Nadav Samin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164441
- eISBN:
- 9781400873852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164441.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book examines why tribal genealogies continue to be a central facet of modern Saudi identity despite the erosion of kinship ties resulting from almost 300 years of religious conditioning, and ...
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This book examines why tribal genealogies continue to be a central facet of modern Saudi identity despite the erosion of kinship ties resulting from almost 300 years of religious conditioning, and despite the unprecedented material transformation of Saudi society in the oil age. It considers what accounts for the compulsion to affirm tribal belonging in modern Saudi Arabia by focusing on verse 49:13 of the Quran and the multiple contexts in which it is embedded in the kingdom. More specifically, the book asks why this verse is interpreted by so many Saudis as a license to assert their particularist tribal identities, while its ostensibly equalizing final clause is dismissed as an afterthought. It also explores the politicization of the Arabian oral culture by documenting the life and work of the Arabian genealogist and historian Hamad al-Jāsir.Less
This book examines why tribal genealogies continue to be a central facet of modern Saudi identity despite the erosion of kinship ties resulting from almost 300 years of religious conditioning, and despite the unprecedented material transformation of Saudi society in the oil age. It considers what accounts for the compulsion to affirm tribal belonging in modern Saudi Arabia by focusing on verse 49:13 of the Quran and the multiple contexts in which it is embedded in the kingdom. More specifically, the book asks why this verse is interpreted by so many Saudis as a license to assert their particularist tribal identities, while its ostensibly equalizing final clause is dismissed as an afterthought. It also explores the politicization of the Arabian oral culture by documenting the life and work of the Arabian genealogist and historian Hamad al-Jāsir.
Nadav Samin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164441
- eISBN:
- 9781400873852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164441.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter follows the lives of Saudi lineage seekers as they weave in and out of Hamad al-Jāsir's letters and their own personal narratives and texts. It first examines al-Jāsir's genealogical ...
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This chapter follows the lives of Saudi lineage seekers as they weave in and out of Hamad al-Jāsir's letters and their own personal narratives and texts. It first examines al-Jāsir's genealogical volume Jamharat Ansāb al-Usar al-Mutahaddira fī Najd (The Preponderance of the Lineages of the Settled Families of Najd). It then relates the story of one of al-Jāsir's lineage-seeking petitioners, known as Rāshid b. Humayd. Rāshid's story calls attention to the intimate and personal concerns that propel the modern Saudi search for tribal lineages, genealogy between oral culture and textual culture, and the state's sometimes heavy hand in policing the boundaries of public culture in the kingdom.Less
This chapter follows the lives of Saudi lineage seekers as they weave in and out of Hamad al-Jāsir's letters and their own personal narratives and texts. It first examines al-Jāsir's genealogical volume Jamharat Ansāb al-Usar al-Mutahaddira fī Najd (The Preponderance of the Lineages of the Settled Families of Najd). It then relates the story of one of al-Jāsir's lineage-seeking petitioners, known as Rāshid b. Humayd. Rāshid's story calls attention to the intimate and personal concerns that propel the modern Saudi search for tribal lineages, genealogy between oral culture and textual culture, and the state's sometimes heavy hand in policing the boundaries of public culture in the kingdom.
Charlotte Linde
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195140286
- eISBN:
- 9780199871247
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195140286.003.0006
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter analyzes three examples of a single story about the founder: two written versions and an oral version. The comparison demonstrates two separate dynamics in the life of a narrative within ...
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This chapter analyzes three examples of a single story about the founder: two written versions and an oral version. The comparison demonstrates two separate dynamics in the life of a narrative within an institution. The first shows how a speaker's position shapes the microstructure of the narrative: in particular, how a story about the founder is told either as an account of his management skills, or as an account of his care for his agents, and the skills and character traits which his agents still share with him. The comparison also shows the complex relation between written and oral narrative: the continuous movement of a narrative from oral form to written form back to oral form, which continues without a final fixed version. Thus, the process of transmission of folk tales and oral culture is shown to be alive in the American corporation.Less
This chapter analyzes three examples of a single story about the founder: two written versions and an oral version. The comparison demonstrates two separate dynamics in the life of a narrative within an institution. The first shows how a speaker's position shapes the microstructure of the narrative: in particular, how a story about the founder is told either as an account of his management skills, or as an account of his care for his agents, and the skills and character traits which his agents still share with him. The comparison also shows the complex relation between written and oral narrative: the continuous movement of a narrative from oral form to written form back to oral form, which continues without a final fixed version. Thus, the process of transmission of folk tales and oral culture is shown to be alive in the American corporation.
