Orality and Literacy: Reflections across Disciplines

by Keith Thor Carlson (Editor), Kristina Fagan (Editor), Natalia Khanenko-Friesen (Editor)

Overview

Orality and Literacy investigates the interactions of the oral and the literate through close studies of particular cultures at specific historical moments. Rejecting the 'great-divide' theory of orality and literacy as separate and opposite to one another, the contributors posit that whatever meanings the two concepts have are products of their ever-changing relationships to one another.

Through topics as diverse as Aboriginal Canadian societies, Ukrainian-Canadian narratives, and communities in ancient Greece, Medieval Europe, and twentieth-century Asia, these cross-disciplinary essays reveal the powerful ways in which cultural assumptions, such as those about truth, disclosure, performance, privacy, and ethics, can affect a society's uses of and approaches to both the written and the oral. The fresh perspectives in Orality and Literacy reinvigorate the subject, illuminating complex interrelationships rather than relying on universal generalizations about how literacy and orality function.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487527686
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	10/13/2020
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Keith Thor Carlson is a professor of History at the University of the Fraser Valley where he holds a Tier One Canada Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-Engaged History.
Kristina Fagan is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan.
Natalia Khanenko-Friesen is the director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Map of Selected Place Names

Introduction: Reading and Listening at Batoche
Keith Thor Carlson, Kristina Fagan, and Natalia Khanenko-Friesen

Part One: Questioning Truths

1. Boasting, Toasting, and Truthtelling
J. Edward Chamberlin

2. Orality about Literacy: The "Black and White" of Salish History Keith Thor Carlson

Part Two: Writing it Down

3. The Philosopher's Art: Ring Composition and Classification in Plato's Sophist and Hipparchus
Twyla Gibson

4. The Social Lives of Sedna and Sky Woman: The Textualization of Stories from Inuit and Mohawk Oral Traditions
Susan Gingell

Part Three: Going Public

5. "Private Stories" in Aboriginal Literature
Kristina Fagan

6. From Family Lore to a People's History: Ukrainian Claims to the Canadian Prairies
Natalia Khanenko-Friesen

Part Four: Subverting Authority

7. Literacy, Orality, Authority, and Hypocrisy
Gary Arbuckle

8. Unstable Texts and Modal Approaches to the Written Word in Medieval European Ritual Magic
Frank Klaassen

Part Five: Uncovering Voices

9. A Tagalog Awit of the "Holy War" against the United States, 1899-1902
Reynaldo Illeto

10. Telling the Untold: Representations of Ethnic and Regional Identities in Ukrainian Women's Autobiographies
Oksana Kis

Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Julie Cruikshank

"Drawing closely on contemporary oral traditions, archival documents, and orally narrated life stories, Orality and Literacy not only emphasizes the contact zones in which oral and written forms co-exist, but also the slippery, dynamic tension that changes their relationship. This thought-provoking book will appeal to students and scholars thinking about similar intersections in their work."

Editorial Reviews

"Drawing closely on contemporary oral traditions, archival documents, and orally narrated life stories, Orality and Literacy not only emphasizes the contact zones in which oral and written forms co-exist, but also the slippery, dynamic tension that changes their relationship. This thought-provoking book will appeal to students and scholars thinking about similar intersections in their work."

—Julie Cruikshank, Professor Emerita, University of British Columbia

From the Publisher