The muse learns to write: Reflections on orality and literacy from antiquity to the present

by Eric Alfred Havelock

When oral culture becomes literate, in what way does human consciousness itself change? And how does the new form of communication affect the content and meaning of texts? In this book, one of the most original and penetrating thinkers in Greek studies describes the transformation from orality to literacy in classical times and reflects upon its continued meaning for us today.“Fresh insights into the orality-literacy shift in human consciousness from one who has long been studying this shift in ancient Greece and has now brought his vast learning and reflections to bear on our own times. This book is for a wide audience and calls for thoroughly rethinking current views on language, thought, and society from classical scholarship through modern philosophy, anthropology, and poststructuralism.”—Walter J. Ong“All in all, we have in this book the summary statement of one of the great pioneers in the study of oral and literate culture, fascinating in its scope and rewarding in its sophistication. As have his other works, this book will contribute mightily to curing the biases resulting from our own literacy.”—J. Peter Denny, Canadian Journal of Linguistics“An extremely useful summary and extension of the revisionist thinking of Eric Havelock, whom most classicists and comparatists would rank among the premier classical scholars of the last three decades. . . . The book presents important (though controversial) ideas in. . . an available format.”— Choice

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Language, Anthropology, Linguistics, Criticism

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Eric Alfred Havelock was a British classicist who spent most of his life in Canada and the United States. He was a professor at the University of Toronto and was active in the Canadian socialist movement during the 1930s. In the 1960s and 1970s, he served as chair of the classics departments at both Harvard and Yale. Although he was trained in the turn-of-the-20th-century Oxbridge tradition of classical studies, which saw Greek intellectual history as an unbroken chain of related ideas, Havelock broke radically with his own teachers and proposed an entirely new model for understanding the classical world, based on a sharp division between literature of the 6th and 5th centuries BC on the one hand, and that of the 4th on the other.

Much of Havelock's work was devoted to addressing a single thesis: that all of Western thought is informed by a profound shift in the kinds of ideas available to the human mind at the point that Greek philosophy converted from an oral to a literate form. The idea has been very controversial in classical studies, and has been rejected outright both by many of Havelock's contemporaries and modern classicists. Havelock and his ideas have nonetheless had far-reaching influence, both in classical studies and other academic areas. He and Walter J. Ong (who was himself strongly influenced by Havelock) essentially founded the amorphous field that studies transitions from orality to literacy, and Havelock has been one of the most frequently cited theorists in that field; as an account of communication, his work profoundly affected the media theories of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. Havelock's influence has spread beyond the study of the classical world to that of analogous transitions in other times and places. (wiki).

Reviews

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jezik kao sredstvo komunikacije nastaje zahvaljujući naglom povećanju zapremine mozga u toku srednjeg ledenog doba (sa 1000 na 1400 kubnih cm). (132)

S neba pa u rebra, eto, tako nastade jezik.

A gde je nebo i jezik tu su i muze i ima nečeg duhovitog u naslovu ove čuvene studije. Zamišljam muzu kako se saginje da bi škrabucnula malo pisano slovo Џ i uveseljava me silno. Može npr. baš Polihimnija da piše to malo dž, Polihimnija ili Kaliopa, a onda, dok ih neko gleda kako one to rade, da pođe na razmišljajno putovanje o prirodi jezika, posebno razlici između usmenog i pisanog jezika.

Danas se sprega usmenog-pisanog uzima gotovo zdravo za gotovo. Čini se da su tu stvari jasne: imamo govor i imamo znakove i znakovi odgovaraju govoru i tako komuniciramo. Međutim, šta ako bismo, a što ne bismo, postavili pitanje: da li je priroda razmišljanja čoveka koji nije pismen ili koji potiče iz kulture koja nema pismo, suštinski drukčija od čoveka koji je pismen? Zatim i: koja je uloga usmenosti u izgradnji kulturnog kapitala? Jer, pisani jezik je (malo se o tome govori) jedan od oblika tehnologije i da bismo mogli da upravljamo tehnologijom, moramo da naučimo da je hakujemo, a ako to nije moguće, makar da budemo svesni njenih dometa, u najširem smislu. Iz tog razloga možemo obrnuti poznato viđenje o superiornosti (fiksiranom) pismenosti u odnosu na (stalno promenljivu) usmenost. Čini se da je zaista jednostavno, međutim, šta ćemo da radimo ako nas je pismenost toliko „zarazila” da nismo sposobni da pojmimo ne-pismeni svet. Jer, svet, šta god ko pričao od poststrukturalističke družine, nije tekst, odnosno, u najmanju ruku nije samo tekst, a u još manju od najmanje ruke, nije tekst koji je fiksiran.