Adam Fox
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199251032
- eISBN:
- 9780191698019
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199251032.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Cultural History
The interaction between the different media, oral, scribal, and printed, and key aspects of the oral culture in 16th- and 17th-century England is the theme of this book. The book also focuses on the ...
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The interaction between the different media, oral, scribal, and printed, and key aspects of the oral culture in 16th- and 17th-century England is the theme of this book. The book also focuses on the way in which an increasingly literate and print-based culture influenced the means and the content of communication throughout society least familiar with the written word. The significance of the medias of speech, script, and print infused and interacted with each other, is emphasized through an extensive citation of the ballad of Chevy Chase, England's favourite national song. The written word helped in instructing people ways to sing, and to express themselves, and in the later Middle Ages, it extended further into almost every aspect of economic, social, and cultural life.Less
The interaction between the different media, oral, scribal, and printed, and key aspects of the oral culture in 16th- and 17th-century England is the theme of this book. The book also focuses on the way in which an increasingly literate and print-based culture influenced the means and the content of communication throughout society least familiar with the written word. The significance of the medias of speech, script, and print infused and interacted with each other, is emphasized through an extensive citation of the ballad of Chevy Chase, England's favourite national song. The written word helped in instructing people ways to sing, and to express themselves, and in the later Middle Ages, it extended further into almost every aspect of economic, social, and cultural life.
Helen O’connell
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199286461
- eISBN:
- 9780191713361
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199286461.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, European Literature
This chapter shows how the irrationality of Irish is exemplified by its invocation as a metaphor for sentimentality and pathos in ‘Hibernian’ idioms such as ‘asthore’ and ‘machree’. Improvement ...
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This chapter shows how the irrationality of Irish is exemplified by its invocation as a metaphor for sentimentality and pathos in ‘Hibernian’ idioms such as ‘asthore’ and ‘machree’. Improvement pamphlets are generally silent on the issue of the Irish language, presumably because the language could not withstand the processes of modernization. The Irish language and modernization are simply thought to be antithetical. In the process, the language is represented as static, indeed paralytic, and thus incapable of linguistic, let alone economic, production. This chapter argues that Irish was conventionally seen in this manner in the early 19th century and questions the historical, not to mention linguistic, basis for a claim that came to be accepted as a ‘truth’ in the travel writing and literature of the period.Less
This chapter shows how the irrationality of Irish is exemplified by its invocation as a metaphor for sentimentality and pathos in ‘Hibernian’ idioms such as ‘asthore’ and ‘machree’. Improvement pamphlets are generally silent on the issue of the Irish language, presumably because the language could not withstand the processes of modernization. The Irish language and modernization are simply thought to be antithetical. In the process, the language is represented as static, indeed paralytic, and thus incapable of linguistic, let alone economic, production. This chapter argues that Irish was conventionally seen in this manner in the early 19th century and questions the historical, not to mention linguistic, basis for a claim that came to be accepted as a ‘truth’ in the travel writing and literature of the period.
Jack Zipes
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691153384
- eISBN:
- 9781400841820
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691153384.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, ...
