Dr Seuss v. Homer: A comparison in mnemonics

I was nervous, my palms sweating as I swallowed the knot in my throat. You can do this, I told myself. Just keep calm. But it‘s hard to keep your cool when your entire 5^th grade class is staring at you. I closed my eyes, opened my mouth, and the words just started to flow.

This was the experience of my 5^th grade speech contest. Everyone in the class had to memorize a book, speech, or poem and perform in front of the class. There were the serious “I Have a Dream” speeches, the nostalgic Shel Silverstein poems, and then there was mine. I decided on the intellectual yet comedic work of Dr. Seuss in Gerald McBoing Boing. It took me a long time and lots of practice to memorize the book. Thankfully, there was a simple rhyme meter, which allowed me to memorize large passages at a time. Repetition also aided my cause. After the hours spent memorizing, I had to decide how to perform the speech, how to make it interesting and entertaining. With the help of the pictures, I decided that every time I said “Boing Boing,” I would jump up just like Gerald in the book. This added dimension to my performance, making the text jump off the page (literally).With the help of these techniques, I was voted 2^nd best in my class, and I began to get just a small taste of the art of oration.

Now I know what you’re thinking—what does this have to do with the orations of the ancient Minoans in Crete? Well, I’ll tell you.

Much about the language of the ancient Minoans, a civilization that lived on the island Crete off the coast of Greece, is unknown. They did have a written language, labeled Linear A by modern linguists, but it has yet to be decoded. Their oral traditions, which we are more concerned about, have even fewer surviving records. However, the stories that have survived are some you might recognize—The Illiad and The Odyssey, Homeric hymns recorded in text around 800 BC.  (To read more, refer to Diane Cardon's post on these works)

The book Signs of Orality: The Oral Tradition and its Influence in the Greek and Roman World contains an article written by Stephen A. Nimis that explains specific mnemonic devices within the works of Homer. The first he mentions is ring-composition, which is repeating narrative or thematic elements in hysteron proteron order, or in order of importance rather than chronologically. This creates a ring-like pattern like A-B-C-B-A, centralizing on the middle point. Although this pattern does not have to do with rhyme like Dr. Seuss, it helps in terms of memorization because it is a symmetric plan within the mind of the orator. It also shows the repetition and restatement that is mnemonically characteristic of those ancient Greek orations. (Greek lyric poet Simonides also added a great deal to the mnemonics of the Greeks as can be found in The Art of Memory by Frances Yates)

Also, the act of performance was very important in these Greek hymns, much like my own 5^th grade speech. It was what separated orations from texts. The Harvard@Home website, which debuts various research and public addresses from Harvard University, had an article with this statement on performing: “The Iliad and the Odyssey are products of an oral poetic tradition. In oral traditional poetry, the poetic act of composition is simultaneous with the poetic act of performance: the poet composes as he performs, performs as he composes…This is not to say, however, that oral traditional poetry is merely free-associative. Rather, it is premeditated - precisely because it is traditional.” Because a lot of their performance was planned and premeditated, we can see that this served as a mnemonic device, aiding in the memorization of these long passages. Oftentimes we find that muscle memory and brain memory are interconnected. Performance and acting are just yet another way that the ancient orators learned to memorize these extensive poems.

As you can see, there are similarities in mnemonic devices between today and orators of ancient Greece, but I was wondering how the role of mnemonics in society has changed. Today, there is much less encouragement to have things memorized, especially speeches. If we do have to memorize something it’s the cold hard facts, which we are just expected to regurgitate. What has brought about this change? What has caused the depreciation of oral storytelling in society? How have institutions shaped this development? It seems odd to think that mnemonics, the art of memorizing, could be forgotten, but Professor Burton also brought up an interesting paradox in class on Tuesday--Is the oral tradition the way things are kept, or the way they are lost?