Abstract: This volume examines orality and literacy in the ancient Greek and Roman world through a range of perspectives and in various genres. Four essays on the Homeric epics present recent research into performative aspects of language, cognitive theory and oral composition, a re-evaluation of Parry's oral-formulaic theory, and a new perspective on the poem's transmission. These are complemented by studies of the oral nature of Greek proverbial expressions, and of poetic authority within a fluid oral tradition. Two essays consider the significance of the written word in a predominantly oral culture, in relation to star calendars and to Panathenaic inscriptions. Finally, two chapters consider the ongoing influence of oral tradition in the ancient novel and in Roman declamation. These essays illustrate the importance of considering ancient texts in the context of fluctuating oral and literate influences.

Abstract: Orality and literacy are dialectical concepts, the meaning of one term depending on the assessment of the other each has in addition two aspects: a medial and a conceptual one. While mediality is trivial, the conceptual aspect is best conceived of as a continuum, thus blurring any clearcut distinction between orality and scripturality. The scale corresponds to a series of ever-more complex and demanding textual genres. The existence of script—whether alphabetic, syllabic, or ideographic—does not change or achieve anything by itself. In order to unfold its immense creative and changing potential, script has to meet the appropriate cultural—e.g., institutional—conditions. The transformations it may result in are slow—as are all processes impinging on mentality. One process is the enrichment of alphabetic script by an increasing number of ideographic features and a layout benefiting from the two dimensions of the written page. In mathematics, this resulted in a revolution in the seventeenth century. Most recently, informatics, as a new branch of mathematics, leaves deep imprints in everyday life. At the same time, alphabetic script was and is a most powerful metaphor in Western thinking, leaving its traces, e.g., in molecular biology. The increase in literacy characteristic of our modern societies may prompt nostalgic attitudes hailing former states of presumably authentic orality. Such tentatives are bound to fail: once a society has become literate, it cannot but recreate orality with the means of literacy—like the gardens we lay out as surrogates for a lost Nature.

Abstract: The novel "Water Margin" ("Shuihu zhuan"), China's earliest full-length narrative in vernacular prose, first appeared in print in the 16th century. The tale of 108 bandit heroes evolved from a long oral tradition; in its novelized form, it played a pivotal role in the rise of Chinese vernacular fiction, which flourished during the late Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) periods. Liangyan Ge's multidimensional study considers the evolution of "Water Margin" and the rise of vernacular fiction against the background of the vernacularization of premodern Chinese literature as a whole. This gradual and arduous process, as the book shows, was driven by sustained contact and interaction between written culture and popular orality. Ge examines the stylistic and linguistic features of the novel against those of other works of early Chinese vernacular literature (stories, in particular), revealing an accretion of features typical of different historical periods and a prolonged and cumulative process of textualization. In addition to providing a meticulous philological study, his work offers a new reading of the novel that interprets some of its salient characteristics in terms of the interplay between audience, storytellers, and men of letters associated with popular orality.

Abstract: This volume originated in the second conference on postcolonial short fiction organized in Nice by Jacqueline Bardolph. The scope has been subsequently enlarged to cover most geographical areas and make it more comprehensive, resulting in a total of thirty-five contributions analyzing a broad spectrum of stories. If theoretical approaches to this often undervalued yet multifaceted genre receive due attention, the essays closely scrutinize specific texts. Some of the writers discussed are exclusive practitioners of the short story (Mansfield, Munro), but others (Achebe, Armah, Atwood, Carely, Rushdie) are also well-known novelists, a duality of interest that allows stimulating comparisons between shorter and longer works by the same authors. The origin of the short story in orality is a topic frequently addressed by contributors, who comment in particular on the use of dialect and dance rhythms in Selvon and Mittelholzer, or on circularity and the trickster figure in Thomas King and Ken Saro-Wiwa. Alternatively, they assess the stance adopted by characters or implied authors towards their communities, a stance ranging from marginality (Janet Frame) through apparent rootlessness (Wilding, Gunesekera) to a more or less explicitly formulated sense of belonging (Marshall, Head). Correspondingly, in the case of a multicultural society such as South Africa, the changing political situation has rendered possible new ways of defining whiteness (Isaacson, Gordimer). The status of women (both white and black) emerges as another major theme, with an emphasis on their persistent marginalization. As for the confessional mode, favoured by a number of women writers, it assumes a new form with Janice Kulyk Keefer, who gives the reader the rare pleasure of discovering 'Fox,' her version of what she calls 'displaced autobiography,' or 'creative non-fiction.'