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If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, evolved, and spread—or why so many people cannot resist its appeal, no matter how it changes or what form it takes. This book presents a provocative new theory about why fairy tales were created and retold—and why they became such an indelible and infinitely adaptable part of cultures around the world. Drawing on cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychology, literary theory, and other fields, the book presents a nuanced argument about how fairy tales originated in ancient oral cultures, how they evolved through the rise of literary culture and print, and how, in our own time, they continue to change through their adaptation in an ever-growing variety of media. In making its case, the book considers a wide range of fascinating examples, including fairy tales told, collected, and written by women in the nineteenth century; Catherine Breillat's film adaptation of Perrault's “Bluebeard”; and contemporary fairy-tale drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that critique canonical print versions. While we may never be able to fully explain fairy tales, this book provides a powerful theory of how and why they evolved—and why we still use them to make meaning of our lives.Less
If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, evolved, and spread—or why so many people cannot resist its appeal, no matter how it changes or what form it takes. This book presents a provocative new theory about why fairy tales were created and retold—and why they became such an indelible and infinitely adaptable part of cultures around the world. Drawing on cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychology, literary theory, and other fields, the book presents a nuanced argument about how fairy tales originated in ancient oral cultures, how they evolved through the rise of literary culture and print, and how, in our own time, they continue to change through their adaptation in an ever-growing variety of media. In making its case, the book considers a wide range of fascinating examples, including fairy tales told, collected, and written by women in the nineteenth century; Catherine Breillat's film adaptation of Perrault's “Bluebeard”; and contemporary fairy-tale drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that critique canonical print versions. While we may never be able to fully explain fairy tales, this book provides a powerful theory of how and why they evolved—and why we still use them to make meaning of our lives.
Nadav Samin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164441
- eISBN:
- 9781400873852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164441.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This concluding chapter examines the notion that a genealogical rule of governance pervades Saudi Arabia in relation to Wahhabism and Islam. It suggests that Saudi Arabia's modern genealogical ...
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This concluding chapter examines the notion that a genealogical rule of governance pervades Saudi Arabia in relation to Wahhabism and Islam. It suggests that Saudi Arabia's modern genealogical culture is a direct consequence of the rise of Salaf religiosity in the kingdom and that the acute genealogical consciousness of modern Saudi society is a form of bedouin tribal vengeance against modernity. Just as the economic paternalism of the Saudi state has influenced the discourse and strategies of al-Qaeda, the kingdom's economic model has played an important role in shaping its modern genealogical culture as well. The chapter also discusses Hamad al-Jāsir's genealogical project, which preceded the wholesale politicization of the Saudi oral culture, and argues that the attachment to the Arabian past that drove such project was real and visceral, rather than an ideological fetish encouraged or manufactured by the Saudi state.Less
This concluding chapter examines the notion that a genealogical rule of governance pervades Saudi Arabia in relation to Wahhabism and Islam. It suggests that Saudi Arabia's modern genealogical culture is a direct consequence of the rise of Salaf religiosity in the kingdom and that the acute genealogical consciousness of modern Saudi society is a form of bedouin tribal vengeance against modernity. Just as the economic paternalism of the Saudi state has influenced the discourse and strategies of al-Qaeda, the kingdom's economic model has played an important role in shaping its modern genealogical culture as well. The chapter also discusses Hamad al-Jāsir's genealogical project, which preceded the wholesale politicization of the Saudi oral culture, and argues that the attachment to the Arabian past that drove such project was real and visceral, rather than an ideological fetish encouraged or manufactured by the Saudi state.
Anna J. Clark
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199226825
- eISBN:
- 9780191710278
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226825.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter first draws together conclusions about the range of claims and counter‐claims made about divine qualities during the Republican period by individuals and groups from a range of social ...
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This chapter first draws together conclusions about the range of claims and counter‐claims made about divine qualities during the Republican period by individuals and groups from a range of social strata. It highlights the importance both of physical resources and of oral culture in the ways the cognitive vocabulary of divine qualities was used in Republican society. It then explores engagements with such qualities in the early empire. The capacity to restrict meanings and associations increased with the existence of an imperial family, but divine qualities also continued to be important in this period because alternative readings and associations could still be made, and such qualities were useful to senators and other people as well as to emperors. Imperial case studies include episodes found in Suetonius, Tacitus, and Dio, acclamations, Pompeian graffiti, ships, slave names, and the tomb of Claudia Semne.Less
This chapter first draws together conclusions about the range of claims and counter‐claims made about divine qualities during the Republican period by individuals and groups from a range of social strata. It highlights the importance both of physical resources and of oral culture in the ways the cognitive vocabulary of divine qualities was used in Republican society. It then explores engagements with such qualities in the early empire. The capacity to restrict meanings and associations increased with the existence of an imperial family, but divine qualities also continued to be important in this period because alternative readings and associations could still be made, and such qualities were useful to senators and other people as well as to emperors. Imperial case studies include episodes found in Suetonius, Tacitus, and Dio, acclamations, Pompeian graffiti, ships, slave names, and the tomb of Claudia Semne.
