Memory in Oral Traditions

Memory in Oral Traditions PDF Author: David C. Rubin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019535964X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Long studied by anthropologists, historians, and linguists, oral traditions have provided a wealth of fascinating insights into unique cultural customs that span the history of humankind. In this groundbreaking work, cognitive psychologist David C. Rubin offers for the first time an accessible, comprehensive examination of what such traditions can tell us about the complex inner workings of human memory. Focusing in particular on their three major forms of organization--theme, imagery, and sound pattern--Rubin proposes a model of recall, and uses it to uncover the mechanisms of memory that underlie genres such as counting-out rhymes, ballads, and epics. The book concludes with an engaging discussion of how conversions from oral to written communication modes can predict how cutting-edge computer technologies will affect the conventions of future transmissions. Throughout, Rubin presents the results of important original research as well as new perspectives on classical subjects. Splendidly written and farsighted, Memory in Oral Traditions will be eagerly read by students and researchers in areas as diverse as cognitive psychology, literary studies, classics, and cultural anthropology.

Memory in Oral Traditions

Memory in Oral Traditions PDF Author: David C. Rubin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019535964X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book

Book Description
Long studied by anthropologists, historians, and linguists, oral traditions have provided a wealth of fascinating insights into unique cultural customs that span the history of humankind. In this groundbreaking work, cognitive psychologist David C. Rubin offers for the first time an accessible, comprehensive examination of what such traditions can tell us about the complex inner workings of human memory. Focusing in particular on their three major forms of organization--theme, imagery, and sound pattern--Rubin proposes a model of recall, and uses it to uncover the mechanisms of memory that underlie genres such as counting-out rhymes, ballads, and epics. The book concludes with an engaging discussion of how conversions from oral to written communication modes can predict how cutting-edge computer technologies will affect the conventions of future transmissions. Throughout, Rubin presents the results of important original research as well as new perspectives on classical subjects. Splendidly written and farsighted, Memory in Oral Traditions will be eagerly read by students and researchers in areas as diverse as cognitive psychology, literary studies, classics, and cultural anthropology.

Memory in Oral Traditions

Memory in Oral Traditions PDF Author: David C. Rubin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195120329
Category : Ballads
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
"Dr. Rubin has brought cognitive psychology into a wholly unprecedented dialogue with studies in oral tradition. The result is a truly new perspective on memory and the processes of oral tradition." --John Miles Foley, University of Missouri

Memory in Oral Traditions

Memory in Oral Traditions PDF Author: David C. Rubin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195082117
Category : Ballads
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking work, cognitive psychologist David C. Rubin offers for the first time an accessible, comprehensive examination of what such traditions can tell us about the complex inner workings of human memory. Splendidly written and farsighted.

Memory in Oral Traditions

Memory in Oral Traditions PDF Author: David C. Rubin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781601299208
Category : Ballads
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
This text applies the methods and theories of cognitive psychology to the study of oral traditions. The author elaborates on three structural devices that appear in oral traditions: those consisting of meaning; those using imagery; and those in which sound pattern is predominant.

The Edge of Memory

The Edge of Memory PDF Author: Patrick Nunn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472943279
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
In today's society it is generally the written word that holds the authority. We are more likely to trust the words found in a history textbook over the version of history retold by a friend – after all, human memory is unreliable, and how can you be sure your friend hasn't embellished the facts? But before humans were writing down their knowledge, they were telling it to each other in the form of stories. The Edge of Memory celebrates the predecessor of written information – the spoken word, tales from our ancestors that have been passed down, transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. Among the most extensive and best-analysed of these stories are from native Australian cultures. These stories conveyed both practical information and recorded history, describing a lost landscape, often featuring tales of flooding and submergence. These folk traditions are increasingly supported by hard science. Geologists are starting to corroborate the tales through study of climatic data, sediments and land forms; the evidence was there in the stories, but until recently, nobody was listening. In this book, Patrick Nunn unravels the importance of these tales, exploring the science behind folk history from various places – including northwest Europe and India – and what it can tell us about environmental phenomena, from coastal drowning to volcanic eruptions. These stories of real events were passed across the generations, and over thousands of years, and they have broad implications for our understanding of how human societies have developed through the millennia, and ultimately how we respond collectively to changes in climate, our surroundings and the environment we live in.

Oral History and Public Memories

Oral History and Public Memories PDF Author: Paula Hamilton
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1592131425
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Oral history is inherently about memory, and when oral history interviews are used "in public," they invariably both reflect and shape public memories of the past. Oral History and Public Memories is the only book that explores this relationship, in fourteen case studies of oral history's use in a variety of venues and media around the world. Readers will learn, for example, of oral history based efforts to reclaim community memory in post-apartheid Cape Town, South Africa; of the role of personal testimony in changing public understanding of Japanese American history in the American West; of oral history's value in mapping heritage sites important to Australia's Aboriginal population; and of the way an oral history project with homeless people in Cleveland, Ohio became a tool for popular education. Taken together, these original essays link the well established practice of oral history to the burgeoning field of memory studies.

Oral Tradition

Oral Tradition PDF Author: Jan Vansina
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 0202367622
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description


The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments

The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments PDF Author: Lynne Kelly
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681773821
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The discovery of a powerful memory technique used by our Neolithic ancestors in their monumental memory places—and how we can use their secrets to train our own minds In ancient, pre-literate cultures across the globe, tribal elders had encyclopedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across a landscape, identify the stars in the sky, and recite the history of their people. Yet today, most of us struggle to memorize more than a short poem. Using traditional Aboriginal Australian song lines as a starting point, Dr. Lynne Kelly has since identified the powerful memory technique used by our ancestors and indigenous people around the world. In turn, she has then discovered that this ancient memory technique is the secret purpose behind the great prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge, which have puzzled archaeologists for so long. The henges across northern Europe, the elaborate stone houses of New Mexico, huge animal shapes in Peru, the statues of Easter Island—these all serve as the most effective memory system ever invented by humans. They allowed people in non-literate cultures to memorize the vast amounts of information they needed to survive. But how? For the first time, Dr. Klly unlocks the secret of these monuments and their uses as "memory places" in her fascinating book. Additionally, The Memory Code also explains how we can use this ancient mnemonic technique to train our minds in the tradition of our forbearers.

Memory

Memory PDF Author: Patricia Fara
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521572101
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This engaging volume for the general reader explores how individuals and societies remember, forget and commemorate events of the past. The collection of eight essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to address the relationships between individual experience and collective memory, with leading experts from the arts and sciences. We might expect scientists to be concerned with studying just the mental and physical processes involved in remembering, and humanities scholars to be interested in the products of memory, such as books, statues and music. This collection exposes the falseness of such a dichotomy, illustrating the insights into memory which can be gained by juxtaposing the complementary perspectives of specialists venturing beyond the normal boundaries of their disciplines. The authors come from backgrounds as diverse as psychoanalysis, creative writing, neuroscience, social history and medicine.

Memory and Manuscript

Memory and Manuscript PDF Author: Birger Gerhardsson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802843661
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Here in one volume are two of Birger Gerhardsson's much-debated works on the transmission of tradition in Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. In Memory and Manuscript (1961), Gerhardsson explores the way in which Jewish rabbis during the first Christian centuries preserved and passed on their sacred tradition, and he shows how early Christianity is better understood in light of how that tradition developed in Rabbinic Judaism. In Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity (1964), Gerhardsson further clarifies the discussion and answers criticism of his earlier book. This Biblical Resource Series combined edition corrects and expands Gerhardsson's original works and includes a new preface by the author and a lengthy new foreword by Jacob Neusner that summarizes these works' importance and subsequent influence.