Abstract: In Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss tells us that we should think of so-called primitive peoples not as "peoples without history" but as "peoples without writing."' The British poets of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries discovered themselves to be indisputably and perhaps regrettably both historical and literate. Not that Chaucer, Spenser, or Milton lacked either a sense of history or the resources of writing; but none of these luminaries had to consider, as did so many of the English and Scottish Romantics, the fate of poetry as a cultural project set adrift from its imagined origins in speech and gesture, in what Percy Shelley called a "vitally metaphorical" language.2 To restore poetry to those origins, or at the very least to remind readers of those origins, was the explicit aim of such poets as William Wordsworth and Walter Scott. Shelley described poetry as "connate with the origin of man"; Wordsworth lauded the almost mystical connection between the first bards and their audiences; and Scott derived his own poetic genealogy from minstrels who, he maintained, served the Scottish "National Muse" even as Homer served that of the Greeks.3

Abstract: Within the framework of the conceptions of orality and writing prevalent in Latin American cultural practice, the author attempts an approach to the relationship between the contradictory notion of ‘oral literature’ and the redundant notion of ‘written literature’, that is, between orality as a real communication phenomenon, when it occurs as verbal creation, and the fiction of orality found in literary writing In this case, what one really discovers is an effort to establish a dialog with what has been omitted by the literary establishment and cultural standards Along these lines, literary texts not only incorporate forms and structures proper of oral texts, but in some paradigmatic cases a true link with a deep cultural orality is found

Abstract: The question of the 'great divide' between orality and literacy has been critically addressed by various scholars of literacy, including social literacy theorists. This paper uses the notions of primary and secondary discourse across both oral and literate contexts to examine this 'divide'. Using evidence from the oral tradition of the Xhosa, it is shown that 'traditional'societies have well-established primary and secondary discourse types. Against this understanding, the issue of 'access' to Western academic literacy is examined. It is argued that within the changing context of South African society and as a direct result of former apartheid policies, individuals may have failed to acquire the cultural capital of both oral secondary and literate secondary discourse types. The literate secondary discourse practices of Xhosa-speaking students at university are explored through an analysis of student writing. This paper then reports on several projects which attempt to address some of the concerns of acade...

Abstract: For the debate on orality, literacy and memorization, India provides some striking evidence. In his comparative analysis of ‘oral aspects of scripture’, Graham gives the Hindu tradition a special place, for the ‘ancient Vedic tradition represents the paradigmatic instance of scripture as spoken, recited word’ (Graham 1987:68). The Vedas, the oldest texts of Hinduism, have been transmitted orally for three thousand years or more, despite the very early implementation of writing, and it is the Vedas as recited from memory by Brahmans that are alone authoritative. A corollary of the spoken word's primacy is that in teaching the Vedas and other texts, although ‘written texts have been used’, ‘a text without a teacher to teach it directly and orally to a pupil is only so many useless leaves or pages’ (ibid.: 74).

Abstract: This article explores the printed and oral communications through which the sixteenth-century holy woman Elizabeth Barton publicised her political prophecies against the Henrician Reformation. Authorship of the primary printed account of Barton's early career has been misattributed, leading scholars to underestimate the number of accounts of Barton's miracles which circulated in her lifetime. This observation leads to an analysis of the media apparatus used by Barton and her adherents, which was an expansion into the political realm of the textual and oral networks through which saints' lives and miracles were publicised in late medieval England.

Abstract: Oral and literate expression refers to verbalized formulations communicated through speech and writing, respectively Despite their apparent clarity, ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ are actually complex and multiform concepts, both in their varying cultural manifestations and in the theoretical controversies surrounding their significance and interpretation The ideas of ‘orality’ and ‘literacy’ have played crucial and value-laden roles in successive theoretical interpretations of the nature of society, culture, individual cognition, and historical change, across a wide range of humanistic and social science disciplines Specially fraught debates relate to their (now-queried) role in the grand evolutionist narratives, to the social and/or cognitive ‘consequences’ of oral and literate communication, to the arguably ethnocentric background for many generalized assessments, intertwined with the Western experience of expansion and empire, and to their relation to current IT developments Recent work has stressed ethnographic, historically specific, situational and socially-contexted approaches to oral and literate practices and performance pays more attention to multiplicity and to power (and other) differentiations, and explores their multidimensional role in subtle and creative expression

Abstract: The essay argues for a reconsideration of the role of the “literate revolution” in the disciplining of rhetorical practice in the fourth century BCE. Specifically, the argument addresses the tension between oral memory and literate rationality in Isocrates and Aristotle to illustrate two divergent possibilities of appropriating oral linguistic resources of a culture. Aristotle's literate classification of endoxa (received opinions) and pisteis (proofs) depoliticizes the oral utterances and maxims of contemporary Greek culture, thereby rendering discourse a mere accessory of a political agent. By contrast, Isocrates conceives of rhetorical performance as constitutive of political agency and civic identity.

