Literary Continuations;
or How Literature Still Remembers Oral Traditions
More so than any other semester, my classes this time around seem to be interconnected in a way that proves almost inescapable. Oral traditions are found in the metafictional books that talk to the reader and instruct them, Tristram Shandy from eighteenth century British literature is discussed in terms of a “cock and bull” story in oral traditions, and the memorization techniques of storytellers that reveal their necessity through implementation aided in remembering countless lines of Shakespeare. However, what compels and intrigues me the most, for I am still very much interested in the subject, was revealed in not only the required literature from my classes, but also in the very limited reading I attempted for my own pleasure. It seemed as if I would never be able to escape the author telling me how to read their story or the never-ending interpretations and application of memory and its importance. For that reason, I am here to ponder the influence of the oral culture and its traditions on literature from the onset of the novel in roughly the eighteenth century until the present day as well as the treatment of memory in this context with the help of Walter Ong and his work Orality and Literacy, The Art of Memory by Frances A. Yates, and Sean Kane’s Wisdom of the Mythtellers. I encourage that the reading of this essay be done in a memorably comforting place so the reader does not impose any negative feelings on the text and its reading prior to completion.
Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Paul Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book, Stefen Merrill Block’s The Story of Forgetting, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. These represent a small fraction of the books relevant to my discussion that I have encountered this semester alone. Yet they are perhaps some of the strongest in their application of either the traditional oral “tools” as laid out by Walter Ong and Sean Kane or the treatment of memory as found in The Art of Memory. As I examine these, I hope to enrich your own experience in realizing just how many books rely on the foundations of “oral literature” to convey their message.
Nearly every one of the books I will be using reiterates that writing very rarely and only after sometime, manages to be “put together without the feeling that the one writing is actually speaking aloud” (Ong 26). That is to say that through the incorporation of the author seemingly guiding the reader through the use of asides in his narration or even by simply posing a question, the interpersonal experience of hearing the story from the mouth of the teller proves to be a connection that remains desired. Instead, when writing in the print culture, the author is isolated and alone, forced to imagine his audience and his audience the same in imaging the author (Ong 100-1). Perhaps this may account for what seems like a conversation between the author and the reader.
In Orality and Literacy, Walter Ong reveals nine elements that are maintained or exhibited by primary oral cultures; thoughts are additive rather than subordinative, aggregative rather than analytic, redundant, conservative, close to the human lifeworld, agonistically toned, empathetic, homeostatic, and situational (Ong 37-49). Using the aforementioned texts, I am sure that nearly all of these predominantly oral characteristics can be applied to the print culture in a very effective and compelling manner. Also, at least four of these novels demonstrate the notion of boundaries found in chapter three of Wisdom of the Mythtellers. I will illustrate the way in which some of the books that I have chosen pose as exemplary models of written literature that is additive and aggregative.
In Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne succeeds in incorporating the first of Ong’s elements of primary oral cultures into the world of secondary orality. When Ong discusses the use of additive rather than subordinative structure in sentences, he is referring to the less grammatically shaped style with “and” as an integral introductory sentence starter instead of an essential part of a compound sentence (Ong 37-8). The sentences in Sterne’s novel are also very much additive in that they continue on and on and on and on in such a way as this: “To my uncle Mr. Toby Shandy do I stand indebted for the preceding anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher, and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and heavily complained of the injury….” (Sterne 3). Thoughts are strewn together with little to now subordination.
Thoughts that are aggregative rather than analytic, or to say more cliché than original, appear in oral traditions constantly through both epithets and formulas (Ong 38). Ong reveals that these help cement characters into their roles much like Henry Fielding employs particular names and gestures for certain characters to emphasize their personality differences and their purpose in the work. One such character, Lady Slipslop, is so rightly named not only because of her mismatched appearance, having a nose too long and eyes too small, but also in her poor choice and use of words as when she refers to her lady returning to London very “concisely” (Fielding 7). The gestures of the characters, however, more than the names add to the aggregative style as those practicing some of these in the novel do so nearly every time they are discussed. In this way, the actions of the characters act as the formula by which they are remembered.
