4/21 & 4/26 & 4/28 Individual Paper Presentations

Individual Paper Presentations took two and a half class periods to run through; but, as usual, the insights into other students' interests was worth all the time that it took. Thanks for all your heard work Oral Trads spring 2005! These will not all be in complete grammatical sentences...sorry for you grammar goddesses out there.

Tracy-Oral and literate cultures in Tolkien. Ents are the only truly oral group in the books and they cannot forget anything. Men of Rohan are talked about as being oral but the king learned how to read and so they are tainted. Elves and Dwarves have many oral traditions but they write everything down. Dwarves write everything down because they tend to die before they can deliver messages. People of Gondor (Gondorians) are being killed by writing. Printing Press of middle earth developed by the bad guys.

Faith-Noah's Ark story on tape. Book on tape gives life to a story through verbalization. Enhancing memory through listening to people talking. Seeing less effective than hearing for a lot of people. Books on tape are more oral, but the story is recorded and played back with the same words each time.

Heather-Inspired by movie "Waking Life" which puts forth the idea that words are symbols and they are dead. Saussure says emotions cannot be expressive enough or make the same meaning for each person. No words are adequate to describe love for example. Feeling is understanding and writing is only a dead representation and will never be good enough. However, it is through the development of a literate culture that we are able to get closer to an adequate description/representation of emotion. Songs are the best example of this.

Jeramiah-Wrote the "Complete Idiot's Guide to Oral Traditions". Discussed the stories of Joel Chandler Harris (Brier Rabbit and Brier Fox) because the stories look like they were written with Ong's nine characteristics of orality in mind. Importance of the "flat character" emphasized.

Nikole-One must think memorable thoughts. With writing we have lost the oral storyteller and lost many feats of memory but with writing also came an enhanced ability to create. Biggest sin, even within the writing culture, remains forgetting.

Stacy-Writing restructures consciousness. Writing increases efficiency but carries with it less emotion than face-to-face contact. Discussed the imperialistic nature of the movement from orality to literacy citing Alexander's conquests.

Kristi-Just returned from a primarily oral culture in Guinea. Had to learn the local language by immersion--Pular language. No standardization and no alphabet. They are trying to apply Pular to the Roman alphabet but none of the sounds quite match up to the letters. Therefore, stories being written down with the Roman alphabet do not convey full richness of the language. A man came up with an alphabet for the Milinke language in the 1940s and it's working just fine for them.

Allison-Discussed the Jabberwocky poem in Through the Looking Glass because she noticed as she was reading it how much of an oral poem it is, despite the fact that it's written down in a book. Portmanteu form of language is eminently adaptable in its creation of a distinct way of thinking about things. Humpty the Linguist has the abilitiy to have an entire conversation using just one word..."glory".

Cara-Wonders about Ong's assertion that writing can "enrich the human psyche and enhance the mind". Structure of language and writing can be taken further than orality. Thinking in terms of the "other" can be achieved in writing.

Bryan Davis-Discussed the fictionalized audience. In order to have a fictionalized audience the speaker must have an imagined sense of what he wants the audience to get out of his performance. The types of audience and the types of medium have an effect on how the speaker goes about doing this.

Josh-Discussed that in India, drumming is a lot like the oral poems of the past. There are formulas of beat that are just known and can be used/inserted into compositions.

Brian J-One cannot fully immerse in an experience without sound. Brian disagrees with this statement and cites sign language as an equally powerful alternative to sound. With sign language there is no developmental delay versus learning speech and sight is the morefully developed sense. Signing increases brain function.

Courtney-Hypertext of Finnegans Wake section. Check the project out at http://hypertextondtandgracehoper.blogspot.com. (Really awesome. I thought abot doing this but chickened out. )

Ed-Ong's memorization ideas. Oral narrators think they are saying the same story the same way but they never are. To incorporate the audience matters so verbatim recitation is not all important. Body connected to presentation. Stress on presentation not just memorization. Oral cultures remember things but they don't just spit knowledge back out right away. They ruminate on whatthey learn and then speak about it after a while.

Justin-Orality and Middle Earth. Orality is something you must have but it cannot stand alone. Gondor has lost orality and is dying. Rohan is oral with a relationship to writing as well. Writing not "bad" for Tolkien. Gandalf finds information in records. Writing as the language of the dead.

