ENGLISH

Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens

By Rosalind Thomas

Book information

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Year
1992
ISBN
9780511597404, 0521425182, 0521350255, 0511597401, 9780521350259, 9780521425186
LCC
PA227 .T47 1989
Language
english
Format
DJVU
Filesize
2 MB (2371173 bytes)
Series
Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture 4
Pages
335\335
Topic
Education
DPI
300
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

Scholars are becoming increasingly aware that, despite its written literature, ancient Greece was in many aspects an oral society. In the first major attempt to study the implications of this discovery, Dr. Thomas stresses the coexistence of literacy and oral tradition in Greece and examines their interaction. Concentrating on the plentiful evidence of Classical Athens, she shows how the use of writing developed only gradually and under the influence of the previous oral communications. Using insights from anthropology, the author isolates different types of Athenian oral tradition, constructing a picture of Athenian traditions and exploring why they changed and disappeared. Thomas researches not only the nature of individual traditions, but the mechanisms of oral tradition and memory in general; then the possible effect of writing on oral tradition. This study provides crucial insights into the methods and achievements of the Greek historians and therefore into the very material of Greek history.

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