Search All

Articles

1. Cultural Process in the "Iliad" 18: 478-608, 19:373-80 ("Shield of Achilles") and Exodus... 2008

   https://ncsu.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHCXMwlV3db9MwELfY9sIL37AyiCyGKJPIGseOP_rWVa2o1DFEmcSbldgpDKoWNVSC_547J6laeEA8xFJky05yF9_v7LufCXlZ6kxyQN4x2DIVC5eIuOAYtgO2SUjulddufzGHnLa5MLjwcP71S-0fNh-vh2baiANyBN6Kwrity-vZdqsAc4xrqklMFOOm4SDlGe8BkD3HyC2k0fljV3nPDDWTcR2QuL8I8tcUHezO-C65ap84hJvgIQe7cfe9wHUYCC5aXsd_vN09cqeBoHRQV9wnt8rlA_Jk2ixcVvQVnW65lquH5NewIeegTVIBvVlSgI10srjJPWW6TwX4iDLRbygzfa442CP6uounbC88Xc3pADPGF2XVPaP50tPRz5XfVDTN-uhX9rmGxoP1N2yJ3Q5XMP-CvLtnj8j1ePRx-DZuDmyInWApHmuvnNdwcSZLBeCuBCnk88Qoo-eS5U6kHhAQqEbhGNcOuXYyIwuZS-UAOfBjQnWppXc-K0oAk8wlhUpzkyukOVTea9Eh0b4kbY47NPZDErjamOyQ01ay9nvN2GHDtl3GLSiERTpUZjrkBQrdIgXGEmNsPuebqrKT2Ts7YNooQG4KxjoOjRZrV1fvVj0O2rIdAl01ESriHfWxzYxQ2VrKdgaQFVCRBqGIQP7TISetgu00Tg0S-4ns6X_2dkJupy1hL3tGDn-sN-VzcohqGZED9ekiIkeD6Ww6gbuL0TBCKzCG8jJ5j2V6FYWf6zeeHA9A

   Wallace, Nathaniel

   College Literature, Vol. 35, Issue 4, pp. 55 - 74.

   This essay is concerned with the notion of community as revealed in two foundational texts, the Shield of Achilles in "Iliad" 18 and the Ark of the Covenant episode in the Book of Exodus. The exten... Read more

   This essay is concerned with the notion of community as revealed in two foundational texts, the Shield of Achilles in "Iliad" 18 and the Ark of the Covenant episode in the Book of Exodus. The extensive ekphrastic discourse in each text receives primary attention. Across religious and other boundaries, shared and differentiating factors are identified that relate to the development of communities. Conceptual grounding is located in Victor Turner's "communitas" framed as a well-coordinated union of individuals apprehended according to basic human and social traits. Also utilized is the cultural theory of Giorgio Agamben, who maintains the relevance for communities of the "quodlibet" seen as a value that is indispensable. Agamben also emphasizes singularity or "whatever you want, that is lovable." Clearly, the community of Agamben, derived from postmodern contingencies, entails protocols at variance with those of Turner, devoted researcher of traditional African tribal societies. Yet the avant-garde community of Agamben may have antecedents that are historically remote. In turn, sites at history's threshold may be illuminated with reference to cultural nuances detected by Agamben. With these discursive coordinates in view, discussion turns to a pair of texts associated with cultural idealization. The examples also stage their communities as mired in internal conflicts, ambiguities, flux, and attempts at definition and revision. Read less

