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Literacy & Orality in Ancient Greece
Rosalind Thomas
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BA Classics (Oxford)
PhD Ancient History (University College London)
Professor of Greek History (University of London)
Research interests include literacy & orality, Greekhistoriography, Greek law, Greek politics & society
Author of three books
Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens
Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art ofPersuasion
Who is Rosalind Thomas?
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What is Literacy?
What is Orality?
Definition of Illiterate today as compared toAncient Greece?
Most make the assumption that Greece wasmodern in how we define the word
Literature was meant to be spoken aloud or sung
Written documents not even legal proof until muchlater
Literate vs Illiterate
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Today, literacy is equated with civilization
Writing produced democracy, rational thought,
philosophy and historiography
Literacy produces change in society
Did it in Greece? How?
More or less than you would expect?
Writing reacts or interacts with oral communicationin a variety of ways.
Written items have a better chance at survival
Literacy and Orality
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The Iliad and the Odyssey
Parry-Lord Thesis
The product of a long tradition rather than the creationof one poetic genius
Composed in performance
Influenced by the audience
Problem: Speech by Achilles in the Iliad Forced, awkward, not as rich
Why not changed???
Oral Poetry
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Came to the Greek World (8th Century)
Used for graffiti, dedications, marked ownership
How does the author define graffiti???
Ensured Immortality through Permanence
By 6th Century, prose literature composed separatelyfrom verse
Written laws (notice added religious or magicalproperties as linkage to the gods increased politicalauthority)
Coming of the Alphabet
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It is difficult if not impossible to make hard and fastdistinctions between what is oral and what is
written except in the most literal sense Do you agree?
Why or why not?
Key Argument of the
author
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Visual Effect non literate of writing for sacred or
symbolic purposes
Public Curses Public Memorials
Wide variety of writing materials Pottery, Papyrus, Leather, Lead, Bronze, Gold,
Stone, Marble, Wooded Tablets, etc.
Oral modes DID NOT CEASE with thecoming of writing
As documents increased, so did archivesto store them
Beyond the Rationalist View
of Writing
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Hard to say when early poets began to write down their
works? Or how far they improvised in performance?
Oral traditions are extremely unstable unless there arespecific, formal or ritual mechanisms to preserve themaccurately
Literature was recited or performed with music and evendancing
Written text may be final record made only after carefulcomposition in the poets head
Appearance of improvisation and spontaneity
Orality, Performance &
Memorial
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Ancient Sparta Almost no state records at all
Officials wrote letters & dispatches Kings kept records of oracles
Copies of certain treasures erectedon stone
Only one classical document has beenfound in Sparta5th century treaty
Tombstones generally forbidden
No written records of judgmentsappear to be produced
Literacy & the State
Not the RealSparta
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Classical Athens
Lies at other extreme
Extravagant erection of stone inscriptions
Surviving decrees of the 5th century number 229
Decrees, laws, accounts of treasures, calendars, treatiesall written down or carved in stone
Production of written documents increase greatly in4th century
Still would be unfair to call it an archive mentality
Literacy & the State
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Dominated by Books & Documents
Copies of Speeches by Orators were put in
Circulation Improvisation Not Given the Same Sort of Attention
Writing Used for Teaching
Laws Freely Available to Leaders (Senators & Elite)
Records were Shared between Buildings, Groupsand Individuals
Roman World Closer to our Own than the Greeks (atleast from a written standpoint)
The Roman World
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The Written World did not just suddenly pop intoexistence from the Oral World
A careful progression or as Thomas puts it, abalance of the two
Complimented one another (which would leadeventually to the written becoming more and more
important)Does Thomas arguments ring true??? What are the
holes in her logic???
Conclusions
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How does the role of orality in ancient Greece compare to
the role in orality in modern America?
Do video and audio recordings constitute orality? Orsince they do not change and evolveare they a form ofliteracy?
What is modern-day orality and how do we keep recordsof it? How does this affect us as archivists?
What was the role of archives in ancient Greece? Whatwould happen if modern archivists took on the Greekapproach?
Why do we create records?
Questions?