New Directions In Oral Theory

In this volume, a group of leading classicists and medievalists interrogates the complex ways in which oral and literate culture intersect with and shape one another's contours. Rejecting the view that orality and literacy are mutually exclusive and contradictory cultural forces, these essays focus on the mix of oral and literate poetics discoverable in a wide range of ancient and medieval texts. In the explorations of texts produced in cultures situated at various points along the oral-literate continuum, the authors reveal how deeply and inextricably intertwined orality and literacy are and they further demonstrate just how supple and powerful an interpretive tool contemporary oral theory is.