Early Writing and Development

Early Writing

•The first writing: Mesopotamia c. 3500 BCE

•Pictographs

•Development of an alphabet

Transition From an Oral Culture to a Literate One

“More than any other single invention writing has transformed human consciousness.”

-Walter J. Ong

A naperon……….an apron

an ekename……..a nickname

Change in the way language evolves

• Fundamental change in human thought and consciousness

• Knowledge of an object in a literary sense changes how we think of that object

• Writing is intimately connected with speech for the literate individual

• Change in fluidity of texts

Authority of documents

Writing gains respect and meaning

Document as Art

• Making illuminated manuscripts

• Text as secondary

• Visual design and purpose

Document as a Symbol

• Objects symbolized transfer

• Document or seal supersede the object

• Small change in acceptance

• Large change in substance

Voice of the Document

“Fundamentally letters are shapes indicating voices. Hence they represent

things which they bring to mind through the windows of the eyes.

Frequently the speak voicelessly the utterances of the absent.”

John of Salisbury, Metalogicon

Voice of the Document

• Witness heard and saw donor

• Letters indicate voices

• Reading substitute for seeing

• Last longer than living memory

Memory vs. Text

• Truth established by statement

• Too far in past, oldest men asked

• Truth simple and personal

• Laws lasted as long a memory

Social Cultureand

Technology

Social Culture

• In a literate culture, we lose the interaction that the oral culture used to provide. Whereas the oral culture could be experienced one-on-one or with a group, a literate culture is limited in that its mostly a personal and individual experience.

• Censorship: Literature can be banned and destroyed. Oral culture is experienced at the moment and after the interaction is exchanged, its impossible to be censored.

• Social class: Literacy was a mark of the wealthy and level of education

Technology

• Secondary Orality: Termed by Walter Ong. Expresses the shift and morphing of oral and literate culture as modern technology begins to play a larger role in the current culture through several different medias.

• Secondary orality does not fall neatly into either of the traditional and classic definitions of oral or literate culture but rather, is made distinctly possible through the ever-evolving technology.

Examples

• Internet: Instant messaging, emails, youtube

• Phones: text messaging, long distance calls

• Television:

• Oral culture → Literate culture → Oral culture (?)

Questions to Consider

• What is (or will be) the impact of the continually developing technology?

• What effect is it having on our literate culture?

• Is oral culture making a comeback as the dominant culture?

• Will books ever make a permanent exit?

Want An Example?

BEOWULF!!!

Beowulf as an Example of loses in Literate Culture

• Beowulf was written in an unrhymed four-beat alliterative meter of Old English Poetry

• “Beowulf was composed to be heard aloud, probably recited by a bard before a company of men.”

• This being so, reading the poem instead of listening to it causes us to lose some meaning as well as its rhythm, diction, and sound texture.

Beowulf as an example of gains in a Literate Culture

• We have gained preservation of ideas through text, the sharing of ideas.

• Gain more by HAVING a text version of Beowulf

• We gain as a literate culture, history, language, and the free flow of ideas

Wrapping it Up

• Through Beowulf we lose: the original text and form it was meant to be presented in

• Through Beowulf we gain: actually getting to read and understand Beowulf and know of its existence.

Evolution of The Westernized Latin Alphabet:

And eventually… Graffiti

From- Calligraphy

To- Graphology & Palaeography

Brief history of Written English

• Latin based scripts: 2 categories

– Formal: Instrument of authority– Informal: Cursive or quickly written scripts

for everyday use. (*historically, formal scripts degenerated into cursive forms which in turn, over the passing of time, achieved formal status in their own right.)

Definition of Style

• A “script” is a system of handwritten characters, the main body of which compose what we think of now as fonts. ‘National scripts’ became a predominant form of distinguishing letter forms and shape as well as method of production. (i.e. Merovingian-influence from France, and the Visigothic-influence from Spain most notably. In fact the gothic influence was the first script to incorporate upper and lower case letter forms, based on the Greek system of unicals developed for and used by the early Christian church.

• A “hand” is the individualized characteristics that each person’s form of handwriting naturally entails. (i.e. level of skill/training, type of material being written, etc.)

Aesthetics influence GrammarForm follows suit

• Early Gothic scripts were the first to employ upper and lower case letters in the same sentence; used to denote a proper noun or start a sentence, the aesthetic choice influenced our later grammatical rules and also lead to the prosperity of the golden age of calligraphy; the art of writing.

• Versals and Cadels: Gothic capitals lead to the development of highly ornate decoration on capital letters, ranging from simple larger than normal bold letters, called versals, to the intensely elaborate, sometimes whole page paintings adorned with gold leaf, called versals.

• Modern aesthetics considered, Graffiti may be thought of as the continuation of man’s interest in penmanship and the inherent relatable

quality found in reading what someone has written by hand.

What we’ve gained and lost…

Some books to check out…Orality and Literacy

by Walter J. OngFrom Memory to Written Record: England from 1066 to 1307

by M. T. ClanchyThe Literacy of the Laity in the Middle Ages

by James W. Thompson