with nonliterate societies and moving toward the classical 
world, “he suggested that ancient economic life might better be 
understood if viewed from the perspective of primitive rather 
than modern society.” (2)

     Such a reverse perspective of the literate Western world is 
the one afforded to the reader of Albert Lord’s The Singer of  
Tales.  But we also live in an electric or post-literate time when 
the jazz musician uses all the techniques of oral poetry. 
Empathic identification with all the oral modes is not difficult in 
our century.

     In the electronic age which succeeds the typographic and 
mechanical era of the past five hundred years, we encounter 
new shapes and structures of human interdependence and of 
expression which are “oral” in form even when the components