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3/22

oral culture: instruction and entertainment is the SAME

"Remembering Finnegans Wake" by Michael Sexson (himself!)

(Jeremy and Valerie demonstrated an oral performance of Finnegans Wake)- you don't READ the Wake, you perform it! This gives it body through voice

-The body of the Wake is make of layers
-Joyce was a prophet! He predicted the current language
-it's breaking up what Ong calls "secondary orality"

The new language comes from our cyberspace=Hypertext!!!
- a new kind of literacy(secondary orality)

layers are: etimology/hyper-intertextuality (ie: the Bible) =relates to other texts

Prefiguration of the seismic change in the shift of paradigm

Random notes (as if those above weren't random....not)

Writing culture has possession, however, with new technology-things are up for grabs again!
ie: essays online can be used by someone else in another stante and can call it theirs

-if we know a part of a word, we are intertextualizing other knowledge-the Wake
BUT in order to understand, and see the layers, we must know:
Biography
theology
geology
the Bible
books of the dead
history

example: the FALL- (used in the Wake)- refered to in LAYERS: Humty Dumpty's fall, Adam and Eve's fall, Alice's fall, Wallstreet's fall
-Like the hyperlink which leads to a universe of knowledge, so does the Wake

EVERYONE HATED the Wake!! unitl........................the W.W.W.

Joyce wanted a book of collective dream-like language expressing all humanity (vs. personal/private). BUT the books is about everything and everybody!
ie: The two main characters, a man & a woman, encompass EVERY feature/quality of being male and female

Key: REMEMBER re-memeber discourse, give body back to words, pictures back to
information

To do so, take a trip around the SKULL :)

Yates: practical vs. mystical- memory systems are magical!!

(pages are missing, Dr. Sexson reads quickly aloud)

Camillo-creates wooden memory theatre- for real!- you go inside & touch / contact the ascending layers of information (vs. the mysical memory palace)

For Joyce, we just need our sleep! And when we wake in the morning-we forget again

3/10/2005

REMEMBER-my bood is different than most of yours, so my page numbers are most likely one-two pages AHEAD!!!!


Soul Mate! Find your loved one and write an epic poem....here's what Ong has to say:
Ong (70)-the oral praise epic
-look at the Odyssey!
-make up things if you dont' know, anything to make praise, true or false


Back to notes:

Seven liberal arts (I'm sure these will be on the test!)
G rammar
G eometry
R hetoric
A stronomy
M usic
A rithmetic
D ialect

The mad Grandma!

Ong (119-118)
Manuscripts
-in early reading cultures, such as childhood, they sound ou words while they read-orally
there's nothing wrong with this!
it gives body to the written word-vocalize

Important points
(79-81)) writing comes naturally, yet there is no way to write naturally
(vs. Plato who says writing is not natural at all)

(82) technology is the extension of the powers we ALREADY have

(26) there are many scripts but only ONE alphabet (vs. the 40,000 Chinese pictographs)
-alphabet mimics sounds letters make

(84) Pictographs do not have the tight system like the alphabet

(90) What alphabet did for us---TRANSFORMED the world!
- writing restructures the consciousness

(93) Glamor=glamorous=magical! -like Grammar....because grammar was like magic when it first began

Alphabet in Greek 

Sorry!

For those who didn't come to class last Thursday, sorry for not posting the class notes....I'm sure they would've helped! Thats all I have to say for this entry :)

2/15

TEST NEXT TUESDAY!!
Covering Chapters: 1-3 Yates
Prologue & Patterns Kane
1-3 Ong
And Notes!

Don't forget to get tickets to Rushdie-March 7- They're going fast! Get your extra credit!

Some more Ong
(42) No. 5 Close to the human lifeworld
-oral-conceptualize, analyze, verbalized knowledge-=not opp. from literate but DIFFERENT
-very descriptive-very detailed which is why it is very sacred
-geneologies=meaningful-close to lifeworld (Bible meaningful to those who read it, therefore "begats" are meaningful too!)

ONG'S KEY MESSAGE: Writing isolates/distances us from the natural world

(43) Learning by observation-not reading (manuals)-and only minimal verbal instruction
-allowed to make errors! We can't make errors in the literate culture because it's ALL WRITTEN DOWN! (i.e. Dictionary-we can't make up words!)

No. 8 Homeostatic
-oral living is in the present-no dictionaries, no past

(random point: Hans Christian Anderson translated oral myth into literature- when you read it, it's LITERATURE not Oral)

No. 9 Situatinoal vs. Abstract
-orality is situational=present (like homeostatic)
-(51) Hammer, saw, log, hatchet-which doesn't fit in?
-to know, we excersise our categorical intelligence-NOT situational (situational would be as the student replied "you would use the saw to saw the log, the hatchet is the most usless" as opposed to categorical method which implies that the log, not being a tool, doesn't fit)
-we've been contaminated by assessments!! Brainwashed!
-to score a high IQ we need typographic intelligence-not real knowledge!

