Points that stuck with me through Ong's Chapter 5

When I saw the word Loci on page 123- I immediately thought "Memory Theatre", places in the mind where ideas are stored. As I read this over and over I thought "I wonder how many places are in my mind and what is really stored in each one?" Never have I thought to think how I store things, why certain things are stored and where. Are they grouped? If so how? Chronologically, through connected events, by emotions? I picutre my memory to be sort of like a book or a compilation, somehow everything is organized by me on some sort of unconscious level.

One other thing that I found interesting was the idea of print and privacy. Oral traditions are very communal in the sense that they are shared, done together and almost a celebration.
For example, in my world literature class we are looking at Faroese ballads. They are chanted by communities as a whole and given emotion, tone, the oral tradition there relies on the people as a whole. The oral tradition is individual on the level that the bard (leader) must be able to improvise those ballads if he is to forget them word for word.

The idea of Print as closure and spontaneity is a topic that requires much more indepth thought on my part and another blog as well...


Oral traditions are being taken over by the print culture now and therefore people read in private. Many want complete silencewhile reading. The only time i read aloud is to my niece, nephews or the children I nanny. All of us take joy in that reading time because it has become a really fun tradition, whether between me and one of them or all of us. Basically what I am trying to get at, is the fact that the print culture has also produced isolation. When I am at home in the summers I spend a lot of time alone reading which of cuorse i love, but until reading Ong's page 128 I did not realize I was isolating myself.