53 pages • 1 hour read
Walter J. OngOrality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6: “Oral Memory, the Story Line and Characterization”
Chapter 6, Section 1 Summary: “The Primacy of the Story Line”
Many genres of verbal art show indications of the gradual shift from orality to literacy, none more strikingly than the artform of the narrative, Ong claims. Narrative provides an account of events embedded in the flow of time and is the most important and fundamental verbal art form. It factors in to almost all other verbal arts and reflects many influences including and beyond the orality-literacy dynamics of a culture.
Chapter 6, Section 2 Summary: “Narrative and Oral Cultures”
Oral cultures cannot preserve knowledge in an abstract or isolated way as literate cultures are capable of doing in writing. In such oral cultures, narrative is imbued with the important function of bonding thought and knowledge into a durable, memorable form. Much knowledge can be stored in the substantial and lengthy bodies of lore that oral cultures are capable of generating and sustaining.
Chapter 6, Section 3 Summary: “Oral Memory and the Story Line”
Prior studies of the history of the narrative in Western culture show a striking distinction between the characteristics of narratives in oral and literate cultures. Oral mnemonic structures influence oral narratives and produce stories that are structured very differently to the standard linear climactic plot that literate audiences would be familiar with.