Oral is Commune-not isolated
-audience involved-always room for improvisation
-technologies isolate i.e. i-pods=our own little world! Solipsistic=related to self; interiorized consciousness which consumes itself)
Samuel Beckons "The writers audience is always fiction" (the audience is unknows and therefore
made-up)
Not in ORAL!!

Hanna's Quote
Ong (74) Derrida vs Ong (paragragh under "Words Are Not Signs" )
-issue that we privelage speech over written-superior form of communication
-but NO! Derrida says writing is prior to speech, whereas Ong says "thought is nested in speech"

Kane Quotes:
(19) Agriculture= domesticate/subjigate nature
-in the Bible, man eventually takes dominion over nature
-destroys the hunter/gather-esque (or oral)
Letter of the Law!=Death (20) "...natural death"
-based upon writing, yet writing is that which kills it (the Law)

Women/snake & Agriculture
-women/snake once source of wisdom
-after agriculture, women/snake loose their place and are under control

Agriculture brings about CLASS SYSTEM (bottom of 21)
-if you have one class, you need another to control it0-continual effect
-3 main classes: Priest, worker/farmer, warrior

(40) "The whole world" paragraph
-preserve the mystery! (again)

(43) -on test! Caribou myth
-one of Kane's methods of comparing oral to literate

You must have a packed livingroom Jeremy! Nice "palace" :)

Notes

I Hopes These Can Be Of Use! But Just As Jennie Said- Take Good Notes Yourself And Don't Rely On Mine!

Day One
Oral VS. Literate Culture

Oral
operate w/ literate
dialect-variation of one language
graptolite- standard lang. /standard English
voicing writings

TYPES:
fables
riddles Information:
prayers/charms/spells
stories (Iliad)
Fables=moral message-use animals
-short story (Jesus’)
-explain life
-ideologies
Riddles=instruction
-bordering on spiritual
-(the realness of that oak tree over there)
Charm/Prayer/Spell=magic
-have power over that other thing you
-inspired by nature
use magic against In Community
Story=history of a people
-entertainment (way later) or emotions
-give people sense of who they are
compose in a community- to an audience

Literate
Being able to READ!!
Chirographic Culture=writing by hand (Egyptian)
Typographic=printing
BOOKS/written products are:
-Information
history
events/new
propoganda
instruction/manuals
spiritual/religious/moral (Bible)
-Writing for writings SAKE!!
-Silent & Isolated documentations
Hendry David Thoreau-Waldo
-inspired by "other things" i.e. Nature
-In community
Write from other writers or emotins
-poet/singer/bard/scope

*What makes cliches live on:
repetition repeated elements=epithets rhythms constructed to be
remembered!

Mnemosyne (=memory) Mother of the Muses
-birth to 9 muses: dance, poetry, music
Calliope
Clio
Erato
Enterpre
Melpomene
Polythymia
Terpsichore
Thalia
Urania

How the Iliad was passed on- thousand-line story!!
*Homer- the great one
*Community composition- attached “Homer” to it when writing it

Milman Parry’s idea of orality
-the stories have : complexes
themes-episodes that repeat (meal boasted by the hero, description of armor)
formulas- clusters of phrases, cliches

These only increase the possibility of a story!!!

Oral=only a possibility of a story Vs. Literate=a definite story

Characteristics of Oral Composition:
Participatory- interaction between story tellers and audience audience vs.
storyteller
Repetition- helps make sure the audience GETS IT!
Homeostatic- in the interest of the audience & the storyteller to preserve the
integrity of the moment- the most impt. pieces are remembered & others are
not-no longer part of the story
Close to the human life world- grounded in our experiences
Additive, vs. subordinative- layering


1/20
Memory needs GRAPHIC- how do you scare people about hell.....pictures!
Key Terms to examine:
1.) Primary orality
2.) Chirographic-writing culture
3.) Typographic-print culture

“Logos” and the power thereof= the spoken word
myth says=prior to the world of speech & writing- we were in the garden of
innocence

Overture- foreshadow of the events in a piece of music

1/22
Text= literary discourse of an oral___
Ong (14) orality=pure
*We are products of a print culture-never pure! We’ll never achieve beautiful
and powerful creations!
HOWEVER, w/out literacy, no: libraries
Shakespeare
ONG!!
documents of oral consciousness
“How do you know what you think until you’ve seen what you say” ie: Writing!!
Act of writing: imposing a type of connection or order on what goes on in your
head

It’s inevitable to go from orality to literacy! & You can’t function in society w/out it!!
-Yet we take things for granted because we’re programmed to the typographic experience
Literate culture= law forms- is generated by what’s written by what’s written
-signing contracts!
-basis of legal issues

Happiness issue= with or w/out -does it elevates us?
“The medium is the message” McCullan (sp?)
=the message is not in the medium-it’s in the message!! (ie: an underlined book has an altered meaning
-different information- book subject to highlighting changes the info!)
(I don’t believe this!)

