The Emergence of Writing in Greek Antiquity

Do you believe that the transition between the days of pre-internet read a book and write a paper, and our current days of fast blue-tooth cord-free and other hyphenated techno-craze has been an easy one?


Do you think it has been entirely in the interest of all people?

Have we lost anything in making this transition?


We have focused a lot in our class about not just the establishment of these various ways of storing knowledge, especially the mediums, but we have also discussed heavily the impact of the changes that come from transitioning between knowledge storing forms.


According to historian and philosopher, Walter J. Ong, "the 'transformation of the word' moved in a sequence of distinct phases from the formulaic style of the poets, to the art of memory practiced by the Sophists, to Plato’s dialogues, and then finally to Aristotle’s descriptive prose treatiseswith Plato, the balance of the tension between the oral and literate mindsets swung in favor of writing."(Epilogue to Plato: The Bias of Literacy---Twyla Gibson; University of Toronto)


Walter J. Ong, along with other scholars, argue that the transition from the completely oral transmission of knowledge to the literary styles preserved even until today from Ancient Greece was not an easy one.  Specifically, the transition from the Sophists oral poetry to Plato's written dialogues seemed to be the most drastic.


Dr. Twyla Gibson, and Assistant Professor at Toronto University and author of Epilogue to Plato: The Bias of Literacy, states:

"Plato was denouncing oral poetry as well as Sophistic oratory and rhetoric because they were representatives of the oral tradition. In contrast, Plato was advocating his own, literate philosophy. Thus, when the balance shifted in favor of literacy in the long transition to the use of letters, Plato was placed on the literate side of the fulcrum."

 The transition from the oral to the literary tradition seems to have taken place at about the time Ancient Greece adopted the Phoenician alphabet in about 500 B.C.  At first, the transition among those willing to make the transition was rather subtle.  Gibson states:

"Plato’s discourses are break boundaries, sites of overlap between two different communication technologies, the oral and the written. Thus, these dialogues are both oral-derived, traditional compositions and works of literate prose philosophy. . .Plato’s dialogues are a hybrid medium, combining oral traditional modes of information storage and retrieval with a consummate literate prose writing style. "

Plato preserved oral forms of memorization (such as chiasmus or metaphors) and translated them to prose.  Overall, Plato made the oral styles of Greek antiquity last longer, even until today.  Imagine what the world would have been like if Plato had never tried to preserve the oral tradition in writing.

Sources: Epilogue to Plato: The Bias of Literacy---Twyla Gibson; University of Toronto.  <http://www.media-ecology.org/publications/MEA_proceedings/v6/Gibson.pdf>.