Ong; Second Half

In the second half of Ong’s book, there is a similar pattern that follows the rest of the book. On page 154 Ong discusses literary history. “Literary history has begun to exploit the possibilities which orality literacy studies open to it. Important studies have reported on a wide scatter of specific traditions treating either their primary oral performances or the oral elements in their literary texts (page 154). In the second half you see a shift of spoken language to texts and manuscripts. In the first half Ong discusses speech and language now that has moved to literature and the history of that.

I personally loved the portion where Ong went over the history of literature. Written language is something that has been created and evolved many times. Starting with medieval literature there has been many writers at that time that read their work out loud which built rhetorical style. Since Medieval times I can imagine that stories are told and passed down orally then eventually written by someone who has the skills to record it which is why some stories still live today such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

“Over the centuries, the shift from orality through writing and print to electronic processing of the word has profoundly affected and, indeed, basically determined the evolution of verbal art genres, and of course simultaneously the successive modes of characterization and of plot” (page 155). I chose this quote because I think there are many different ways of understanding it. You see a shift from orality to writing, and even this shift takes so many centuries. Then when writing was invented there was the ability to make copies of a writing which also took a long while. Currently, we have the ability to make copies on command and through technology. Language turned to text which then turned to technology. The ability to electronically process words has strongly affected humans and the learning process and the comprehension of what is being read. The part of this quote that I was a little confused by was the “verbal art genres”. I feel like this could mean different things. Art itself can be applied to many things: painting, décor, architecture, literature, etc. Genres are characterized by similarities in form, style or subject matter so genres were created as a way to classify the type of art. Verbal is something spoken. When taken apart I understand it, but putting verbal art genres together confuses me. Unless they were talking about how reading a story out loud creates the successful story telling of characterization and plot. What is also interesting is that before there were stories there were songs. In every religion there are songs sung for a purpose. Ong says “the oral song is the result of interaction between the singer, the present audience, and the singer’s memories of songs sung” (page 154). This is true in all cases.