Communication in Europe and its Influence - Orality And Literacy In Greece, Plato's Critique, Rome, The Middle Ages, Monastic Expansion
By the first millennium B.C.E., major world civilizations were flourishing in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China. Each had developed a distinct form of writing, along with urban centers for administration and record keeping. In contrast, Europe was largely a series of diverse nonliterate village farming communities steeped in the conventions of primary oral communication. The eventual emergence of a literate tradition in Europe took place in Greece—at its cusp,
one of the most celebrated works in the history of Western civilization.
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Homer's Iliad and Odyssey occupy an important early niche in the history of European literature. It has been argued, however, that the Homeric epics, strictly speaking, are not even literature. In An Essay of the Original Genius and Writings of Homer (1775), the English diplomat and archaeologist Robert Wood initiated a continuing debate by arguing that Homer could not read or write and tha…
Standing on the cusp of this information revolution, Plato saw benefits and liabilities in the transformation. In the utopian vision of his Republic, he has harsh words for both the oral tradition of Homeric verse and the later legacy of dramatists such as Aeschylus, whose writings have poetic overtones. Their emotionality, heavy reliance on sensory experience in describing the world (a signature …
The book trade, in the form of papyrus scrolls, flourished under the empire. Teams of scribes were able to produce hundreds of copies and occasionally revised "editions" of a given work—a feat usually linked with the printing revolution. Bookstores were established, and even advertised. Papyrus was, however, expensive (ordinary correspondence usually employed wax tablets) and …
The Roman Catholic Church assumed administrative leadership in postimperial Rome, with popes replacing emperors. Europe became a decentralized, largely nonliterate patchwork of feudal estates based on rural agriculture. The centuries that followed are usually seen as a period of cultural decline, often referred to as the Dark Ages—a term now dismissed, however, by many historians; Lynn Whit…
By the end of the sixth century, under the auspices of Pope Gregory the Great (reigned 590–604), another invasion of Europe from Rome began. The monastic tradition, founded by St. Benedict (c. 480–547) and originally dedicated to prayer and asceticism, now formed itself into a proselytizing militia. When the churchmen moved north they were met with accommodation more than resistance …
The worldview of the churchmen, sometimes referred to as a cosmography, regarded nature as a book to be interpreted, not a domain amenable to empirical discovery or rational analysis. However, with new ideas entering Europe from the Crusades and through the Islamic presence in Spain, as well as from the newly emergent church-founded universities, some accommodation became necessary. In response, T…
Although few scholars would argue that any single technology merits the label "historical prime mover," moveable-type printing is certainly one of the few likely candidates. It gave new impetus to the Renaissance already underway, opened the door to modernity, and offered a technique for mass production that would proliferate during the industrial revolution. Johannes Gutenberg, a go…
Although Luther oversaw the first vernacular edition of the Bible, in German—only to be perturbed by how some in his flock interpreted various passages—the first two centuries of the print revolution saw Latin still used for most scholarly publications. But it was a language on the wane, as was the influence of theology on both natural science and the newly emerging human sciences. N…
Orators in antiquity, the Roman acta, medieval troubadours, and handwritten and early printed broadsides were some of the ways through which news had circulated in premodern Europe. The first true newspapers, defined by a regular publication schedule, were weeklies that began in Germany in the first decade of the seventeenth century. Other countries quickly embraced the idea. Written in the vernac…
Burke, James. The Day the Universe Changed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985. Clanchy, Michael. From Memory to Written Record in England, 1066–1307. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. Crowley, David, and Paul Heyer, eds. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003. Drucker, Johanna. The Alphabetic Labyrinth. New York: Thames and Hudson, 19…
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