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Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens
Abstract
Despite its written literature, ancient Greece was in many ways an oral society. This is the first serious attempt to study the implications of this view. Dr Thomas stresses the coexistence of literacy and oral tradition in Greece and examines their character and interaction. Concentrating on the plentiful evidence from Classical Athens, she shows how the use of writing developed only gradually and under the influence of the previous oral communication. Drawing on anthropological discussion, the author isolates different types of Athenian oral tradition, building up a picture of Athens' traditions about its past and examining why they changed and disappeared. This study provides crucial insights into the methods and achievements of the Greek historians. It also has major implications for the interpretation of ancient literacy.
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Cited by
Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World: Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice
Meyer, E. A. (2004) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511482861 · Cited by 353
Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse
Bakker, E. J. (2018) · Cornell University Press · doi:10.7591/9781501722776 · Cited by 98
Cosmography and the Idea of Hyperborea in Ancient Greece: A Philology of Worlds
Gagné, R. (2021) · doi:10.1017/9781108973755 · Cited by 35
Metadata
- Authors
- Thomas, R.
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 1989-03-09
- OpenAlex
- W4298428573
- Cited by
- 889
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 71.80
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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