Abstract: (2001). Literacy, orality, television: Mediation and authenticity in jewish conversational arguing, 1–2000 C.E. The Communication Review: Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 511-540.

Abstract: The Basque Country in northern Spain is comprised of two autonomous communities, also known by the names Euskadi and Navarra, as their respective polities refer to themselves. There are three traditional provinces within Euskadi: Araba, Gipuzkoa, and Bizkaia. There are also three Basque provinces in France, but this discussion will be limited to the Basque Country in Spain.

Abstract: Drawing from the conceptual studies of oral tradition, this paper extends previous analysts’ tracings of the “oral residue” that unconsciously marks literature into the realm of visual media, positing that there are very clear characteristics of oral performance and orally‐transmitted narratives ("the oral epics") operating within, and indeed formatively shaping, the popular cinema of India. These include not only broad psychodynamic characteristics of orally‐based thought, such as aggregative rather than analytic elements, and a conservative‐traditionalist rather than experimental mindset, but as well specific devices and motifs common to orally‐based storytelling—from the use of cliches and the portrayal of gross physical violence, to the significance of the verbalized oath, the reliance on “heavy” characters, and the acceptance of—in fact, preference for—formula.

Abstract: Edith Ackermann presents some of the compensation between orality 'and literacy from the perspective of the child, and shows the potential of different language games and environments based on narrative to enhance the susceptibility of children to narrazionee annotation.

Abstract: The general assumption among non-Aboriginal editors that Aborigines are bad writers, and their attitude to raise questions about Aborigines' relationships with textuality, is condemned. It is suggested that non-Aboriginal editors tend to control the language and texts of Aboriginal people in collaborative works on Aboriginal life-writing, thereby leading to the assumption.

Abstract: This volume deals with aspects of orality and oral traditions in ancient Greece, specifically literature, rhetoric and society, and philosophy, and is a selection of refereed papers from the fourth biennial Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece conference, held at the University of Missouri Columbia in 2000.

Abstract: L’éloge de la créolité truly marks a decisive moment in the Caribbean literary movement. But beyond obscuring its discretely prescriptive, indeed unifying tone, the richness and profundity of that document can also suppress certain latent contradictions. In analyzing it, there is indeed the fear that the voluntarist manifesto might be in fact the actualization of what it would denounce: “un retour à l’ordre totalitaire de l’ancien monde, rigidifié par la tentation de l’un et du définitif” (53)/ “returning to the totalitarian order of the old world, fixed by the temptation of the unified and definitive” (114).1 From a theoretical perspective, authoritative studies—especially the reflections of Jacky Dahomay, Ama Mazama, Roger Toumson, Michel Giraud, and Raphaël Lucas—shed light on the macoutist bent of several Creolist claims. Indeed, not only do the Creolists implicitly refute their own stance in declaring that the Antilles are “encore dans un état de prélittérature” (14)/“still in a state of preliterature,” but a mythical monopolizing of the glory of origins insinuates that this “quête douloureuse d’une pensée plus fertile” and “d’une expression authentique” (13)/“painful quest for a more fertile thought” (75) and “a more precise expression” is born of their approach to writing. Furthermore, they make Creoleness and orality the “voie royale vers un authentique étouffé en eux-mêmes” (45)/“the best chance for their repressed authenticity”(106) that is claimed to have been definitely absent in their predecessors, who foundered in a “suicide esthétique” (45)/“aesthetic suicide” (106). That totalizing discourse locks literature within a quite imprecise concept that is paradoxically linked to a “diversalité” ‘diversality.’ It also reduces the plural archipelago to a cultural and linguistic unity. Finally, it announces an esthetic itinerary that privileges one sole aspect of orality (diglossia and the symbolic implication of a storyteller) as the forme majeure of orality that must be rescued from oblivion. Immediate literary history reveals, however, that the Creolist propositions are not immune from analysis. In the words of Michel Foucault, their method seeks to reduce writing to “un rituel [qui] définit les gestes, les comportements, les circonstances, et tout l’ensemble de signes qui doivent accompagner le discours” (Foucault 41)/“a ritual [which] lays down gestures to be made, behaviour, circumstances and a whole range of signs that must accompany a discourse” (225), indeed to a “système d’assujetissement” (47)/ “form of subjection” (227). Following on previously developed theoretical analyses, this article will shift the focus of reflection to the field of the purely literary in order to discredit Creolist mystification and its totalitarian attempt. A comparative study of Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnifique and Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Ti Jean L’horizon revisits a number of

Abstract: This volume deals with aspects of orality and oral traditions in ancient Greece, specifically literature, rhetoric and society, and philosophy, and is a selection of refereed papers from the fourth biennial Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece conference, held at the University of Missouri Columbia in 2000.