(Apothegms= to look up sayings- get it in writing)

If the information is in a book-it is different from what’s communicated orally
*it’s the medium being communicated-not the actual message-the highlighting
and scribbles-not the text
(11) Ong=oral traditions are untouched- there’s no such residue (meaning cannot be altered)

Literate tradition- it’s always there! Benefits of written- you can always produce it!

Ong- Language is a technology (NOW- stage of electronic information)

-Yates- “Art of Memory”
2 types: Natural/ Soul= meaningful moments- psychic
Artificial/ Practical/Logical= daily life “things” and “words”, place/people (100 books)


1/27
Museum= place where “muses” are located so that, like a memory, we have a place to see them and later refer to them in one’s mind
-the power of sight, memory and location!! (Yates)
(Most IMPORTANT event in history: Gutenberg's Printing Press (predicted in Finnegan’s Wake)

.... Blackboard labeling (shoe, toothpaste)= we created items and placed them in a location on the board/in our MEMORY
-To recall, we have to reconstruct the place (blackboard) = IMAGISTIC PLACEMENT

Cliche’s (overused expressions) make a FORMULAIC SOCIETY

Oral Vs. Literate Debate!!
Catholics VS. Protestant

Catholic
ritual interpretive
oral
pictures
memory palace
psyche/soul

Protestant
by the book! Bible
literate-interpretation and constant READING
iconoclastic= "breaking of the pictures"

Macs VS. PC
Macs
iconographic
images

PC
Just down Literate!
each symbol has WRITTEN title to it

Anamnesis=recollection (from Plato)
-we’re “full” when we’re born & we loose as we live
-we knew everything when we were babies
-a mafia= forgetfulness -that which is deadly to forget
How do we know if we’re remembering the right/wrong things?? If it makes you TINGLE!!!

Plato: No teacher can teach you anything new= they can only remind you of what you’ve forgotten

Yates- 1st key= SIGHT
1.) Memory map
2.) Recollection guide-memory key for oral & literate
-cannon=guide to memory works and books

1/29?
Globe Palace= Shakespeare’s theatre
- was called the memory theatre-like Yates’ “palace of memory”
- the actors would use the room to help their memory

Yates “things must be memorable” -provocative, violent, grotesque, gross, graphic
- these things tend to “stick”!

Ong’s oral epic poets= RAPPERS!!!

Writing started w/ receipts

Geneology interest is because the people feel it is part of WHO they are=meaningfull
Lists! ( of genes, of begotten- the Bible, ships in the Iliad)
- if they relate to you- they’re impt.

*Kane- “Wisdom of the Mythtellers”
- Myth is told by one who has come BACK to the connection with NATURE

Ong Passages:
(76)- Picture does the job
(36)- Oral=formulaic literate= not QUITE formulaic
However- both are formulaic because both are aids to memory- mnemonic
aids
(43)- Celebration of the mimetic-observe and mimic!
(15)- literacy eats up our oral past so that we don’t remember it was even
there- Ong says be literate AND oral so to RESTORE memory

2/8
We’re in a REVOLUTIONARY Age!!!
oral--hieroglyphic--typographic--electronic--images, again!
We’re coming BACK to the image/ iconographic erea
Fewer and fewer people read -go to the computer instead! (video games, TV, computer)

*Yates & Ong
-Cataclysmic culture changes
Ong (79) = Plato says “we’re going down”!! Writing is inhuman (just as we say e-books are wrong)
“Writing weakens the mind”--we’ll become forgetful
“Written text is unresponsive” --you can’t talk to a text!! Non-dialectic.
“Written word cannot defend itself as the natural spoken word” = TRUTH! It’s inflexible
(reading aloud gives word body because you give it voice---mother reading bedtime story)

IRONIC PLATO
- in order to hear Plato’s points- it had to be WRITTEN!!
Ong says PRINT is held accountable
-some say “ora of originality” is gone (what good is the electronic replication of the Mona Lisa? I want the real thing!!)

“Luddite”=anti-technological person
-”they’re dehumanizing”

Our time: It’s a “Brave New World”---our ALL NEW World- we’re brave and crazy!
Memorizing can save lives! ie; Holocaust- those who could recollect books and stories had a high chance of survival

Ong: Secondary orality= return to orality AFTER passing through literate influence

*KANE (34)= orality is musical! Which is why we can remember--rappers, commercial “jingles”

Ong(37) Orality is Additive, vs. Subordinate
-it hammers in a point!! (ie: Creation Story: and this happened, and
this, and this, and then, and then)
Yates (38) (yet to be discussed)