Walter J. Ong

Thomas J. Farrell (University of Minnesota Duluth)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 30 Nov 1912
Died 12 Aug 2003
Activity 1932-2003

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Literary Critic/ Historian

Resources

Walter Jackson Ong, S.J., was one of the most deeply original thinkers in the twentieth century. He has more than 400 different publications to his credit, not counting reprintings. In his early work he studied the writings on dialectic and rhetoric of Peter Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, 1515-1572), the French humanist logician and educational reformer. Through a great variety of publications and lectures, Ong arguably did as much as his friend and former teacher Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) to call attention to the specific nature of -- and differences between -- primary oral culture, chirographic (or manuscript) culture, typographic (or print) culture, and secondary oral culture. (Ong's thinking about these different forms of culture i…

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2990 words

Citation: Farrell, Thomas J.. "Walter J. Ong". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 March 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3420, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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