   Journal Article  |  Full Text Online

2. On the Theoretical Foundations of Orality and Literacy 1999

   https://ncsu.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHCXMwlV3db9NADLfY9sLLgDGNsC0cYoB4SJvmLl-PbbcOREvEWibeTsldAkIoQ836wH-Pna8m8FDxclJiq-qdHfvnO58NcJEGrscReVvoy3xLKFtYCae0HfRNwuPa14Hqb-bAq-YuDG08DH58r-LDevGGpEQi3IMDjFZ8yttafFm25hZtb4VxucCoamRXZ5FO6IfDm_GcbuOFA44vBtSN_a-z5Z4zqk1ylZZIOZJxgcuUVf0t-lsjfcPt1N5o9giiZh5lEgq1Puhm4w_LCohl2Yum2uOOOT-GwxqYsnFFeAIP0vwITub1dmbB3rB5W4G5OILDsvXl24LViYhPwYtyhmiSrbZXI9m2aVPB7jIWrUvUz-Jc17-mfh_Dana1mr636q4MlsJY8t5Cp6q1h2Fa5mme2RnHIFdzz4vdUPMwyxIR8kRl3NUqSTOtuXZjhAmIixOOYJI_AxakgaeVdpMUAeNI2YnvxGHsUylDX-tAGHDRl5NEG1p_W4V0bLSJnAvfgHeN9OSvqjaHxJiGRC9R9JJELzm-kMIx4DWJV1LJi5xyalS1LyNxatNIjl3hjSjUM-Bln-9bvCkKGVzPd_J8mFzv5ll-6vKclDw_16qidijHpRa20-II1FzXM-C8p5XbaSMuRzBrgNXRUtkuWaVMckk9jB1bYJRLxtFB_rNGj7vMGCMgR4Dk03_JneV_0VLRJtFBU5yndxtcLRf1A8X5_D__zik8rKtiWI5zBvv36016Dvv0-Ziw569CGr9OTDgY335e3OLT5Gpq0qXdG5P82QzHj66N4_zSwnExuqTRiczSZPwB2WFYTw

   Biakolo, Emevwo

   Research In African Literatures, Vol. 30, Issue 2, pp. 42 - 65.

   More than this, the binarism represented by the contrast of the two terms transcends the question of alternative media or modes of communication. [Walter Ong]'s arguments hinge on the cultural diff... Read more

   More than this, the binarism represented by the contrast of the two terms transcends the question of alternative media or modes of communication. [Walter Ong]'s arguments hinge on the cultural differences that arise from, and are symbolized by, the two communicative orders. For this reason, it is useful to sketch the terminological history of orality and literacy as a binary complex. This has indeed partly been done by Ong himself, who admits his indebtedness principally to Eric Havelock, Milman Parry, and Albert Lord (Presence 17-110; Interfaces 92-120 and 272-302; Orality and Literacy 6-30). According to him, Parry's philological inquiries revolutionized Homeric studies and resolved, once for all, the age-old Homeric question. For Parry found that "the distinctive feature of Homeric poetry is due to the economy enforced on it by oral methods of composition" (Ong, Orality and Literacy 21). Metrical exigencies and the constraints of human memory compelled the oral poet to take recourse to formulae, standardized themes, epithetic expressions, stock or "heavy" characters, and a copious and repetitive style. These findings by Parry were later confirmed and extended by Lord's study of contemporary Balkan epic poets in his well-known The Singer of Tales (1960). But it is to Havelock that Ong owes his elaboration of the consequences of the acquisition of literacy by the oral poet and an oral culture. In a more recent essay, Havelock, while acknowledging the primacy and necessity of oral language, restated the revolutionary impact of literacy on Greek society and Western civilization -- much the same point he had made in Preface to Plato (1963), Origins of Western Literacy (1976), and The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences (1982). The Greek alphabet, he argues, was unique and infinitely superior to earlier Egyptian, Sumerian, and Phoenician writing systems because it "provided an exhaustive table of atomic elements of acoustic sound that by diverse combinations could represent the molecules, so to speak, of linguistic speech" ("OralLiterate Equation" 25). The importance of its introduction into Greek society lies in its enhanced storage and retrieval capacity -- a function earlier served primitively by oral poetic rhythm. Another consequence was the replacement of the narrative, activist, agent-oriented syntax of Homeric poetry, with a "reflective syntax of definition, description, and analysis," which, according to Havelock, is typified by Platonic prose ("Oral-Literate Equation" 25). This was not a mere stylistic shift. On the contrary, it embodied a change in the psychological preconditions of the act and process of communication. In other words, it resulted in alterations in the organization and operation of the human consciousness. Therefore, it is not surprising that Havelock attributes to this shift the advances of Western knowledge and civilization. As he explicitly states, "Without modern literacy, which means Greek literacy, we would not have science, philosophy, written law or literature, nor the automobile or the airplane" ("OralLiterate Equation" 24). [Deborah Tannen]'s basic thesis is that the oral-literate paradigm, re-echoing as it does these other paradigms, has helped her in clarifying and categorizing contrasting discourse strategies from various situations including conversations, narratives, aesthetic responses, and so on. She discusses three examples from her research involving respectively Greek and American subjects, Americans and Greeks/American-Greeks, New York Jews and non-New Yorkers/non-Jews ("Oral/Literate Continuum" 4-13). Her conclusion is that the Greeks, Greek-Americans and New York Jews used discourse strategies that were "inherently oral" even though these subjects were highly literate people. These strategies include a tendency to formulaicness of language, personal/emotive involvement and internal evaluation. The American subjects, on the other hand, adopted writing strategies such as external evaluation, decontextualization, and novelty of expression. Although she admits that these strategies have become "culturally conventionalized," she nevertheless insists with surprising agility that the distinction is not along ethnic or cultural lines, proclaiming in one telling sentence: "It will not do to label some people as oral and others as literate" (13-14). Read less

