Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08513_Field_TCGG T278.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 902b | 16 lines

     of course designed for public reading, and long after
     private reading became common, rhapsodes made a
     profession of reciting epic. Pisistratus, who had
     something (we do not know how much) to do with
     regularizing the text of Homer, also instituted the public
     reading of his poems at the Panathenaic festival. From
     Diogenes Laertius (1.2.57) we learn that ‘Solon provided
     that the public recitations of Homer shall follow a fixed
     order; thus the second reciter must begin from the place
     where the first left off.’

          Prose no less than poetry was presented orally, as
     we know from reports concerning Herodotus and others,
     and the practice of oral presentation affected the nature
     of prose as it did of poetry. The elaborate attention to
     sound which characterizes Gorgias’ pioneer productions