The Power of the Written Tradition

by Jack Goody

In this collection of nine essays, noted anthropologist Jack Goody explores his view of writing as a transforming technology, charting the differences between cultures with writing and those without... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560989629
• ISBN13: 9781560989622
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Essential Reading On Oral vs. Literate Culture

In a sense, this is Jack Goody's "Summa", even though it contains fewer than 200 pages. The book contains a series of essays in which he deals with objections to his earlier writings, makes a few objections of his own to other writers, and generally illuminates the nature of oral transmission, the interaction of literate and non and illiterate societies, the power writing gives to those who have it, and its influence on conventions such as time, narrative and poetry.This book is of particular interest to me in relation to the Bible, because for years in the seminary I always heard that the laws of Moses, the stories of Genesis or the sayings of Jesus were transmitted verbatim because of the allegedly superior memory skills of oral cultures. Mr. Goody takes dead aim on these naive notions, and the theories of Lord and Parry, by looking at actual oral transmission in actual oral societies. It turns out that word-for-word recall of ritual recitations is non-existent, and rhyme and meter are likewise in short supply. In the observed societies, mythic recitation is collectively composed by intiates at the time of performance, and varies considerably from time to time and place to place.Other issues considered in the book are the creation of narrative time through writing, the influence of writing on the slave revolt in Bahia in 1835, a critique of Derrida's playful, but not very accurate notion of language, and consideration of writing as a technology. This book was very hard to put down. It's a keeper!