Nancy Shoemaker
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195167924
- eISBN:
- 9780199788996
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167924.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
American Indians and Europeans kept records of their international agreements in tangible form: wampum belts, calumet pipes, or eagle feathers among eastern Indians, and among Europeans, written ...
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American Indians and Europeans kept records of their international agreements in tangible form: wampum belts, calumet pipes, or eagle feathers among eastern Indians, and among Europeans, written accounts of what was said ending with signatures and wax seals. In meeting each other at diplomatic councils, they recognized how the other culture's contractual objects served the same purposes in that these objects stored the memory of the event in tangible form, were surrounded with ceremony to endow transient words with permanent significance, and, as mere distant facsimiles of oral conversations, were vulnerable to fraud and deceit. Benjamin West's painting Penn's Treaty with the Indians, commissioned by the Penn family to create a visual memory of fair purchase of Indian lands in place of missing written documentation, and the manipulation of words in the negotiations of the Delaware Walking Purchase, illustrate how writing was not a superior instrument for making Indian treaties than the Indian devices. Still, the illusion that European writing somehow assisted in the conquest of America has endured into the present.Less
American Indians and Europeans kept records of their international agreements in tangible form: wampum belts, calumet pipes, or eagle feathers among eastern Indians, and among Europeans, written accounts of what was said ending with signatures and wax seals. In meeting each other at diplomatic councils, they recognized how the other culture's contractual objects served the same purposes in that these objects stored the memory of the event in tangible form, were surrounded with ceremony to endow transient words with permanent significance, and, as mere distant facsimiles of oral conversations, were vulnerable to fraud and deceit. Benjamin West's painting Penn's Treaty with the Indians, commissioned by the Penn family to create a visual memory of fair purchase of Indian lands in place of missing written documentation, and the manipulation of words in the negotiations of the Delaware Walking Purchase, illustrate how writing was not a superior instrument for making Indian treaties than the Indian devices. Still, the illusion that European writing somehow assisted in the conquest of America has endured into the present.
Born Georgina
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520202160
- eISBN:
- 9780520916845
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520202160.003.0010
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines the technological and social problems related to music production at the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), also discussing the character of ...
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This chapter examines the technological and social problems related to music production at the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), also discussing the character of collaborative authorship, the oral culture of research, and IRCAM's problems of lack of stabilization and the lack of documentation of its research. It suggests that the coexistence within IRCAM of the overproduction of technical codes and texts with the institute's oral culture of mutual help was far from contradictory.Less
This chapter examines the technological and social problems related to music production at the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), also discussing the character of collaborative authorship, the oral culture of research, and IRCAM's problems of lack of stabilization and the lack of documentation of its research. It suggests that the coexistence within IRCAM of the overproduction of technical codes and texts with the institute's oral culture of mutual help was far from contradictory.
Margaret Pabst Battin
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195140279
- eISBN:
- 9780199850280
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195140279.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Imagine a collection of texts on the ethics of suicide — all the primary texts that are of philosophical interest, from all of Western and non-Western culture, from all the major religious ...
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Imagine a collection of texts on the ethics of suicide — all the primary texts that are of philosophical interest, from all of Western and non-Western culture, from all the major religious traditions, including reports from oral cultures where original texts are not available. A spectrum of views about the ethics of suicide — from the view that suicide is profoundly morally wrong to the view that it is a matter of basic human right, and from the view that it is primarily a private matter to the view that it is largely a social one — lies at the root of contemporary practical controversies over suicide. These practical controversies include at least three specific matters of high current saliency: physician-assisted suicide in terminal illness, hunger strikes and suicides of social protest, and suicide bombings and related forms of self-destruction employed as military, guerilla, or terrorist tactics in ongoing political friction. This chapter looks at various texts that are deemed primary sources on the ethics of suicide.Less
Imagine a collection of texts on the ethics of suicide — all the primary texts that are of philosophical interest, from all of Western and non-Western culture, from all the major religious traditions, including reports from oral cultures where original texts are not available. A spectrum of views about the ethics of suicide — from the view that suicide is profoundly morally wrong to the view that it is a matter of basic human right, and from the view that it is primarily a private matter to the view that it is largely a social one — lies at the root of contemporary practical controversies over suicide. These practical controversies include at least three specific matters of high current saliency: physician-assisted suicide in terminal illness, hunger strikes and suicides of social protest, and suicide bombings and related forms of self-destruction employed as military, guerilla, or terrorist tactics in ongoing political friction. This chapter looks at various texts that are deemed primary sources on the ethics of suicide.
