Communication media, memory, and social‐political change in Eric Havelock

The classicist Eric Havelock is often viewed as one of the strongest proponents of the so‐called orality‐literacy theses. His work is foundational to the idea of media ecology. His most noteworthy contribution to the theory of media ecology, it is argued, is the manner in which he makes moral codes and communication codes inseparable through a theory of memory (echoing). That inseparability allows the linking of the psychological and social lifeworlds, i.e., the creation of social identity, and explains Plato's need to destroy traditional rhetoric and poetic.

Notes

Bruce E. Gronbeck (Ph. D., University of Iowa) is the A. Craig Baird Distinguished Professor of Public Address at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242. Dr. Gronbeck has authored four textbooks and edited Spheres of Argument (1989), Media, Consciousness, and Culture (1991), and Presidential Campaigns and American Self Images (1994). He has been a Fulbright Lecturer at Uppsala University, Sweden (1992) and has lectured extensively in Sweden, Italy, and Finland. He wishes to thank Iowa's Obermann Center for Advanced Studies for its support of this project.