Abstract: Near the Burmese border, ethnic Chinese Tai villagers perform zhangkhap songs based on Buddhist epics and improvised oral poetry. Repressed from the 1950s as through the 'as, zhanghap has revived dramatically in recent years. Tourists are taking notice, but this may not be good news.

Abstract: Manuscript documents produced by the Ethiopian church are valuable historical sources about the relations of property and politics. Historians, however, should consider them as part of a political culture in which orality and literacy operated jointly to convey meaning and political validity.

Abstract: Introduction"When you sing it now, just like new," said Tommy Attachie of Dane-zaa songs and stories. It was the summer of 1998 and Tommy and I were cataloguing material for a CD of songs and oratory by the Dreamer Charlie Yahey. Tommy is a Dane-zaa elder and song-keeper. He told me that: All these songs, how many years ago. Makenunatane yine [songs of the dreamer, Make-nunatane], and Aledze, Maketchueson, Nachan [names of other dreamers]. How many years ago. Old prophet. When you sing it now, just like new.Each rendition of a song from the Dreamer's tradition evokes the stories of a particular Dreamer's life and teaching. When you sing the songs of the old prophets, the stories become "just like new." To use a distinction made by Dennis Tedlock (1991: 315), they are recreations rather than reproductions. Stories in Zuni oral narrative, he said (and then wrote), are interpretive performances: They exist only in the form of interpretations and it takes a multiplicity of voices to tell them. (Tedlock, 1991:338)Like song, Dane-zaa oral narrative is a performance genre. In performance, Dane-zaa singers and storytellers recreate rather than reproduce material from their cultural tradition.Stories from First Nations oral tradition are interpretive rather than canonical. They live in the communal space shared by storyteller and listener. They live when a knowledgeable storyteller gives them voice for a particular audience. They live in a succession of creations and re-creations. They live in the breath of their tellers. Storytellers have kept their oral traditions alive by "singing them now," and by so doing, making them "just like new." Each telling is an interpretive re-creation rather than a recitation. Each telling realizes a shared creative authority.Storytellers now cross the borders that separate oral and written literatures (Fee and Flick, 1999). Stories in both media contextualize information by reference to shared experience. Authors and readers of First Nations literature similarly participate in dialogue by sharing experience. Communicating by crossing between orality and literacy is Indian business. First Nations writers like Thomas King and Tomson Highway vigorously exercise a sort of intellectual corollary of the Jay treaty, easily transgressing the boundaries that separate orality and literacy while remaining at home within their own country.In this paper I discuss how contemporary Canadian First Nations writers, orators and artists continue to recreate their narrative traditions using the wide variety of settings and media now available to them. I suggest that narrative traditions continue to be instrumental to First Nations adaptive technology. First Nations people communicate their understanding of the world in the languages of narrative, ceremony, visual representation, dialogue and oral tradition. I engage with First Nations literature in a variety of voices and media. Anthropologists have debated, nearly to the point of exhaustion, whether postmodern literary theory has anything to say to us, but have paid less attention to literature itself as ethnography. I suggest that we should be sharing theoretical as well as ethnographic authority with First Nations traditions by conversing with their narratives and narrators, rather than with the obfuscating and literarily barren language of postmodern theory (Ridington, 1999a).First nations narrative technologyFirst Nations literature is, I suggest, part of a long tradition of what I have elsewhere called "narrative technology" (Ridington, 1999b). Literature is more than a pastime in First Nations tradition. It is where stories become experience and experience gives rise to stories. In the pages that follow I present examples of First Nations oral and written literatures, some of which go beyond the conventional definitions of literature as intentionally written composition. …

Abstract: This volume deals with aspects of orality and oral traditions in ancient Greece, specifically literature, rhetoric and society, and philosophy, and is a selection of refereed papers from the fourth biennial Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece conference, held at the University of Missouri Columbia in 2000.