Paul Borgman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195331608
- eISBN:
- 9780199868001
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331608.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
The original audience heard a story shaped to their listening capacities, which for a print‐oriented audience presents special difficulties. In highlighting the reliance of David's story on ancient ...
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The original audience heard a story shaped to their listening capacities, which for a print‐oriented audience presents special difficulties. In highlighting the reliance of David's story on ancient techniques of repetition, this book brings into focus a narrative most often approached as a collection of parts rather than as a compelling whole. David's story (Samuel and early Kings) took final shape from within an oral culture whose techniques of repetition demanded from the audience not only a grasp of the story's forward progress, but also a circling backward—a tracing of those “hearing clues” constituting broad formal patterns. From eleven major patterns emerge narrative shape and meaning, and an answer to the mystery of who David is. Some examples: (1) the mystery of David's character is finally less so in a triad of sparings: twice, David spares the life of enemy Saul, accounts that “sandwich” a third sparing—of an enemy David has set out to kill; (2) Saul is anointed and/or proclaimed king three times, and (3) commits wrongdoing in parallel fashion; (4) David is introduced to the story's audience four times, paving the narrative way for aspects of his character lying ahead; (5) David's three‐time failure as a father mirrors Eli's earlier failure, and spells out the king's great fall, setting up the story's glorious resolve, the triumph of a father finally saying no to a spoiled son and yes to interests of the kingdom. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, who has written extensively on the David story, responds with skepticism to Robert Alter's suggestion that David's story evidences architectural cohesion: “Alter may be correct on this point,” Brueggemann cautions, “but he has only asserted the matter and has not given it any careful analysis.” This study demonstrates the aptness of Alter's assessment regarding the story's unity, answering Bruggemann's challenge with a singular analysis adequate to the demands of this sophisticated ancient masterpiece.Less
The original audience heard a story shaped to their listening capacities, which for a print‐oriented audience presents special difficulties. In highlighting the reliance of David's story on ancient techniques of repetition, this book brings into focus a narrative most often approached as a collection of parts rather than as a compelling whole. David's story (Samuel and early Kings) took final shape from within an oral culture whose techniques of repetition demanded from the audience not only a grasp of the story's forward progress, but also a circling backward—a tracing of those “hearing clues” constituting broad formal patterns. From eleven major patterns emerge narrative shape and meaning, and an answer to the mystery of who David is. Some examples: (1) the mystery of David's character is finally less so in a triad of sparings: twice, David spares the life of enemy Saul, accounts that “sandwich” a third sparing—of an enemy David has set out to kill; (2) Saul is anointed and/or proclaimed king three times, and (3) commits wrongdoing in parallel fashion; (4) David is introduced to the story's audience four times, paving the narrative way for aspects of his character lying ahead; (5) David's three‐time failure as a father mirrors Eli's earlier failure, and spells out the king's great fall, setting up the story's glorious resolve, the triumph of a father finally saying no to a spoiled son and yes to interests of the kingdom. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, who has written extensively on the David story, responds with skepticism to Robert Alter's suggestion that David's story evidences architectural cohesion: “Alter may be correct on this point,” Brueggemann cautions, “but he has only asserted the matter and has not given it any careful analysis.” This study demonstrates the aptness of Alter's assessment regarding the story's unity, answering Bruggemann's challenge with a singular analysis adequate to the demands of this sophisticated ancient masterpiece.
Paula Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226761473
- eISBN:
- 9780226761466
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226761466.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
This chapter develops a historical analogy around the perception called “media shift.” Just as twentieth-century studies of oral (as opposed to scribal and print) culture took off in the wake of new ...
