"In the Beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said: Be light made" (Genesis: the Douay 1610 version)
In Walter Ong's "Some Psychodynamics of Orality", he explains how oral cultures had a different relationship to the word/words from written cultures- words were very much alive for them, interacting and casting realities into and out of existence.
In this world, the word was an event that occurred, having an integrity on their own. The bard's duty, thus, was not just to entertain but to tell people who they were, where they came from, and what they would eventually become. He aligned his people within an overarching cosmology that connected the past- from the ontology of the world- to the present and the future. The medium of the ballad served not only to entertain, but was a web connecting man to his universe.
Words, here, existed within social realities and outside the capsule of the self. It was social, constantly interacting, and causing things to Be. The world was sung into being by a single song, just as the bard sung social realities into being through his songs.
In Walter Ong's "Some Psychodynamics of Orality", he explains how oral cultures had a different relationship to the word/words from written cultures- words were very much alive for them, interacting and casting realities into and out of existence.
In this world, the word was an event that occurred, having an integrity on their own. The bard's duty, thus, was not just to entertain but to tell people who they were, where they came from, and what they would eventually become. He aligned his people within an overarching cosmology that connected the past- from the ontology of the world- to the present and the future. The medium of the ballad served not only to entertain, but was a web connecting man to his universe.
Words, here, existed within social realities and outside the capsule of the self. It was social, constantly interacting, and causing things to Be. The world was sung into being by a single song, just as the bard sung social realities into being through his songs.
