Test 1, Feb 22 notes

Hey these are my notes I made (from class, peer pages and reading) and used for the test, just in case this is still useful to anyone for the midterm or whatnot



♣Oral Traditions- Test Review Feb22-05-
Ong Chpt 1-3
Yates Chpt 1-3
Kane Prologue & Chpt 1
Class discussion- 1-25 bold #’s are test ?’s from peers

2. Words are defined in an oral culture through gesticulations, facial expressions, vocal inflections etc.
Logos- the spoken wordPrimary Orality: a culture that has never been exposed to the written word
4. Chirographic: a culture that writes but does not have access to mass literature
5. Typographic: mass distribution of books
6. Loci- Latin for ‘place’, where you story memory palace images ( places and images = loci and imagines- used by roman rhetors)- Cicero
two other descriptions of classical mnemonic:
anonymous-Ad C. Herennium libri IV; five parts of rhetoric
& Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria: relate ideas to place in a building

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) – father of modern linguistics: words are made up of sounds: Phonemes
Only 106 languages throughout history have been committed to writing- only 78 of the 3000 languages today produce literature.
Metrodorus of Scepsis- brought the stars into memory pg. 39 Yates
Grapholect: a transdialectal language formed by deep commitment to writing

13. Compare Primary Orality and Secondary Orality to putting “the car before the horse” – going backwards-never having known the world without writing means you can’t understand the true mode of language. –literary residue

Hexameter Line: made up of formulas of word units – Parry Homer in hexameter line

8. Rhapsodize: “To stitch together song” – greek “weave”
9. Text – to “weave”, pulling strands together

- Alexander Pope wrote “An Essay on Criticism” which set the standard for society in the Romantic age to value the quality of poetry on its being Totally Original. / Millman Perry’s (who has revolutionized orality/poetic structure for Homeric studies) study of Homers’ Illiad and Odyssey disproved this by say that these works of art are mostly repeated cliché and style and form of other works- this is important because in an oral culture formulaic patterns had to be used to remember knowledge.
- Greeks interiorized writing, making rememberence unimportant. This was around Plato’s time (427-347 BC) that the alphabet was made- but writing was not completely popular until around 720-700BC : this is the reason why Plato ignored poets in his work- the traditional poet was outmoded by the chirographic world. *Greek civilization marks the period when writing clashed with orality.

Whitman (1958)- Iliad structured to repeat at the end of the episode the elements from the beginning of the episode – Chinese puzzle, boxes within boxes

-greeks introduced vowels to the alphabet

Hebrew “dabar” = word & event

Words are Not Signs- it is a secondary model system
Iconography

3. What activities put us in contest with nature: Agriculture- building fence/harbor seeds/tether animal

Luddite: against new technology (Robert Ludd)
Anamnesis: ‘recollection’, Plato’s Phaedrus
Anrathia: ‘forgetfulness’
Ecolalia: “baby talk”

1. singing is referred to as a text (sing in me, Muse…)
7. Anima- latin for ‘soul/spirit’ – bringing to life
10. Gesang ist dasein- ‘song is existance’11. Paratactic- additive/ Syntactic- subordinative
12. White berries = practical wisdom/ oral stories are practical
14. There is no such thing as a story, only the idea of a story- it exists while being told
15. “How do you know what you think until you see what you say?” W.H. Auden- motto of a print culture
16. Agon – Greek for “battle”, having to do with Ong’s Flyting – oral culture is agonistically toned
21. Tabula Rossa, ‘blank slate’ –as we age more of our knowledge is erased
22. Aristotilian- Induction (blank slate) / Platonic- recollection/remembering- Plato would say that we are born with a full slate-not blank
23. Mnemotechnics or more interestingly: the art of memory Ram’s Testicles
25. Natural memory (born with it) and Artificial memory ( memory strengthened by training)

