53 pages • 1 hour read
Walter J. OngOrality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6: “Oral Memory, the Story Line and Characterization”
Chapter 6, Section 1 Summary: “The Primacy of the Story Line”
Many genres of verbal art show indications of the gradual shift from orality to literacy, none more strikingly than the artform of the narrative, Ong claims. Narrative provides an account of events embedded in the flow of time and is the most important and fundamental verbal art form. It factors in to almost all other verbal arts and reflects many influences including and beyond the orality-literacy dynamics of a culture.
Chapter 6, Section 2 Summary: “Narrative and Oral Cultures”
Oral cultures cannot preserve knowledge in an abstract or isolated way as literate cultures are capable of doing in writing. In such oral cultures, narrative is imbued with the important function of bonding thought and knowledge into a durable, memorable form. Much knowledge can be stored in the substantial and lengthy bodies of lore that oral cultures are capable of generating and sustaining.
Chapter 6, Section 3 Summary: “Oral Memory and the Story Line”
Prior studies of the history of the narrative in Western culture show a striking distinction between the characteristics of narratives in oral and literate cultures. Oral mnemonic structures influence oral narratives and produce stories that are structured very differently to the standard linear climactic plot that literate audiences would be familiar with. Oral narratives are episodic and decidedly not chronological, often starting in media res and making use of flashbacks and tangents to provide context to the action. This is the most natural way of relating long stories without the organizational crutch of writing. The epic poet was not listing information and would never have heard the ‘storyline’ of an epic told chronologically as a linear narrative. Instead the recitation is a conversation between performer and audience, organized around memorable themes, scenes, and formulas.
Chapter 6, Section 4 Summary: “Closure of Plot: Travelogue to Detective Story”
Literacy allows for greater conscious control over the elements of storytelling than was possible for an oral poet, as well as the ability to plan, edit, and revise in solitude. Narratives in literate cultures therefore tend toward more precise and selective structuring, favoring climactic plot structures, such as the Freytag pyramid, over episodic narratives as seen in oral cultures. Detective stories are the pinnacle of this densely formatted pyramid structure plotline, which provides both catharsis and closure. Written narratives also feature more internal conflict and introspection than oral narratives, which are primarily action-based.
Chapter 6, Section 5 Summary: “The ‘Round’ Character, Writing and Print”
A rounded character is seen as the hallmark of effective characterization by a literate reader. Realistic characters such as the everyman or antihero are ascribed complex motivations, undergo growth, and often face internal conflict. Such characters are the product of literacy and contrast the heavy type-characters that were used in oral narratives to carry the storyline and manage non-narrative elements. According to Ong, flat type-characters did persist in narratives well past the introduction of literacy. Such characters representing Christian vices and virtues were common in medieval morality plays, and to this day hollow type characters proliferate in genre fiction and other simpler narrative forms. Greek tragedies held the first examples of well-rounded characters in Western literature, and this was because these dramas were composed in writing. Ong notes that literacy is important for interiorization and that the history of Christianity and Christian traditions in Europe is marked by the influence of writing and print on believers. The increased interiorization and psychological complexity of characters in modern narrative forms such as the novel is likely also linked with advances in psychology and psychoanalysis.
Chapter 6 Analysis
In this chapter, Ong details how the orality-literacy shift affects the verbal artform of the narrative. As he intimates, the narrative is a key reflection of its home culture as well as an important influence on the development of that culture. By mapping the successive developments to the narrative in Western culture and linking these changes to concurrent shifts toward a greater internalization of literacy, Ong provides detailed insight into The Impact of Communication Technologies on Human Interaction and Cultural Development.
Ong spent many decades studying and teaching English literature. His expertise in the topic serves him well in mapping the pertinent developments to the form, focus, and content of narratives along a lengthy timeframe. His account is expertly formed and convincingly argued, but for the fact that Ong only discusses trends and developments within Western literary traditions. Other cultures have equally complex and well-studied literary traditions that are very different to those of European and American literature. Whether or not such trajectories also reinforce Ong’s conclusions on the subject of orality remains a question, as Ong does not pay any mind to the diversity of global literary traditions.
Ong’s bias toward Western traditions is not merely a concern about parochialism or a lack of diversity but also raises questions about the efficacy of his claims. A standard question in the fields of the social sciences is about whether discernible correlations—like the ones Ong traces between oral and literate cultures—constitute essential or universal relations or if they are merely correlated as a matter of circumstance or coincidence. A common way to address this question is to examine different contexts to see if the same connections hold elsewhere (thereby lending credence to the essential or universal nature of the connection). Hence, the limited purview of Ong’s study leaves open questions about whether his claims about the nature of oral versus literate cultures are essential characteristics of these cultures or if they are merely true as a matter of circumstance. By examining oral and literate cultures in parts of the world beyond the West, Ong could corroborate his claim that he’s outlining the essential features of oral and literate cultures. Without this additional analysis, the broad scope of Ong’s claims remains questionable.
