The Literary Turn: Writing, Consciousness, and the Greek Historians
During the 9th century BCE, Muse-inspired Homeric rhapsodes are said to have traveled the Ancient Greek isles singing the Epics. The Homeric invocation highlights the absence of a writing system to record knowledge. Despite the adoption of the alphabet in the mid-8th century BCE, oral tradition maintained greater cultural authority and writing was considered a mnemonic technology. Despite carefully composing their verses with writing, Archaic Greek poets never claim to "write" their poetry, implying that, like the Homeric bards of the pre-literate era, they produced their works through divine inspiration from the Muses. The first self-proclaimed Greek "writer" was the historian, Hecataeus of Miletus. Instead of invoking the Muse, he is the first writer to use the first-person verb “grapho” to declare that his work was composed solely by him and not by divine inspiration. Herodotus and Thucydides follow suit, using variations of this verb (grapsō and synegrapse) to describe their creative process. Additionally, the historians distinguish their works from their predecessors by emphasizing data collection through first-hand observation (autopsy) along with painstaking analysis and revision of all available information before writing. These self-declared ancient writers created what I call the Autographic Turn, in which a literary figure identifies himself both the creator of a literary text and emphasizes that writing was his method of knowledge production.
This project examines the implications of the Greek historians' 1) self-declaration as writers by using the forms of the Greek verb graphō, 2) their disregard for the Muses, and 3) their decision to record information obtained through firsthand observation (autopsy) in conjunction with Ronald Kellogg’s Cognitive Theory of Writing and consciousness. Unlike speaking, which is automatically performed by humans, writing is a complex learned action since converting thoughts into orthographically proper written words requires coordination of multiple cognitive processes. Writing requires metacognition - the constant re-evaluation of one’s thoughts. Kellogg, a cognitive psychologist who specializes in studying writing, suggests that both metacognition and handwriting are paired activities due to the heavy cognitive load they place on Working Memory which is responsible for temporarily managing information while an individual is thinking. The Working Memory consists of the Phonological Loop, the Visuospatial Sketchpad, and the Episodic Buffer, which all work together to access and convert information sometimes stored in Long Term Memory into words. Other studies suggest that Metacognition corresponds with a conscious mental state since - from a neurocognitive perspective - a writer engages brain regions responsible for spatial processing, motor coordination, language production, reasoning, and orthography making writing a complex, whole-brain activity.
Marking the similarities between the historians’ writing process and the modern neuropsychological theories on writing and consciousness, we suggest that by declaring themselves “writers,” ancient historians demarcated their works as being produced through a different cognitive process from those of undeclared writers who invoked the muse. Their emphasis on autopsy, analysis, and revision as components of the writing process resembles Kellogg’s theory of writing as a conscious activity. This contrasts with the Muse-inspired, undeclared writers whose works might be classified as “non-conscious” or “sub-consciously” produced texts. This project engages with cognitive scientific approaches to suggest that the Greek historians’ self-identification as writers might allude to an early conceptualization of consciousness foreshadowing the rise of literacy in Antiquity.
These first self-declared writers prompted the rise of the Literary Turn, in which the written medium overtook Oral Tradition as the authoritative arena and means of discourse. This process, working its way through the Latin writers appears to have developed to completion by the end of the 1st century CE, when pseudo-Longinus’ work “On the Sublime” is published and serves as the first example of aesthetic and literary criticism of solely written works that are consumed by readers and not through public performance or recitation. Writing had fully transitioned from a mnemonic tool to fully-fledged medium for experiencing ecstasy and cognitive states beyond the limits of rationality’s grasp. This is particularly interesting within the context of the rise of Christianity and the role that Scripture played within it, since it had primarily been important for Judaism, but grew to become part of another religious tradition. Contextualized within the rise of the Second Sophistic’s reinvention of rhetoric in the first century CE, this provides a competing medium for public intellectualism in the early Roman Empire.
Key terms: Oral tradition, Kellogg’s cognitive writing theory, consciousness, critical thinking, writing, inspiration, Central Executive Function, Second Sophistic
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