Abstract

Eric Havelock claimed that writing 'caused' abstract thought and philosophy, and this view has been criticized as a naive technological determinism. Moreover, Havelock's claims about an historical transition from orality to widespread literacy have not been borne out by the empirical evidence. For these reasons, the present consensus is that the advent of writing occasioned no revolution; that rather the ancient transition from orality to literacy was a 'smooth transition'. This dissertation argues that in fact there was a literate revolution in ancient Greece, and that it occurred when the rhetoricians began writing for hearers. In theoretical terms, the advantage of literacy lies in the longer time-frame of composition, which allows for the editing and perfecting of speeches. The politics of direct oral democracy placed a premium on good speaking, and thus provided motivation for the development of the literacy. Classical rhetoric employed this new 'poetics' to multiply the powers of oral-poetic persuasion, to make speeches more poetically appealing. The works of Gorgias and Alcidamas provide abundant confirmation of this thesis: not only do these authors use writing to intensify the poetic powers of persuasion, they also devote their most important works to a theoretical analysis of how writing could be used to manipulate an oral-poetically conditioned audience. These earliest theories of communication were not the product of disinterested speculation, but were instead motivated by a crisis in communications. It has not been sufficiently noted that some of Plato's most important themes are borrowed from these earlier theorists. That all these authors employed the same terminology, the same metaphors, and the same paradoxes to discuss orality and literacy indicates that the revolution in communications was a defining issue of the times, and suggests that Plato's 'theorizing' should be related to the crisis of communications described by the earlier theorists. Not only was there a 'revolution' in the means of communication in ancient Greece, these authors were keenly aware of this revolution and were engaged in a public debate on the subject.