I handed in my finished term paper this morning, which is also the last day which we can post blog entries before the grading begins. So, having arrived at the end of the line in regards to this class on oral traditions, what do I know now that I didn't know before taking the class?

For one, that Francis Yates makes for dense reading, but contains very evocative pictures in the book in addition to evocative theories. But I've also come to see that the oral tradition, while in the past, still influences the present(as the past seems apt to do; the reason for this is memory). It seems that most everything to some extant or another is interconnected with everything else, which is what the ancient myths understood and articulated very plainly, and which the literate culture would do well to remember.

So what were the chances of my figuring this out? One in three, of course.

Today was the first day of the individual presentations of our term papers. Those that went were Gerad of the Open Plain, Sutter the Sacker of Cities, Kelsey of the Late Rent, Keen Kenning Ben, Brandon, Zazen Zach, Quick-wit Nick, and Crazy Coffee Carly. All of them offered piquant topics, though I was interested to see that there were seemed to be a trope of music running through this batch. This probably is a comment in and of itself on the importance of music within the oral tradition and beyond.

It was also mentioned that for the final exam, we will need to be familar with what Yates has to say about Robert Fludd(who hypothesied that Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was actually constructed as a memory theatre), and Chapter 7 in Ong, which relates heavily to literary criticism.

Groups 2 and 1 gave their presentations today. Group 2, on the Kane chapter 'Boundaries' was very impressive; detailed and informative and humorous, which always helps. The principal idea to be gleaned from it however, is that in mythology boundaries are crossed but can only be done temporarily, and one returns to the 'real' world having benifitted enormously from what they have learned in the other world. You see this motif frequently in children's literature(hence the references to a rabbit-hole and a great glass elevator, and Oz).

Group 1, 'Maps", my group, set out to accomplish the mapping of landscape locations without tangible types of maps which one would find in a literate context. Hence, a story out of stories was formed. How successful or entertaining it was in this endeavor I will leave to other commentators to surmise.

Today was the day that always comes before a test, the day on which the test questions are prepared. I will rattle them off down below, although not in a terribly oranized order.

Nietzche says "we are all walking dictionaries"
Lull: motion, no images, non-corporeal, ladder, tree
The triangle is to the boxes as the literate is to the oral
mis en abyme translates to "into the abyss"
Reformation happened because of the printing press
The mandala relates to FW because its a squared circle
Democratic through alphabet?
Ong, page 142, quoting Rilke "song is existence"
Page 224 of Yates--description of Bruno
Solomon's 7 pillars of wisdom built into memory theatre by Camillo
Alphabet invented how many times? Once!
Triangle reached peak at the detective story
Ty and Robert both used their bodies as memory theatres
Yates: connection between Lull and kabala
Hypertext(layered language) used by Joyce and cyber space
Hebrew alphabet has no vowels
Yates pg. 203-- Bruno rushes out of the convent
George Herbert's Easterwings
Ong pg. 126-- Tristram Shandy portrays silence with blank space.


I'm thinking that's most everything. We'll see when the test time comes.

We now know that our group presentations are the week of April 13-17, and that we go in reverse alphabetical order for our individual presentations, which will take two forms: the oral form in which we speak of our topic in a demonstrative way and the print form which will adhere at least in part to the restrictions of grammer nazis(which Christine of the Laughing Rats admits to being). Grammer nazis do have a foothold in the literary tradition, since as Ong points out on page 128, print reinforces an urge for "correctness" of language.

But even within the literary tradition, correctness of language usage and organization doesn't necessarily win out all the time. Finnegans Wake is a whopping example of why, as is Tristram Shandy(from which we get the phrase 'cock-and-bull' story) in a slightly different vein.

And then there was discussion of Bruno's insanely complicated and vast memory system, which as Yates says on page 124, would require if not yield, the memory of a magus with divine powers. This is really the assertion that Bruno's memory system carried; that human beings don't reicieve messages from the Divine, they in fact become or are Divine. Which was considered heresy and resulted in Bruno being burned at the stake. There is apparently an interesting children's fantasy inspired by Bruno's memory system called Little Big by John Crowley. Yet another thing I'll have to read.

Something that will be of note for us to know: chapter six is the most important chapter in Ong, and the one which will be most important for the next exam. The contents of chapter six in Ong is the shaping of narrative.

He discusses, on pg. 144-145 Freytag's triangle, as contrasted with boxes within boxes. The former, which is a product and crux of the literary tradition, has a precise dramatic unity with a beginning, crisis and denoument. The latter is oral tradition influenced and has layers and layers of story and story details going on. As such, the boxes-within-boxes stories tend to sprawl on and on and seemingly go on forever. But, I've gotta say that I was heartened to hear this in class today, for its something I've felt for quite some time: lengthy novels give us something short stories can't. I know, the reverse goes for short stories as well. But the depths to which Les Miserables and Don Quixote can carry us!

It has been suggested that Sutter has to add the beginnings of The Crying of Lot 49 and Tristram Shandy to his memory theatre.

And, I now think I ought to read David Malouf's An Imaginary Life.

Sutter started us off with introducing a piquant little book entitled The Little Black Book of Colors. Which is completely black and yet still contains all the colors of the rainbow, predominately through its Braille text. This was offered up as an example of synaesthesia, or the melding together of senses--so, you read colors, or taste sounds or hear smells. Intriguingly enough, Vladimir Nabokov was a synaesthete.

We then proceeded into a discussion of how oral culture, in its treatment of stories, tends toward being open-ended and ongoing as opposed to providing closure. Schaherzade(sp?) in The Arabian Nights is the paradigmatic instance of this--the story had to go on for her life to go on--. And I've gotta say, it wouldn't have occured to me to consider day-time soap operas as related to instances of open-ended secondary orality but it turns out that they are. And I'm suddenly reminded of a really great line from Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn which relates so well to this: "There are no happy endings, because nothing ever ends."

We then ended up taking once again about Finnegans Wake and how, within it, we have the presentation of language almost as it was when babies make it--it makes no sense, it just exists for the mere sake of existing--, and the moving along of this to the application of sounds toward the names of things which one finds in the world, such as the one-hundred letter word attempting to be an onomatopeia of the sound of rolling thunder. Woweeeeee.

* the three members of Group 1 who were not present today in class were Checkmark Parker, Sweet Smiling Melissa and Brian the Eldest.