Orality and Literacy: Reflections across Disciplines
© 2011
Orality and Literacy investigates the interactions of the oral and the literate through close studies of particular cultures at specific historical moments. Rejecting the 'great-divide' theory of orality and literacy as separate and opposite to one another, the contributors posit that whatever meanings the two concepts have are products of their ever-changing relationships to one another.
Through topics as diverse as Aboriginal Canadian societies, Ukrainian-Canadian narratives, and communities in ancient Greece, Medieval Europe, and twentieth-century Asia, these cross-disciplinary essays reveal the powerful ways in which cultural assumptions, such as those about truth, disclosure, performance, privacy, and ethics, can affect a society's uses of and approaches to both the written and the oral. The fresh perspectives in Orality and Literacy reinvigorate the subject, illuminating complex interrelationships rather than relying on universal generalizations about how literacy and orality function.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 344 pages
- Dimensions: 6.0in x 0.0in x 9.0in
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Reviews
"Drawing closely on contemporary oral traditions, archival documents, and orally narrated life stories, Orality and Literacy not only emphasizes the contact zones in which oral and written forms co-exist, but also the slippery, dynamic tension that changes their relationship. This thought-provoking book will appeal to students and scholars thinking about similar intersections in their work."
Julie Cruikshank, Professor Emerita, University of British Columbia -
Author Information
Keith Thor Carlson is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan.
Kristina Fagan is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan.
Natalia Khanenko-Friesen is an associate professor of cultural anthropology and the head of the Department of Religion and Culture at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan. -
Table of contents
Introduction Keith Thor Carlson, Kristina Fagan and Natalia Shostak
Boasting, Toasting and Truthtelling J. Edward Chamberlin
Orality About Literacy: The 'Black and White' of Salish History Keith Thor Carlson
The Philosopher's Art: Ring Composition and Classification in Plato's Sophist and Hipparchus Twyla Gibson
The Social Lives of Sedna and Sky Woman: The Textualization of Stories from Inuit and Kanien'kahake/Mohawk Oral Traditions Susan Gingell
From Family Lore to a People's History: The Role of Oral Culture in Ukrainian Claims to the Canadian Prairies Natalia Khanenko-Friesen
Private Stories in Aboriginal Literature Kristina Fagan
For Their Own Good: Literacy, Orality, Authority, and Hypocrisy in the Laozi / Gary Arbuckle
Unstable Texts and Modal Approaches to the Written Word in Medieval European Ritual Magic Frank Klaassen
A Tagalog Awit of the 'Holy War' against the United States, 1899-1902 Reynaldo Illeto
Telling the Untold: Representations of Ethnic and Regional Identities in Ukrainian Women's Autobiographies Oksana Kis
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Subjects and Courses
