Preface; Introduction David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance; Part I. Oral And Literate Aspects Of Culture And Cognition: 1. The oral-literature equation: a formula for the modern mind Eric Havelock; 2. A plea for research on lay literary Ivan Illich; 3. Oral metalanguage Carol Fleisher Feldman; 4. Rational thought in oral culture and literate decontextualization J. Peter Denny; 5. Cree literacy in the syllabic script Jo Anne Bennett and John W. Berry; 6. Literacy: an instrument of Oppression D. P. Pattanayak; Part II. Oral And Literate Forms Of Discourse: 7. Lie it as it plays: Chaucer becomes an author Barry Sanders; 8. The invention of self: autobiography and its forms Jerome Bruner and Susan Weisser; 9. Literacy and objectivity: the rise of modern science David R. Olson; 10. Thinking through literacies Jeffrey Kittay; Part III. Oral And Literate Aspects Of Cognition: 11. Literacy: its characterization and implications R. Narasimhan; 12. The separation of words and the physiology of reading Paul Saenger; 13. Linguists, literacy, and the intersionality of Marshall McLuhan's Western man Robert J. Scholes and Brenda J. Willis; 14. A neurological point of view on social alexia André Roch Lecours and Maria Alice Parente; 15. Literacy as metalinguistic activity David R. Olson; Author index; Subject index.

In this study of the social and psychological implications of literacy, sixteen distinguished scholars provide a sustained and detailed examination of the relations between orality and literacy, the traditions based on them, the functions served by them, and the psychological and linguistic processes recruited and enhanced by them. By shedding the romantic view that literacy is the road to rationality and modernity, the volume provides a more functional view of literacy. The articles place new emphasis on the relationship between speaking and writing and highlight the different ways in which people exploit the particular resources of speech and writing for special purposes, such as building communities, creating records, and specializing genres, such as prose fiction, enhancing private study and meditation, and enhancing the specialization and organization of knowledge.