Ukoliko je pismo tehnologija, ono će uvek biti produžetak neke nesvodljive, kako Havelok kaže, „primarne komunikacije” (89), ali time postaje i nešto novo u odnosu na ono od čega je poteklo. Pošto smo svi pomalo skloni binarnim opozicijama jer, i kada nemaju osnova, često olakšavaju život, ovde treba dobro razmisliti o razdvojenosti usmenog i pisanog, naročito u smislu njihove ravnopravnosti. Pritom, da sve bude dodatno zamršeno, Havelokovo razmišljanje o usmenosti, upravo je pisano, ali, može se dodati: kakvo drukčije može biti? (62)

Mi o vremenu pre pismenosti razmišljamo kao o dobu stabilne slike sveta gde je predanje bilo izvrsni tradicijski kanal, a pravila, iako neizrečena, jasna: ono što bi zajednica podržala, ostajalo bi u kolektivnom pamćenju, ono što je odudaralo, večno je izgubljeno. Tako možemo i o pojavi poezije da razmišljamo kao o mnemotehnici. Književnost pre pismenosti bila je, kako Havelok tvrdi - skladište kulturnih informacija kako bi se mogla ponovo upotrebiti. (98) Odnosno, i sama poezija može biti tehnologija, odnosno, strategija za ovladavanje vremenom i resursima, kako u krajnje konkretnom vidu, tako i u apstraktnom. Prosto: što je nešto zvučnije, pevljivije, lakše se pamti. Vremenom, forme su se usložnjavale i osamostalile, ali i fiksirale u znaku, pa mogu da budu i zaboravljene i ponovo otkrivene. U toj mogućnosti zaboravljanja i otkrivanja nalazi se jedno izvrsno Havelokovo objašnjenje: čin percepcije (usmene kulture) zamenjen je nečim nepodudarnim sa prirodom našeg životnog okruženja - pismom. A pismo jeste u korelaciji sa usmenošću, a usmenost sa svetom, ali pismo uvek upućuje i na samo sebe, ono stvara svoje sopstveno stanište. I Prometej je osuđen, vredi istaći, ne samo zbog vatre, već zbog šverca pisma.

E sad, ukoliko bismo prihvatili tezu o mnemotehničkoj osnovi poezije, onda, prateći tu liniiju, proza bi bila nova forma izražavanja - moguća samo u pismenosti - kao, uostalom i sama istorija! (146) Havelok tvrdi da je Platon prva figura celovite pisane spekulativne misli u istoriji ljudskog roda (149), a da njegov učitelj Sokrat, kao najveći filozof usmenosti, ne ostavivši ni jedno slovce napisano iza sebe, uticao da Platon otključa prozna vrata. A od tad, pa do danas, svi oni štucaju.

Pominje Havelok i Perija i Lorda, ali i Makluana i elektronske medije. I ne mogu da se otmem utisku da bi ova knjiga bila sasvim drukčije skrojena danas - ne zato što su razmišljanja o njoj prevaziđena, već zbog toga što smo debelo zagazili u ono što Havelok i Makluan pomalo tiho ističu: tekstualno transponovanje stvarnosti se, nakon apsolutne viševekovne dominacije polako povlači i svoje mesto otvara drugim medijima. Međutim, kao što je usmenost opstala u pisanom, jer je ona sastavni deo pisanog, tako i elektronski mediji u sebi imaju sedimente i pisanog i usmenog. Uzbudljivo je razmišljati o tom procesu. Svako ko se bavi danas knjiežvnošću pomalo je duša prošlog vremena, što nipošto nije loše.

Bonus: 13 (antičkih) čovekovih umeća (138-139). Divna tema za razmišljanje o tome kako se opseg kulture menjao i šta je ono što je čovek doživljavao kao sebi pripadajuće:

plovidba
poljoprivreda
posmatranje ptica
lov
ribolov
uzgajanje životinja
jezik
mišljenje
društveni instinkti
arhitektura
medicina
pravo
država (polis)

[Parlei · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most frustrating books I have read in awhile. This work is not meant to be read by itself, but in conjunction with others--probably his other published works, but I highly recommend reading the article by John Havlerson, "Havelock on Greek orality and literacy." Journal of the History of Ideas (1992): 148-163, if you want to get an understanding (and critique) of Havelock's arguments. Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy is another, for a different perspective.