Debbie-Orality and literacy in The Tempest. Prospero moving toward literate, Caliban oral. Prospero able to keep power because of his book/learned magic. Caliban has a natural relationship with the island; his knowledge is of springs, trees, food. Like Kane's idea of oral cultures, Caliban can hear the songs that the earth is singing. (Speech about the island with Stephano and Trinculo) Prospero enslaving nature, making boundaries. Shift toward literacy creates a tension between man and nature.

Mick-Thoughts on the course and the texts. Ong was hard to nderstand as a whole, Yates was dense, Kane was awesome. Group presentations were fun. Individual presentations helped him, especially the chess one. He's a better player now. This class shows up EVERYWHERE! (It's true!)

Jeramiah-Entertains us with a half-time show, including a rendition of "Boy Named Sue"

Dustin-This one will be a little difficult to follow...Vico says we go through cylces of time/history: CHAOS (darkness)-->GODS (mnemosyne and muses)--->HEROES (Odyssey, worship of gods)-->MAN (Shakespeare)-->CHAOS (us and the Internet). Memory a decaying process. Decay leads to chaos and chaos leads to the birth of gods which mens soon we will have men becoming gods...??? maybe.

Valerie-Memory theater of Tarot cards. 4 virtues that we talk about in memory: Prudence, Temperence, Justice, and Strength, these cards are the leaders of the four card suits. Archetypal images.

Shauna-Ong and Bushisms. 9 characteristics of Ong. Close to human life world (swiss cheese), flyting of politics fits in with the agonistically toned section. Bush is an example of secondary orality.

Opai-Why we should be concerned with orality. "Practicality of oral traditions", examples of how oral traditions are used in the real world. Historical records and memory maps. Maps a transition from oral to literate.

Juliet-Power of what we see. Four short films on 9/11 were way more poweful than reading about 9/11. Modern technology makes these documentaries possible. Writing-->secondary orality of a purley visual medium. Video as our means of communication. We can all do tehse things with film.

Wayne-Borges and memory's role. Idea of a microcosm reflecting the reality of a macrocosm. (Examples, games like chess a small game of war/death. Mousetrap play in Hamlet an aesthetic interpretation of King Claudius' actions) Memory a way to bring meaning to chaos.

Cindy-Eidetic is a photographic memory. Phenomenon mostly in children between 7-12 years old. Tying in with Ong and Yates.

Stephanie-Grimm Brothers, how accurate were their transcriptions. Most stories collected from middleclass to upper-middle class women. Many liberties taken in regard to editing. Sexson says, READ Marina Warner's Annotated Grimms.

Sophie-Orality in Tolkien. Pre-chirographic and pre-typographic elements. Libraries at Isengard and in the Dwarf rooms. Power of language in Tolkien, Gandalf speech at Council makes the sky darken.

Jennifer-Explored the connection between museums and Muses. Orality is infiltrating the museum experience in that they are becoming more interactive rather than passive. Use of technology is helping this along. Changes in museums are awakening memory.

Kelly-Memory. Grandmother with Alzheimers could not remember anything short term but could remember and retell great stories in TONS of detail. Intersting parts of memory such as, studying for hours reading material over and over and not being able to remember it. Contrasted to one special dinner with one special person one time that you can remember forever.

Hannah-Connections between oral storytelling and an actor's mind. In acting there are two mind frames 1)Ability to feel the audience 2)Ability to see onese;f from the outside. Ong defines acting as secondary orality because it is generally a recitation from a script. Read Victor Turner.

Wes-Psychology of the Trickster. Native American story of Bear and Rabbit. Illusion of an oral performance.

Zac-iconography and its meaning an progression. Walkabout memory technique uses landmarks.

Samantha-Shel Silverstein. Idea of literacy striving for orality. Some writing (poetry, Wake) intended to be oral. Seeking orality through literacy once we are fully immersed in the literate world.

TEST INFO!!!!!

1)Ong Chapter 7

2)Yates Chapter 9

3)Individual and Group Presentations

4)EJOURNALS!!!!!

In closing, make things memorable.