Snowdon - 1/20/22 - Reading Aloud in the Library of Alexandria

 1/20/22


Today, I was thinking about our discussion in class, regarding how “the Library of Alexandria was probably one of the louder places in the ancient world,” due to the fact that, at that time, everybody would have read aloud. This really boggled my mind; one of those moments where I went right to my parents (a benefit of online learning) to drop that fun fact on them. It reminded me, even though it is not directly related, to some reading I did, though I can’t remember where, of a story of the first time Chinese court officials tried on a pair of glasses in the 16th century, brought there by a Portuguese emissary. The lines that I remember include one old man remarking that he could “see the small edges of things again” and “read with only the light from the window, like when I was a young man.” I suppose that this story made me think of that one due to the fact that they both seem so hard to imagine for we modern observers, but serve as clear reminders that times do change.


As laid out in class, the story about the Library of Alexandria testifies most loudly to the fact that written language really has a strong effect on the entire development of a person’s mindset towards life, and towards the concept of information, as vague as that sounds. In seeing how long that people, even after being exposed to written language for the first time, began to regularly process it internally, rather than reading it or hearing it aloud, seems to show how ingrained in our minds that method of collecting information had been, and continued to be.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Walter Ong (Assigned class reading)

 3/15  In Walter Ong's book, he talks about oral cultures and what sound means to them. The oral cultures that we have learned about from the reading and in class show that to them speech is the unifying force in their relationships and in their societies. In the reading, Ong says  "sound is a unifying  sense. " This quote really emphasizes the ability speech has in its ability to unify people.    I think it is interesting that we are able to be unified with people by our phones but also able to be separated and isolated. In the oral cultures, Ong describes it is clear that the use of speech and sound in their primarily oral cultures is an important tool and unifying force.
Read more

Blog 8 Black Robe Video

  Blog 8 Black Robe Video A good example of human-centered religions clashing against primordial nature-centered religions is cinematically depicted in the 1985 film Black Robe. The era of this film has its roots in colonialism set in present-day Canada. The plot consists of two Jesuits who are on a mission to relieve a dying priest in fever-stricken Huron settlements. They are guided by Algonquin natives who have superstitions about the presence of white Christian men. There is a lot of miscommunication, mistrust, and disagreements throughout the journey. The Algonquian had persisted for many years through passed down oral stories. Their practices and beliefs, such as the world of night and the power of dreams, clashed with their Christian counterparts, who believed water baptism through Christ was the only way to relieve suffering. Christianity was not a concept that could be understood through the natives, nor could the Christians accept and understand the natives fully. The way...
Read more

Orality and Literacy - class reading

     “In primary oral cultures, where there is no text, the narrative serves to bond thought more massively and permanently than other genres” (pg. 141). This quote from Walter Ong’s book reopened a topic of interest in my mind. I have always enjoyed reading fiction. When I was younger, I spent hours every night reading novels until I fell asleep - book in hand. I remember having some difficulties remembering what I was learning in school, but I was able to deeply summarize the stories I was reading in my free-time to my mom. Hardly a detail went unmentioned when I summarized the stories I was reading, but the information that I was learning at school that was not presented as a narrative was much more difficult to remember. I am really interested in Ong’s phrasing in this sentence. “Bond thought” is a captivating phrase. That phrase can be understood two ways, and it seems that Ong means it both ways. Narrative works to connect thoughts in each person's head, making them...
Read more