For the most part, Havelock assumes that the reader has read everything he has and so the writing here does not take the time to ground the reader in anything like context.

Overall, I think that Havelock presents a good theoretical account for the separation of orality and literacy. He poses a number of intriguing questions, such as those he outlines in Chapter 3:

“The ‘Orality Problem’ as it has presented itself for investigation during the last 25 years has been argued from several points of view.
History: what has it meant for societies and their cultures in the past to discard oral means of communication in favor of literate ones?
Contemporary: what is the relationship between the spoken word (of today or yesterday) and the written text?
Linguistic: what happens to the structure of a spoken language when it becomes a written artifact?
Philosophy: Is oral communication the instrument of an oral state of mind, a type of consciousness quite different from the literate state of mind?" (abridged quote)

However, I think the approach to answer these questions are lacking. He, like Ong, relies on a strict dichotomy of orality/literacy that other scholars reject (see Karin Barber, Anthropology of the Text) when in an increasingly shifting society, the lines of such difference are not so clear. I think this work is a good jumping off point for a discussion of orality and literacy, but should not be the final stop in what is to be a long journey.

[T Vignesh Nayak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insights regarding orality, most people think writing is just spoken language in visible form, Havelock showed it is much more than that. Havelock tells how oral culture is different than literate culture.Author uses reference of many books, you don't have to read all those books to understand what author is trying to say. After you read it you will understand not only guns changed the world, also writing caused so much influence on our thinking.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book ages ago and wish I'd read it sooner. It's a quick, yet detailed, introduction to the concept of orality.

I think Havelock's contention is best summed up by the idea that History, in a sense, started with Plato. The technology of the (Greek) alphabet isn't just about writing down what used to be said orally; it fundamentally changes our ontology - what it means 'to be,' a verb that would have been incoherent to those living in the age of orality.

The idea that the oral tradition is rooted in presence, necessarily delimited by place and time, and that the Greek alphabet eventually pulled us out of that context to institute the abstract notion of 'being' is quite something. Socrates wasn't killed just because he was annoying. He was killed because his insistence on a new way of thinking represented a new ontology, which the beneficiaries of the existing tradition saw as a threat. They were right.

[John David · Rating 4 out of 5]

About 28 centuries ago, one of the most importance occurrences in what would eventually become Europe took place: the sudden evolution of the Phoenician syllabary into the full Greek alphabet we know today. Before this time, absolutely all information had to be transmitted orally: from contracts between parties to how to become a Greek citizen to knowledge of everything from your complex family genealogy to how to engage on the battlefield. Two scholars, Milman Parry and Albert Lord, together proposed an idea which would have allowed all pre-literate poets (like Homer) to improvise their poetry; it also gives a cohesive set of explanations concerning why Homeric poetry looks the way it does. Their thesis, later picked up by the likes of Walter Ong and Eric Havelock, is called the Parry-Lord thesis. “The Muse Learns to Write” is Havelock’s last major work and mostly a book-length meditation on the Parry-Lord thesis. It is also a summa which tries to recapitulate an entire career’s worth of ideas while tying up loose ends. Because of this, its length – under 130 pages – it seem like a short, precursory introduction into the idea of orality. It is far more complex than its length would initially lead you to assume.

Havelock, for many years a Sterling Professor of the classics at Yale, is interested not so much in the shape of Homeric poetry, but rather the forms that occurred in human consciousness that were caused by the shift from orality to literacy. Also, how does this important transition inflict itself also upon the texts themselves, deforming or reshaping their meaning and content?

Some questions are so important that they may be almost counted to be scandalous: “One of the difficulties of thinking about language is that you have to use language to think about it. A linguistic act has to be directed upon itself. Once written down, the act could be visualized and this visual this could be separated from the act of speaking and laid out in a kind of visual map. But what was the nature and significance of the speaking act itself? What has been its role in man’s history?” (Havelock, 34). According to Havelock, not even the emergence of Greek philosophy escaped the influence of the orality-literacy transition. He cites the unique character of Plato, whose denunciation of poetry as a form of rhetorical decadence marks a sharp break from his own written prose (a prose which, should be noted, is highly indicative of his own background as a dramatist). Since so much of philosophy was born of Plato’s dramatic dialogues involving Socrates, we have to ask ourselves whether even the most basic presuppositions of philosophy – ideas of freedom, individuality, and what it means to know could not have gone untransformed by the orality-literacy transition.