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This chapter develops a historical analogy around the perception called “media shift.” Just as twentieth-century studies of oral (as opposed to scribal and print) culture took off in the wake of new twentieth-century oral technologies like telephony, the phonograph, and the radio, so too did the eighteenth-century conceptualization of oral tradition emerge in a complex dialectical relationship with an emerging sense of the sometimes reviled and sometimes improving effects of the steady proliferation of print. The chapter documents the eighteenth century's first draft of the comparative media analysis later conducted in the twentieth century.Less
This chapter develops a historical analogy around the perception called “media shift.” Just as twentieth-century studies of oral (as opposed to scribal and print) culture took off in the wake of new twentieth-century oral technologies like telephony, the phonograph, and the radio, so too did the eighteenth-century conceptualization of oral tradition emerge in a complex dialectical relationship with an emerging sense of the sometimes reviled and sometimes improving effects of the steady proliferation of print. The chapter documents the eighteenth century's first draft of the comparative media analysis later conducted in the twentieth century.
Paula McDowell
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226456966
- eISBN:
- 9780226457017
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226457017.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This book argues that reflection on the spread of print commerce was a key factor in the shaping of our modern intellectual category of "oral culture." In 1700, the concept of oral culture did not ...
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This book argues that reflection on the spread of print commerce was a key factor in the shaping of our modern intellectual category of "oral culture." In 1700, the concept of oral culture did not exist. At a time when the bulk of the population could not read, orality was not something to be especially valued. Protestants deemed "oral tradition" a suspect Catholic theological notion, and literate intellectuals linked what we might call popular oral discourse with vulgarity, sedition, and religious dissent. But by 1800, ideas of oral tradition dramatically changed. The proliferation of print and the specter of mass literacy prompted widespread reflection on what we would now call media shift. This period saw the emergence of a secular notion of oral tradition and an interest in what would later be called folk culture -- a culture that was valorized for its presumed distance from print commerce and the degraded present. Fugitive Voices examines ideas of oral tradition, oral discourse, and orality over the long eighteenth century. Drawing on a hitherto unparalleled range of sources including elocution manuals, theological writings, travel narratives, legal records, scientific writings, and satiric prints, and emphasizing the relationship between emergent abstract ideas and particular local voices, this study re-creates a world in which fishwives and philosophers, clergymen and street hucksters, competed for audiences in taverns, marketplaces, and streets. A historical investigation of changing ideas of the oral also defamiliarizes key assumptions of current media studies concerning “print culture,” “oral culture,” and “orality.”Less
This book argues that reflection on the spread of print commerce was a key factor in the shaping of our modern intellectual category of "oral culture." In 1700, the concept of oral culture did not exist. At a time when the bulk of the population could not read, orality was not something to be especially valued. Protestants deemed "oral tradition" a suspect Catholic theological notion, and literate intellectuals linked what we might call popular oral discourse with vulgarity, sedition, and religious dissent. But by 1800, ideas of oral tradition dramatically changed. The proliferation of print and the specter of mass literacy prompted widespread reflection on what we would now call media shift. This period saw the emergence of a secular notion of oral tradition and an interest in what would later be called folk culture -- a culture that was valorized for its presumed distance from print commerce and the degraded present. Fugitive Voices examines ideas of oral tradition, oral discourse, and orality over the long eighteenth century. Drawing on a hitherto unparalleled range of sources including elocution manuals, theological writings, travel narratives, legal records, scientific writings, and satiric prints, and emphasizing the relationship between emergent abstract ideas and particular local voices, this study re-creates a world in which fishwives and philosophers, clergymen and street hucksters, competed for audiences in taverns, marketplaces, and streets. A historical investigation of changing ideas of the oral also defamiliarizes key assumptions of current media studies concerning “print culture,” “oral culture,” and “orality.”
Kenneth M. Bilby
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813032788
- eISBN:
- 9780813039138
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813032788.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter examines how the Jamaican Maroons imagine themselves and their past. It suggests that it is important to acknowledge the historicity of a large number of Maroon oral traditions and ...
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This chapter examines how the Jamaican Maroons imagine themselves and their past. It suggests that it is important to acknowledge the historicity of a large number of Maroon oral traditions and contends that the Jamaican Maroon claims to a separate identity cannot be judged on the basis of how accurately they understand their past. It argues that regardless of how the Maroon oral narratives recount what really happened in any particular context, it is clear their oral culture is both culturally distinctive and historically deep.Less
This chapter examines how the Jamaican Maroons imagine themselves and their past. It suggests that it is important to acknowledge the historicity of a large number of Maroon oral traditions and contends that the Jamaican Maroon claims to a separate identity cannot be judged on the basis of how accurately they understand their past. It argues that regardless of how the Maroon oral narratives recount what really happened in any particular context, it is clear their oral culture is both culturally distinctive and historically deep.