As I stated previously, a lot of the books that I have read this semester also incorporate elements from Sean Kane’s chapter on boundaries in his book Wisdom of the Mythtellers. As Kane reveals how “boundaries are the magic points where worlds impinge” he opens up the possibility for my argument that these books themselves can be boundaries (Kane 103). When reading a book, there are two worlds in action, the one in the book and the one the reader is literally in. These books then can act as boundaries, much like the books for a young girl named Liesel Meminger in The Book Thief that allow her to escape the world around her and open up new possibilities for her as she transforms into a stronger version of herself upon reading them. This transformation of sorts is a key element found in this chapter as a life altering experience is most often a result of transcending one boundary (Kane 110).
However, there are boundaries within books as well, one of the most recognizable being the white rabbit hole from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. After Alice passes through, she enters a dream world where everything becomes topsy-turvy. Upon exiting, she can’t remember if it were a dream or reality. All she knows is that she prefers it more than the reality she wakes up to again. Steffen Merrill Block’s The Story of Forgetting also discusses the concept of boundaries that are life-altering as it opens with the affirmation that “alongside this world there’s another. There are places where you can cross” (Block 3). This other world he is talking about, Isidora, offers a fair transition as it is a land where memory does not exist and nothing can be lost.
The notion of memory and the methods for retention of information expressed by Frances Yates in The Art of Memory also appeared in my readings. As we were instructed in class to create a memory palace, I came across in Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Black Book the idea that memory is a garden (Pamuk 3). This reminded me very much of Yates call for the use of an unfrequented church as a memory palace and made me instead desire to find an unfrequented garden with flowers for which I could name. However, with further reading of the book and deeper thought into the notion, I became disheartened. “’When the garden of memory begins to dry up,’ Celal had said, ‘a man cannot but dote on its lingering rosebuds, its last remaining trees. To keep them from withering away, I water them from morning until night, and I caress them too: I remember, I remember so as not to forget!’” (Pamuk 21-2) Even though this reveals that perhaps the withering tendencies of the flowers in a garden would not serve the best purpose as a memory palace, they do offer quite a lovely yet saddening depiction of the loss of one’s memory, a recurring theme in much of the literature I have read. Travels in the Scriptorium reveal a man, in literary reality an author, that willing chooses to have his memory clouded by medication so as to forget the many crimes he has committed through his writing. The Story of Forgetting centers around the disease that makes loved ones forget their most precious memories. In a class that is all about strengthening the memory, I was left pondering the complexities of the reverse far more deeply.
On page seventy eight of Orality and Literacy, Walter Ong refers to Plato’s Socrates who “urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind.” Sadly, I would probably have to agree with Plato on this one. That is not to say that simply because someone reads they can’t remember anything. It means that in comparison to the memory capabilities of cultures of primary orality, those that rely on the print world have far less impressive capabilities.
In conclusion, as trite and cliché as it is, to say that the oral traditions have died and been fully consumed by the written and print cultures would be a lie. As Ong put it, “without writing, human consciousness cannot reach its fuller potentials, cannot produce other beautiful and powerful creations. In this sense, orality needs to produce and is destined to produce writing” (14). For that reason, many of the same themes and elements of oral “literature” can be found in literature in both its youngest forms and its most recent, which I hope I have managed to convey through this discussion. As much as I would like to think that this is all something new and innovating, I am channeling more conservative or traditionalist oral practices as “the formulas and themes are reshuffled rather than supplanted with new materials” (Ong 42). However, I do hope that what I have given you is at least memorable.
Works Cited
Block, Stefan Merrill. The Story of Forgetting. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks-The Random House Publishing Group, 2008.
Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews. Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001.
Kane, Sean. Wisdom of the Mythtellers. Orchard Park: Broadview Press, 1998.
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. 1982. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Pamuk, Orhan. The Black Book. Trans. Maureen Freely. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.
Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 2007.
"It is in her voice - I cannot say precisely how it is in her voice - the music of humanity at peace with time, and with the earth, and with mortality. In places where this book breathes more deeply as it tells a story, or when it makes a point in the half-said way of the storyteller, that is where the spirit of a distinguished teacher and teller of myth is present." Kane, p. 24