6620-week iii-why do people create records

8/6/2019 6620-Week III-Why Do People Create Records

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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?