20. What virtue is memory a part of? Prudence
17. Mnemosyne-mother of the muses



Ongs 9 Ideas: of a primary oral culture

Additive rather than subordinate
Biblical ‘ands’ – original bible form compared to new- ‘Written discourse develops more elaborate and fixed grammar than oral discourse does’
Aggregative (grouping/clustering) rather than analytic
(18. ) Epithets and clichés in their grab-bag of formulas - ex: clever odysseus, brave soldier, beautiful princess etc. –important for remembrance-association
Redundant (unnecessary) or ‘copious’
Say the same thing, slightly differently, many times, acoustical practicality- Oral : to keep on track one must backloop to previous thoughts- so that speaker and audience does not loose thought process.
Conservative or traditionalist
Formulas are reshuffled rather than supplemented with new material- oral culture is of a conservative mind set- important to remember and re-tell the old- the wise old man or woman is highly esteemed, new ideas rarely weave themselves into knowledge- only new ways of telling stories-communicating.
Close to the human lifeworld
Only lists or facts are those associated with humans (list of ships)- everything is centralized- everyday things are put into memory/ ‘abstract description embedded in a narrative’ - apprenticeship (Iliad passage)
Agonistically toned
Verbal tongue-lashing, praising, keeps conflicts external, not internal- competitions: ( 24. ) –Flyting: free-style rapping, poetry recitation, debating on topic, David and Goliath.
Empathic and participatory rather than objectively distanced
Writing involves personal disengagement and objectivity;
-orality = ‘communal soul’ communication to the audience from the speaker
Homeostatic: oral society of the present- live in the present, discarding memories that are no longer relevant; do keep some words that no longer have meaning in ceremony; integrity of past is subordinate to integrity of present; oral traditions reflect a society’s present cultural values rather than idle curiosity about the past.
Situational rather than abstract
Hammer, saw, log, hatchet- see moon/plate rather than a circle
A moderate degree of literacy drastically affects thought processes
9 Muses and Functions

Calliope (Epic Poetry)
Clio (History)
Erato (Love Poetry)
Euterpe (Music)
Melpomene (Tragedy)
Polyhymnia (Sacred Poetry)
Terpsichore (Dancing)
Thalia (Comedy)
Urania (Astronomy)

you tempestuous little puppet

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/antony/
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/

JRR Tolkien and totally unrelated: Umberto Eco essay

good tolkien site

http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm
http://www.tuckborough.net/

songs of middle earth- oral traditions of tolkiens characters!
http://www.cep.unt.edu/songs/tolkien.html#48


The Holy War:Mac vs. DOS
By Umberto Eco
The following excerpts are from an English translation of Umberto Eco's back-page column, La bustina di Minerva, in the Italian news weekly Espresso, September 30, 1994.
A French translation may be seen here.
Friends, Italians, countrymen, I ask that a Committee for Public Health be set up, whose task would be to censor (by violent means, if necessary) discussion of the following topics in the Italian press. Each censored topic is followed by an alternative in brackets which is just as futile, but rich with the potential for polemic. Whether Joyce is boring (whether reading Thomas Mann gives one erections). Whether Heidegger is responsible for the crisis of the Left (whether Ariosto provoked the revocation of the Edict of Nantes). Whether semiotics has blurred the difference between Walt Disney and Dante (whether De Agostini does the right thing in putting Vimercate and the Sahara in the same atlas). Whether Italy boycotted quantum physics (whether France plots against the subjunctive). Whether new technologies kill books and cinemas (whether zeppelins made bicycles redundant). Whether computers kill inspiration (whether fountain pens are Protestant).One can continue with: whether Moses was anti-semitic; whether Leon Bloy liked Calasso; whether Rousseau was responsible for the atomic bomb; whether Homer approved of investments in Treasury stocks; whether the Sacred Heart is monarchist or republican.I asked above whether fountain pens were Protestant. Insufficient consideration has been given to the new underground religious war which is modifying the modern world. It's an old idea of mine, but I find that whenever I tell people about it they immediately agree with me.The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach -- if not the kingdom of Heaven -- the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can achieve salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: Far away from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions: When it comes down to it, you can decide to ordain women and gays if you want to.Naturally, the Catholicism and Protestantism of the two systems have nothing to do with the cultural and religious positions of their users. One may wonder whether, as time goes by, the use of one system rather than another leads to profound inner changes. Can you use DOS and be a Vande supporter? And more: Would Celine have written using Word, WordPerfect, or Wordstar? Would Descartes have programmed in Pascal?And machine code, which lies beneath and decides the destiny of both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that belongs to the Old Testament, and is talmudic and cabalistic. The Jewish lobby, as always....
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_mac_vs_pc.html

hello class

I've spent many a night at that damned truck stop. Mostly I try to block out the sounds, like the truckers' conversation. I suppose once in awhile I do lose my focus and get lost in that country music and that lyrical speech of the organic trucker culture. Yes, it does seem as if the "music of life" is being orchestrated right before my very ears. Beautiful, surreal, magical even?
I recently took my tape recorder out there to see if I could catch a few precious moments of euphoric grunge- I listen to it every night to get to sleep and now I end up talking to my dearest friends about my that 6-point I flattened the other night as I was cruisin' 96mph on the freeway through North Dakota.
Yates, Ong, Kane, good stuff, I'm likin this. Memory technique, impressively used in class on Tuesday. other top 100 booklists:
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml
http://www.collegeboard.com/article/0,3868,2-8-0-23628,00.html
http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/fantasy100/lists_books.html
http://www.harvard.com/onourshelves/top100.html
http://www.careertips.com/Top100Novels.htm
http://explorers.whyte.com/100books/nwgbooks.htm

check out:
Lord Byron
Darkness
http://www.poetry.com.au/classics/title.html
http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/famous/byron/lord.html