Havelock goes on to present both a general and specific theory of Greek orality, as well as looking at the work of people whose work is closely related to his own, like Marshall McLuhan and Harold McInnis. For a one-stop précis of Havelock’s work, this is a wonderful place to start. As I said above, this is a summa, so it touches on many ideas, especially the ones on the orality-literacy break, which is most fully set forward in his earlier and more scholarly book “Preface to Plato” (1963).

[Emilia Macchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Así como el internet y la imprenta, la invención de la escritura transformó la comunicación para siempre. Y como la historia se repite, en la Grecia antigua fueron años de forcejeo: estaban los tecnófobos, que veían en la oralidad y la memorización en rima la única alternativa para educar; mientras que los defensores, como Platón, pensaban que podrían escribir para teorizar y debatir en vez de repetir las mismas rimas.
Y así, el libro cuenta datos-frik que te vuelan la cabeza: Homero, si es que existió, nunca supo leer; el alfabeto fue inventado los alfareros que debían etiquetar sus vasijas -y por lo mismo, era mal visto por la elite-; el alfabeto griego fue el primero en separar vocales de consonantes, etc etc etc.
Al mismo tiempo, Havelock siempre recuerda nuestro presente, y el eterno debate sobre dejar pasar o no a las nuevas tecnologías del lenguaje.

[Gabriel Franklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The masterpieces we now read as texts are an interwoven texture of oral and written. Their composition was conducted in a dialectical process in which what we are used to think of as 'literary value' achieved by the architectural eye crept into a style which had originally formed itself out of acoustic echoes."

[Simona Dreca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rilettura

[Stefan Ghita · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 perché per me sono cose già lette e rilette !ma nella versione per classicisti (cosa che mai sono stato)

[CRISTINO · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Cuando una sociedad depende de un sistema de comunicación enteramente oral dependerá, sin embargo, al igual que la nuestra, de una tradición expresada en enunciados fijos y transmisibles como tales. ¿Qué clase de lenguaje puede satisfacer esa necesidad sin dejar de ser oral? Parece que la respuesta está en un habla ritualizada, un lenguaje tradicional que de alguna manera se hace formalmente repetible como un ritual en el que las palabras permanecen en un orden fijado.
Ese lenguaje debe ser memorizado. No hay otra manera de garantizar su supervivencia. La ritualización se convierte en el medio de la memorización. Las memorias son personales; pertenecen a cada hombre, mujer o niño de la comunidad; pero su contenido, el lenguaje conservado, es comunitario, es algo compartido por la comunidad y que expresa su tradición y su identidad histórica (…) La retención exitosa en la memoria se forma por repetición. El niño que prefiere que se le repita la misma historia desea ser capaz de recordarla, de contarla él mismo, entera o en parte, y así saborearla mejor. La repetición se asocia a una sensación de placer, factor de primera importancia para entender la fascinación de la poesía oral. Pero con la mera repetición de contenidos idénticos no se llegará muy lejos. El conocimiento oral así obtenido será de alcance limitado. Lo que se requiere es un método de lenguaje repetible (es decir, unas estructuras de sonido acústicamente idénticas) que, sin embargo, sea capaz de cambiar de contenido para expresar significados diversos. La solución que descubrió el cerebro del hombre primitivo fue convertir el pensamiento en habla rítmica. Esto ofrecía lo que era automáticamente repetible, el elemento monótono de una cadencia recurrente creada por correspondencias entre los valores puramente acústicos del lenguaje pronunciado, sin tener en cuenta el significado. Así, unos enunciados variables se podían entretejer en unas estructuras de sonido idénticas, para construir un sistema especial de lenguaje que no sólo era repetible sino que se podía recordar para su uso ulterior, y que podía tentar la memoria a pasar de un enunciado particular a otro diferente que, sin embargo, parecía familiar a causa de la semejanza acústica.
Así tuvo lugar el nacimiento de lo que llamamos poesía, una actuación que ahora, bajo el dominio de la escritura, ha quedado relegada a la condición de un pasatiempo, pero que era originalmente el instrumento funcional de almacenamiento de información cultural para uso ulterior o, dicho en lenguaje más familiar, el instrumento que servía para establecer una tradición cultural. Después de haber observado su finalidad funcional originaria, deberíamos reconocer al mismo tiempo que su finalidad recreativa es también originaria. Hay razones para pensar que el ritmo, en sus diversas modalidades (más que el «vaciar y llenar» de la fórmula platónica), es el fundamento de todos los placeres biológicos —de todos los placeres naturales, el sexo incluido— y posiblemente también de los así llamados placeres intelectuales. Sea como sea, parece que su vinculación con la música y la danza, así como la parte que tiene en las respuestas motrices del cuerpo humano, son indiscutibles. De acuerdo con ello, las sociedades orales asignaban comúnmente la responsabilidad del habla conservada a una asociación entre poesía, música y danza».

