In his 1966 book The Temper of Our Time, Eric Hoffer asserts that all literary traditions sprang from a collapse of a civilization, thereby providing unemployed scribes the impetus to record something other than shipping manifests and other business transactions. He says that the bard - the storyteller - was the storehouse of all history and tradition until then. Whaddaya think?

Early man began to record what he heard when someone said, "Wanna hear a good one?"

Don't know. I'd say that oral traditions (folklore) tended to predate literature (written lore). The Greeks and Romans (and the Chinese for that matter) had a whole bunch of literature before their civilizations ever collapsed. Bunk, I say.

Remember the early literature at the Oriental Institute, Geoff? I agree with z.

I'd like to take the opportunity to recommend The Hidden Book in the Bible by Prof. Richard Friedman, Professor of Hebrew Studies at UCSD. It's his reconstruction of the entire J source -- the oldest of the five source documents of the Torah (see documentary hypothesis)-- and I found it fascinating. He titles it In the Day because they are the first three words of the document. It's a chronological history from the creation of the world (the Genesis chapter 2 creation story) until the middle of Solomon's reign, with a consistent, distinctive narrative voice and none of the kooky, wtf contradictions and changes in style. It was probably written down around 800 BCE, around the same time The Iliad was written down (I'm guessing that writing was making the rounds of the eastern Mediterranean at that time) although it may have drawn upon earlier documents that were lost. I felt like I was reading a document nobody had read in 2500 years, that had been hiding in plain sight. It's a great story, and a great detective story.

I don't know whether it fits the collapsing-civilization theory -- civilizations seem to collapse fairly frequently.

Not sure but love the many different variations of the written word; here in Ireland, we have samples of Ogham which is very basic which resembles markings in fencing poles and I personally like Quipus, which we tried to replicated as kids.

Bea

It seems to me that literature would flourish when people had time to write, ie not during the collapse of civilization.

Many thanks, Neveu!

Yes, Kalleh, that stuff WAS ancient. Perhaps Hoffer didn't look in the right places, or those places hadn't been discovered in 1966. And he wasn't a linguist or historian, he was a longshoreman! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer

Nevertheless, it might still be true that commerce gave rise to writing.

Ammon Shea, who has published some language books including "Reading the OED" (and has posted here!), was a furniture mover. Here is his Blog .

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Originally posted by goofy:
It seems to me that literature would flourish when people had time to write, ie not during the collapse of civilization.

Hoffer's thought is that when the mercantile end of a civilization has collapsed, office hacks would be unemployed, thus giving them the time and impetus to write down what had previously been oral tradition only.

I suppose that applying that idea to the present, we should have seen an uptick in literature during the depressions of the 1890s, the 1930s, and the present one.

Good point, Geoff, particularly with the 1930s depression. Was there one?

Actually, the WPA provided funding for some artists and writers during the 1930s, and we wouldn't have had Steinbeck had the depression not hit. And the cultural earthquake of the US Civil War spawned a whole literature genre.

And we have Fifty Shades of Grey.

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And the cultural earthquake of the US Civil War spawned a whole literature genre.

Absolutely! I also think the social upheaval of the late 60s and early 70s spawned a lot of out-of-the-box thinking, such as in computer science or even in nursing.