Andrew J. Friedenthal
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496811325
- eISBN:
- 9781496811363
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496811325.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter explores the “prehistory” of retroactive continuity, and its implementation in narratives that pre-exist its conceptualization as a term. It begins by discussing the transmission of ...
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This chapter explores the “prehistory” of retroactive continuity, and its implementation in narratives that pre-exist its conceptualization as a term. It begins by discussing the transmission of narratives amidst oral cultures before moving on to explore retconning in Biblical writing, particularly Midrash. The chapter concludes with a look at three master storytellers who used retcons as a crucial part of their “world-building” as writers–Arthur Conan Doyle, J.R.R. Tolkien, and H.P. Lovecraft.Less
This chapter explores the “prehistory” of retroactive continuity, and its implementation in narratives that pre-exist its conceptualization as a term. It begins by discussing the transmission of narratives amidst oral cultures before moving on to explore retconning in Biblical writing, particularly Midrash. The chapter concludes with a look at three master storytellers who used retcons as a crucial part of their “world-building” as writers–Arthur Conan Doyle, J.R.R. Tolkien, and H.P. Lovecraft.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226451817
- eISBN:
- 9780226452005
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226452005.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter studies the change from prior senses of history to today's “real time” sense of history—or instant sense of community—of social networks. How was the equivalent of a sense of history ...
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This chapter studies the change from prior senses of history to today's “real time” sense of history—or instant sense of community—of social networks. How was the equivalent of a sense of history experienced, and mediated, in prehistorical oral cultures? How did print culture at the height of the history of the book, which coincided with narrative historicism in the mode of Leopold von Ranke (Historismus), alter the sense of history? And how do "Web 2.0" and social networking today yet again change the sense of history? Can today's society "friend" past ones to imagine, and absorb, prior senses of history as a layered, enrichening texture of the present? What continuities—for example, of internet transmissions following the routes once forced by imperial roads across conquered lands—lock the digital present to its historical past? But, also, what discontinuities allow past historicism and today's information empire to challenge each other's assumptions, thus enabling a more humane texture of the present mindful of the past?Less
This chapter studies the change from prior senses of history to today's “real time” sense of history—or instant sense of community—of social networks. How was the equivalent of a sense of history experienced, and mediated, in prehistorical oral cultures? How did print culture at the height of the history of the book, which coincided with narrative historicism in the mode of Leopold von Ranke (Historismus), alter the sense of history? And how do "Web 2.0" and social networking today yet again change the sense of history? Can today's society "friend" past ones to imagine, and absorb, prior senses of history as a layered, enrichening texture of the present? What continuities—for example, of internet transmissions following the routes once forced by imperial roads across conquered lands—lock the digital present to its historical past? But, also, what discontinuities allow past historicism and today's information empire to challenge each other's assumptions, thus enabling a more humane texture of the present mindful of the past?
Paula McDowell
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226456966
- eISBN:
- 9780226457017
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226457017.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
In eighteenth-century Britain, “culture” referred to the care of crops or animals. No author used the term "oral culture," for the anthropological idea of a culture as a way of life did not exist. In ...
