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An Ong Reader: Challanges for Further Inquiry
This collection puts together the writings of Walter Ong, a scholar who has offered his own observations about voice, orality, speech, literacy, communication and culture. For those new to Ong, the range and accessibility will serve as a suberb introduction to Ong's body of work. Those already familiar with Ong's major publications will find much in this text to supplement and enrich their understanding and direct their future reading.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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August 15, 2023
Become an "Ong reader!" - As the general book description explains, this "Ong Reader" compiles articles ranging throughout Walter Ong's career. Farrell and Soukup have done a fine job in introducing and selecting representative and revealing pieces that further illuminate the eminent orality and literacy scholar's work.
While there is much gem mining to be done in this collection, some of this reviewer's favorites are among the following.
The "Review of the Interior Landscape," a collection of McLuhan articles of literary criticism, helps situate Ong's work as well as McLuhan's. Ong's references and background on McLuhan's preoccupation with the trivium of classical learning---rhetoric, grammar, and dialectic, apply to him as much as his early mentor. The Review gives the context of their early time at St Louis University in the 1940's for McLuhan as an assistant professor with collague Bernard Muller-Thym (who later became a management consultant) and student Ong who were all affected by similar influences. (See my review of Gordon's McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides for the Perplexed) .)
One piece called "Ramus, Rhetoric and the Pre-Newtonian Mind (1954)" discusses the motivations in the 16th century to make rhetoric and dialectic "easy to explain for youth." This article describes the diagrams Ramus devised as providing "ideas to be opened like baskets" and "glued together in judgments:" it also observes the emphasis on "crude spatial analogies" and a "passion for charts." Another piece entitled "Ramus and the Transition to the Modern Mind (1955)" examines the related "divorce of dialectic from rhetoric." It relates the "yearning for simplicity," the "drive toward the spatial, visual components of cognition" and the resulting dialectical dominance underlying Descartes, Newton and others shaping our world who followed. (See my reviews of Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason and Perry Miller's the The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century .)
Finally, in the later part of the book, there are more recent papers included such as "Information and / or Communication Interactions (1996)." This article stresses that with all our electronic media and information available we are in an "information age" versus a "communication age." It goes on to explain the ways that rhetoric (human speech and communication) as well as hermeneutics (or interpretation like classical grammar) have become critical once again to make sense of our current experience. (See my reviews of Genosko's Remodelling Communication: From WWII to the WWW (Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication) and Ong's Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Word and Digitization ).
Pick up a copy of this fascinating collection of Ong's articles and become an "Ong Reader."
While there is much gem mining to be done in this collection, some of this reviewer's favorites are among the following.
The "Review of the Interior Landscape," a collection of McLuhan articles of literary criticism, helps situate Ong's work as well as McLuhan's. Ong's references and background on McLuhan's preoccupation with the trivium of classical learning---rhetoric, grammar, and dialectic, apply to him as much as his early mentor. The Review gives the context of their early time at St Louis University in the 1940's for McLuhan as an assistant professor with collague Bernard Muller-Thym (who later became a management consultant) and student Ong who were all affected by similar influences. (See my review of Gordon's McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides for the Perplexed) .)
One piece called "Ramus, Rhetoric and the Pre-Newtonian Mind (1954)" discusses the motivations in the 16th century to make rhetoric and dialectic "easy to explain for youth." This article describes the diagrams Ramus devised as providing "ideas to be opened like baskets" and "glued together in judgments:" it also observes the emphasis on "crude spatial analogies" and a "passion for charts." Another piece entitled "Ramus and the Transition to the Modern Mind (1955)" examines the related "divorce of dialectic from rhetoric." It relates the "yearning for simplicity," the "drive toward the spatial, visual components of cognition" and the resulting dialectical dominance underlying Descartes, Newton and others shaping our world who followed. (See my reviews of Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason and Perry Miller's the The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century .)
Finally, in the later part of the book, there are more recent papers included such as "Information and / or Communication Interactions (1996)." This article stresses that with all our electronic media and information available we are in an "information age" versus a "communication age." It goes on to explain the ways that rhetoric (human speech and communication) as well as hermeneutics (or interpretation like classical grammar) have become critical once again to make sense of our current experience. (See my reviews of Genosko's Remodelling Communication: From WWII to the WWW (Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication) and Ong's Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Word and Digitization ).
Pick up a copy of this fascinating collection of Ong's articles and become an "Ong Reader."
Displaying 1 of 1 review