[MD] words/time

[MarshaV]

Orality controlled the learning process was not learning as we know it today but a continual act of memorization, repetition, recall and ritual.

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 "...  His [the poets] role as the encyclopedist was shared by all members of his craft.  The method he used to hold sway over his audience were personal to himself.

 "Their use was an experience which had immediacy for him but was not uniquely his; it had to become equally personal to those who listen to him.  To control the collective memory of society he had to establish control over the personal memories of individual human beings.  This in effect meant that his poetry was a mechanism of power and of personal power.  He [the poet] was the medium of the Muse, and the grandson of the goddess Mnemosune, whose spell he wove.  What  then were the psychological resources available to him to render this spell effective?  They had to be available and usable in the active performance.  For a relationship between the poet and the individual memory of any member of the community could be established only by audible and visual presence.  The relationship must be built up and maintained during the course of oral recitation. 

 "This surely is a clue to a reason why Plato, as he examined the ways of poets and poetry, seems so preoccupied with the conditions of the actual poetic performance before an audience; to a degree that when he seeks to analyse the content of poetry it proves difficult to separate the issue of the content from the psychological effects of reciting it and listening to it.  What the poet was saying was in Plato's eyes important and maybe dangerous, but how he was saying it and manipulating it might seem even more important and more dangerous."  
         (Havelock, Eric A., 'Preface to Plato', pp. 145-146)