[Lukas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps just an incidental side-effect of this meticulous treatise on the origin of Greek culture and the fundamental dynamics of its oral/written property:

Havelock's book, to my mind, serves as a perfect introduction/starting point to the thought of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes and post-structuralist ideas in general. Don't get me wrong, I think that Jonathan Culler's introductory texts are fine, but Havelock explores this line of thought from a different perspective and sheds more light on it.

Havelock's special theories on Greek orality and Greek literacy illustrate several crucial points: a) what happens to a culture after its language gets alphabetized, written down? What happens to thought-processes of the members of that same culture? b) orality/literacy are always (already, to add derridean flavour) interchangeable and connected, always defining one another c) how did the swing from an oral/dynamic culture to literate/static one create the conditions for the creation not only of literature, philosophy and logic but also the psychological concepts of selfhood.

Highly recommended, esp. if read in sequence with: of grammatology (derrida), thousand plateaus (deleuze and guattari), order of things (foucault), the differend (lyotard)

[Steve Chisnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Havelock is not without his detractors, this last major (though brief) work from 1986 has been so often cited in my other readings and research that it seems a mistake to ignore him.

No need here to re-summarize the text: instead, Havelock's arguments are presented with a clear argument and careful articulation of what notions brought him there. What struck me as most significant are the centuries of overlap likely between oral and written cultures, the tension likely between the applications of the early written word (see Plato's arguments against poetry and the reasons Socrates was tried, also espoused at greater length by Havelock in other works), and the necessary philosophical and cognitive (thus cultural) shifts which were inevitable.

Newer writers are working on these arguments now for a looming shift from the printed to digital word. We are likely in the beginnings of another shift similar to what Havelock describes here. Best to understand its potential.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting reexamination of William Ong's work on orality and literacy, not quite as sublimely written or as cohesive. What's remarkable here is the suggestion that the interstitial period between literacy and pure orality, that unpure era of several centuries in which a hybrid culture existed is that golden era of classical culture the West aspires to, not the post-Platonic in which the philosopher of reason deplored "verse" and poetics. Also suggestions of how orality was reintroduced into discourse in the advent of radio technology, and how this also lead to the re-ignition of pathos and kairos as dominant rhetorical appeals, setting the stage for Hitler and Mussolini. Again, an interesting read for the more hardcore, but only as an answer to Ong's work.

[Davide Di Tullio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Havelock si conferma un autore irrinunciabile nell'ambito dello studio della mondo greco. In questo ultimo saggio del 1986 corona una tesi che aveva già portato avanti in alcuni saggi precedenti, approfondendo l'aspetto del rapporto tra oralità e scrittura. Un viaggio affascinante, che ci induce a porre molte domande su un mondo sfuggente come quello del linguaggio orale e del suo rapporto con il pensiero e la sua evolzione. Eppure gli unici strumenti a disposizione sono quelli del linguaggio alfabetico. Si può analizzare il linguiaggio pre-alfabetico con categorie linguistiche aristoteliche, che nulla hanno a che fare con quel mondo? La domanda è lecita e malgrado gli evidenti limiti è l'unica strada percorribile.

[Reading with Sophia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sorprendida de todos los autores que fue entrelazando en su escritura y como fue formando y cambiando mis ideas respecto del valor de la oralidad y la escritura y como ambos se siguen relacionando hasta nuestros días

[Brandon Sitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is mostly a summary of Havelock's earlier stuff, and for that reason it is less essential, but he is also insightful & always interesting.

[Raymonds009 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book totally blew me away. Even though this is my area I have been away so long that I did not have an inkling of this inspiring and challenging look at the way that orality and literature interacted in the latest classical discussion. This should at least be on the reading list as a complimentary study for all English students as well as classical ones. Perhaps I am the only one who was not acquainted with this latest juggernaut into the world of classical students. If you are unaware like I was you really should do yourself a favor and delve in.

[Lette Hass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es una pequeña muestra del trabajo de E. A. Havelock, sobre oralidad y procesos de transición hacia la escritura. Más aún resulta impresionante el pequeño capítulo dedicado a la "Radio y el redescubrimiento de la Retórica"

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing material. Chaps 8,9 & 10 on the development of literacy in Greek oral culture.

[Maja · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was left feeling 'meh'. I expected much more from this.