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In eighteenth-century Britain, “culture” referred to the care of crops or animals. No author used the term "oral culture," for the anthropological idea of a culture as a way of life did not exist. In the nineteenth century, the idea of culture as the outcome of a process of human cultivation developed into what anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor called culture in its "wide ethnographic sense." In the 1960s, Walter Ong popularized “oral culture" -- as Marshall McLuhan popularized "print culture" -- and the idea of oral culture generated major research in fields such as history, sociology, folklore, and literary studies. The term dates to the 1960s, but the idea long preexisted the term. The reflection on oral tradition and oral discourse analyzed in this book represents a key phase in the history of these concepts. Throughout the eighteenth century, one finds ethnographers, anthropologists, and theorists of what we would now call oral culture. To trace the historical development of an abstract concept of the oral has required us to identify and analyze embryonic ideas as well as explicit statements. This book argues that the eighteenth-century invention of the category of the oral was a back-formation of the spread of print.Less
In eighteenth-century Britain, “culture” referred to the care of crops or animals. No author used the term "oral culture," for the anthropological idea of a culture as a way of life did not exist. In the nineteenth century, the idea of culture as the outcome of a process of human cultivation developed into what anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor called culture in its "wide ethnographic sense." In the 1960s, Walter Ong popularized “oral culture" -- as Marshall McLuhan popularized "print culture" -- and the idea of oral culture generated major research in fields such as history, sociology, folklore, and literary studies. The term dates to the 1960s, but the idea long preexisted the term. The reflection on oral tradition and oral discourse analyzed in this book represents a key phase in the history of these concepts. Throughout the eighteenth century, one finds ethnographers, anthropologists, and theorists of what we would now call oral culture. To trace the historical development of an abstract concept of the oral has required us to identify and analyze embryonic ideas as well as explicit statements. This book argues that the eighteenth-century invention of the category of the oral was a back-formation of the spread of print.
Anthony Welch
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300178869
- eISBN:
- 9780300188998
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300178869.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore two tightly interwoven aspects of the Renaissance epic tradition: its changing relationship with antiquity and its complex ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore two tightly interwoven aspects of the Renaissance epic tradition: its changing relationship with antiquity and its complex attitudes toward oral performance. This book seeks to show that a key transition in literate Europe's perception of oral culture took place in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: an emerging view of orality not simply as a fact of daily social life but as the lost and mysterious preserve of human societies far remote in space and time. It also shows how epic poets from Tasso to Milton constructed models of the past that are characterized by song and oral performance, and how, in turn, those models forced them to reassess their own art and vocation.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore two tightly interwoven aspects of the Renaissance epic tradition: its changing relationship with antiquity and its complex attitudes toward oral performance. This book seeks to show that a key transition in literate Europe's perception of oral culture took place in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: an emerging view of orality not simply as a fact of daily social life but as the lost and mysterious preserve of human societies far remote in space and time. It also shows how epic poets from Tasso to Milton constructed models of the past that are characterized by song and oral performance, and how, in turn, those models forced them to reassess their own art and vocation.
Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226451817
- eISBN:
- 9780226452005
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226452005.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Linearists, as they might be called, have staked deep claims of cultural and other value on the linear exposition of history, narrative, argument, and other forms of thought. Theorists of networks, ...
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Linearists, as they might be called, have staked deep claims of cultural and other value on the linear exposition of history, narrative, argument, and other forms of thought. Theorists of networks, hypertext, and other domains of today's digital era stake equally significant claims on the nonlinear, often represented in network-style or other postlinear graphical visualizations. Indeed, they often elevate the importance of graphical knowledge in general. Informed by media history extending from oral culture and the history of the book to digital new media, this chapter asks the simplifying question: what if there never was any linearity to defend or to contest? What if the idea of linearity has always been an ideology deployed through graphical knowledge systems that are realized in graphics as the visualization of any era's idea of authoritative linearity—for example, who gets to go to the front of a line and why—and ultimately of its sense of history? The chapter makes Wallace Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West" (with its invocation of "meaningless plungings" yet also visualization of seas "portioned" into fixed "emblazoned zones") a recurrent touchstone of its argument—in part by using digital humanities text analysis methods to render the poem as visualizations.Less
Linearists, as they might be called, have staked deep claims of cultural and other value on the linear exposition of history, narrative, argument, and other forms of thought. Theorists of networks, hypertext, and other domains of today's digital era stake equally significant claims on the nonlinear, often represented in network-style or other postlinear graphical visualizations. Indeed, they often elevate the importance of graphical knowledge in general. Informed by media history extending from oral culture and the history of the book to digital new media, this chapter asks the simplifying question: what if there never was any linearity to defend or to contest? What if the idea of linearity has always been an ideology deployed through graphical knowledge systems that are realized in graphics as the visualization of any era's idea of authoritative linearity—for example, who gets to go to the front of a line and why—and ultimately of its sense of history? The chapter makes Wallace Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West" (with its invocation of "meaningless plungings" yet also visualization of seas "portioned" into fixed "emblazoned zones") a recurrent touchstone of its argument—in part by using digital humanities text analysis methods to render the poem as visualizations.
