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Where does media history start?. Orality and Literacy The Print Revolution Modern Times (here’s one version) Richard Wagner?. Orality and Literacy . Primary Orality Literacy Scripts “The” Alphabet “High” Literacy Secondary Orality. Primary Orality -- Speculative .
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Where does media history start? • Orality and Literacy • The Print Revolution • Modern Times (here’s one version) Richard Wagner?
Orality and Literacy • Primary Orality • Literacy • Scripts • “The” Alphabet • “High” Literacy • Secondary Orality
Primary Orality -- Speculative • “Pristine,” “natural” p. 78 • What would this mean for history? • What would this mean for law? • What would this mean for science? • Religion? (105) • Narrative drive p. 99
Literacy – A Technology • “Artificial” p. 82 • Where did writing come from? (86) • When? Under what conditions? • Plato’s complaints in the Phaedrus (79)
The Alphabet • A spectrum of written languages, from more phonographic (Finnish) to more logographic (Chinese) • Where did the alphabet come from? • When? Under what conditions? • What IS it? • Sound • Name • Shape
Ong’s Determinism The language of (technological) determinism? “Writing restructures consciousness” “The Greek Alphabet was democratizing” (90)
Methodological Wrinkles • How can we know anything about orality? • Plato’s pitfall (p. 80) • Ong’s little joke (p. 96) • The example of Homer (p. 99) • The example of Genesis (p. 99)
Orality lives on • Ong’s examples of Rhetoric and Learned Latin • The Alphabet song (100) • The Alphabet historicized • “Secondary” Orality?