Wax Tablets of the Mind Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity

"Jocelyn Penny Small, in WAX TABLETS OF THE MIND: Cognitive studies of memory and literacy in classical antiquity, has had the bright idea of trying to defamiliarize high literacy by setting what we know of the nitty-gritty of ancient writing-practice into the context of cognitive psychologists' work on memory. put simply, her question is: how did the highly literate cope with the increase in handwritten texts of all kinds, from the Hellenistic period onwards? Her answer is: by relying on, and training, memory. Memory is a highly ambiguous friend, obliging and treacherous by turns. So what the ancients remembered was gist, not text; they generally got the argument right, but the words wrong. They saw writing not as an external substitute for memory, as we tend to do, but as a product of internalized memories of other texts they had heard read, a substitute for speech. "Small, Jocelyn P. is the author of 'Wax Tablets of the Mind Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity', published 1997 under ISBN 9780415149839 and ISBN 0415149835.