Much ground traversed through discussion today. Among the points of importance was the note to watch out for clutter in our memory theatres--systematizing is necessary for the sake of precious memory space. House-keeping is essential, and when we note the associations that vast memory systems had with the sacred, it is surpisingly fitting to find that the closing passage of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible using a house as a metaphor for the human body and soul.

The notion of flyting(insulting in a very entertaining) is found to origins from the oral tradition(really colorful insults would possibly become incongruos if one tried to write them down) and continues on through the centuries, from Shakespeare(we used an example from King Lear of all plays) to Mickey-and-Judy MGM musicals to Abbot and Costello(and a host of other comedy pairs descending from the archetypal pairing of a 'straight man' and trickster) to rap contests. It all is about dissing.

The importance of the olefactory senses in unlocking the gateways to memory was brought up. This is something that is central to the construction of Marcel Proust's wopping novel In Search of Lost Time (also known as Remembrance of Things Past which is a blatant lifitng off of a line from Shakespeare's sonnet 130).

The use of a rhetorical style known as parataxis(stringing things together, linking them with "and") is a residual thing from oral culture as well. Which is way it can be seen as unsophisticated and simpleminded. But on the other hand this is how Hemingway wrote and he won the Nobel prize. So let us not be hasty in our judgements.