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