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.

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.