a moment of interplay of contrasted cultures, and The  
Gutenberg Galaxy  is intended to trace the ways in which the 
forms  of experience and of mental outlook and expression have 
been modified, first by the phonetic alphabet and then by 
printing. The enterprise which Milman Parry undertook with 
reference to the contrasted forms  of oral and written poetry is 
here extended to the forms  of thought and the organization of 
experience in society and politics. That such a study of the 
divergent nature of oral and written social organization has not 
been carried out by historians long ago is rather hard to 
explain. Perhaps the reason for the omission is simply that the 
job could only be done when the two conflicting forms of 
written and oral experience were once again co-existent as they 
are today. Professor Harry Levin indicates as much in his 
preface to Professor Lord’s The Singer of Tales  (p. xiii):