Imagine you live in an ancient oral culture. Try not to think about oral cultures as lacking literacy but as fully functioning rich cultures - they don't know they lack literacy.
Pick a place - it could be in a desert or in the snow, on an island or in the mountains, or where you live now.
You live in a tribe.
How does your tribe communicate important information? How is the knowledge of the tribe, knowledge about how to live, how to hunt for food, how and when to trade with other tribes, how to resolve problems, how to perform rituals to honour life events, how is the information communicated? How is it passed down from one generation to the next?
This knowledge may be embedded in memory devices which might be physical, like rock paintings, statues, totems, decorative art on masks or bowls, it could be told through dance and song, or might be related orally through stories.
What are some sayings or slogans or quotes that you remember? These are memorable by design, not by accident. What literary techniques have been used to make them memorable?
How would you make something you say memorable? In an oral culture this could mean the difference between life and death.
Perhaps through rhythm, repetition, rhyme, the structure of the sentence.
Any truth or law would be stated in a short sentence of simple words.
These are called an adage, proverb, saying, maxim, aphorism.
A proverb is a short pithy saying which embodies a general truth.
Some that come to mind:
- Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in morning, sailor's warning.
- Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
- When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
- Look before you leap.
- A stitch in time saves nine.
- A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
- Fail to plan, plan to fail.
- Forewarned is forearmed.
- What's good for the goose is good for the gander
- A light purse makes for a heavy heart.
- It takes two to tango.
- Thou shalt not kill.
- Coke is it!
You will notice the literary techniques used here: short sentences of monosyllabic words, alliteration, repetition, parallel constructions, use of opposites, rhythm and rhyme.
These oral memory devices became our literary devices.
When your English teacher says that a literary device is used to make something memorable, that is true. However, you can’t write essays about how each technique is just a memory device; it needs to be more sophisticated than that. Techniques are used for a variety of reasons: to guide the reader in a logical argument, to make readers feel as if they are present in the situation, to recreate an event, to emphasise, to be playful and create pleasure. You need to know the words for various techniques, understand their effects, and appreciate how the decision made by the writer creates a text in which each component part, each decision, contributes to the meaning of the whole text. All the decisions contribute to a text having textual integrity, a cohesion. This is what literary analysis is: explaining how and why a writer makes specific choices for a purpose. It also helps to know how these techniques have been used in early writing and where the words for the techniques came from (Hint: usually Greek).
Top Tip: Patterns are important. Look out for how many literary techniques are based on repetition - of sounds, rhythms, words, sentence structure and concepts. Look out for patterns in structure too.
But don’t worry. The good news is that you are already steeped in language and stories. Everything you already know about stories from films, comics, poems, novels, picture books, graphic novels, television, songs, videogames and advertisements will be helpful.
Watch this video about learning how to learn and note all the literary devices that are used to improve memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT_GcOGEFsk
If you want to read further about this I can recommend two books.
Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture - Lynne Kelly
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word - Walter J. Ong
The other takeaway message about ancient memory devices is that you can make your own.
For you: make your own memory devices
Video - Unjaded Jade: The Revision Technique No One Tells You: How to EASILY Remember Anything!
See Google Images - Graphic Organisers
Memory Palace
Mnemonics
For Creative Plenaries see Phil Beadle's book Dancing About Architecture
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