   Journal Article  |  Full Text Online

3. The Party Line 1976

   https://ncsu.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHCXMwpV3PS8MwFA5uXjwoOkXnpvYg3oJrk-bHUWVDYUwPHXgrTdKBB-ew28H_3pcl7axjqHgpJQlJw5e-9-Xl5T2ELnMRMwLMG4Mu45jqHsWKWLcd0E2UEcON0HVjjovsUWzyYr_-N7RQBuDaq7J_gLfqFArgHUCGJ8AMz18D_QTlH3Z_XXPssTWV0-bXGBHFLM91ZQe-XXgPHX9HZ2UICIFFlL7DK-FGCLbhvpxod_KMcolj7vK1lAKPRWvAOunlK5wedNlu1iRs6ZJICAzFWU_CFpd4qVeLZj16TAfj4TBN-s9JA21HXEqbYeJhhCtNGUahi2nqP7w8dbaxz78PUNeVxBOAZB_teeYe3DgEDtBWPm3ZpNfeQaaFOr7JS_EaXAW1mzdFCx0PvWW4gMphFcy6OES7gFOwRDCwCB6h8aCf3N1jn6YCz4B7zTGnimjFQkVjo3jGlNJaZUIKGmZAPuN4AjzLwDy0nDDDQzURgkmtTEyoPZsiJygQuWBGm1jlQKFD3VM8ymTGbXBHboygbdQtZ5_65VKk1oQoGAUO2UYXVTWIB3vmk03zt0WRxgI4JOvRzS2Ar0VMSn76Yx8dtLNad13UnL8v8jPUtH_pOWrwRJ4v4f0EfKk0HA

   Burke, Kenneth

   The Quarterly Journal Of Speech, Vol. 62, Issue 1, pp. 62 - 68.

   A notion of language as symbolic action has been evolved which places W. S. Howell's arguments in Poetics, Rhetoric, & Logic: Studies in the Basic Disciplines of Criticism that Burke has not suffic... Read more

   A notion of language as symbolic action has been evolved which places W. S. Howell's arguments in Poetics, Rhetoric, & Logic: Studies in the Basic Disciplines of Criticism that Burke has not sufficiently distinguished between poetics & rhetoric in a different perspective. Howell's work fails to use sufficient data, particularly the discussion of imitation & catharsis in Greek tragedy. Its general concept of rhetoric is too narrow, ignoring many of its aspects. In The Two-Party Line: A Reply to Kenneth Burke, Wilbur Samuel Howell (Princeton U, NJ 08540) stresses that the only substantial issue involved is Burke's insistence that rhetorical theory & poetical theory are one & the same thing, & that both should be treated together under the broad heading of rhetoric - this position is incorrect. In its long history, rhetoric has prevailingly been assigned the task of explaining the structure & function of nonfictional works, eg, speeches of all kinds, written public addresses, histories, expository discourses, & philosophical arguments intended for the popular audience, whereas poetics, or the theory of poetry, has been used prevailingly to explain the structure & function of fictions - dramas, epics, narrative poems, novels, short stories, imagined histories, & in fact all literary creations which accomplish their functions by metaphorical as distinguished from literal means. The critical difference between rhetorical & poetical literature is illustrated by a discussion of the rhetorical & poetic dimensions of certain speeches in Dante's Inferno & of Antony's speech to the Romans in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The critical difference ultimately resolves itself into a distinction between the use of statements & the use of fictions as the means of producing effects upon audiences. Modified AA Read less

   Journal Article  |  Full Text Online

See 3 article results