literature combined, despite the fact they are so different (but that's the thing, they both bring to the table more than they could by themselves!).