Notes from the Walter Ong Collection

We’ve updated the Walter J. Ong Collection web site and added a number of items, including

• A section on Ong’s unfinished book Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Word and Digitization, which includes material from and related to the book;
• 13 articles and essays published in Saint Louis University publications between 1939-1979;
• 16 reviews published in Saint Louis University publications between 1940-1984, including Ong’s reviews of Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato and Brian Stock’s The Implications of Literacy;
• 2 letters in which Ong explains the development of his interest in orality-literacy studies and Marshall McLuhan’s influence on his work;
• 6 new lectures, including “The End of the Age of Literacy,” “The Sound-Sight Split in Latin,” “Worship at the End of the Age of Literacy,” and “Orality, Textuality, and Electronics Unlimited”;
• 6 new images, including two drawings by Ong and a picture of his typewriter; and
• 17 unpublished articles, notes, and fragments, including a working outline for Orality and Literacy, four fragments removed from The Presence of the Word, and a number of lecture notes from the Language as Hermeneutic course files.

Ong seems to have kept his syllabi and course notes on index cards. As I’ve mentioned before, he could print extremely small, and thereby pack an index card full of information. The courses I’ve found:

-Orality and Literate Cultures
-The Origins and the Study of Literature
-Polemic in Literary and Academic Tradition: An Historical Survey
-The Practice of Interpretation of Prose/Practical Criticism: Prose
-The Practice of Interpretation of Poetry/Practical Criticism: Poetry
-Literature and the Nature of the Word (more…)

Came across folders for SLU-based lectures Ong gave from 1990-1996. Included are folders for the 1990-1991 and 1991-1992 English Graduate Student Symposium series. Both Symposium series files contain a general overview, talking points for each symposium, and supporting materials (from handouts for the graduate students to essay’s Ong draws from). (more…)

It seems a Montana State University course on oral traditions required students to keep online journals:

Oral Traditions
The Oral Tradition
Oral Traditions
Memories of a Myth-Teller
Responses to Thoughts
Oral Traditions
MLS 337 ORAL TRADITIONS
Oral Traditions
Oral Tradition
Oral Traditions
The Power of Orality
Oral Traditions E-Journal
Story Time
Guy With the Cowboy Hat
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations…
E-Traditions of Orality
Oral Traditions Engl 377
Kelly Stoll’s Journal
Oral Traditions
Oral Traditions
MSU English 337
Oral Traditions
opai’s English 337 journal
Original Drivel
Oral Literatures Journal
Oral Traditions
A Journey into the Traditions of Orality
Assigned Journal
Oral Traditions
Waynes ENGL 337 ORAL TRADITIONS Blog
English 337
Oral Traditions Journal

With all this required course work online I’d expect to find an online syllabus as well. If there is one, I can’t seem to find it.

More finds from Ong’s English files.

-Old English folder has notes from the Beowulf course Ong took from Francis Magoun. Jess Bessinger was Magoun’s assistant and the two alternated teaching the course.

-Middle English folder includes notes from a class on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which Ong took from Magoun.

(As mentioned earlier, the archives also have both Ong’s annotated copy of Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Tolkien and Gordon’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We may have enough material here to make an interesting, if short, study of Magoun as teacher. I ought to see what Harvard has on hand.)

I also found two photographs of Gerard Manley Hopkins which have been given to Ong, in the “English, Nineteenth Century” folder, and notes from Perry Miller’s course “American Religious Expressionism.”

Back to the archives today after a week of vacation. I finished off the last of the correspondence files and quickly worked through the rest of the C and all of the D files. I found the E files, which include English classes Fr. Ong both took and taught, quite interesting. Some highlights:

-Ong’s Harvard Ph.D. exams and notes (”English, Miscellaneous” folder).

-course material from a 1998 intro to graduate studies course titled “The Origins and Study of Literature.” The two major texts were Richard Altick’s The Art of Literary Research and Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction. Ong referred these as the “old” and “new” orientations (”English, Miscellaneous: 152-600 The Origins and Study of Literature” folder).

-notes and old exams from classes Ong took from Marshall McLuhan here at SLU. They include McLuhan’s courses “Rhetoric and Interpretation” and “The Practice of Interpretation: Prose” (”English Interpretation 152-481″ folder), and “Special Graduate Reading Course (Renaissance),” “Studies in English Renaissance Literature: Poetry Exclusive of Spenser,” and “Studies in English Renaissance Literature: Spenser” (”English, Renaissance 152-431″ folder.)