Oral performance carried poetry’s propaganda to mass audiences in pre-literate societies

Evidence

Just as coins and inscriptions could be seen by everyone, so poems could be memorized, recited and sung, thus reaching a very wide audience. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 468

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the mnemonic-power argument from Ong’s oral-culture work and the way sound-based media (radio, podcast) again reach non-reading audiences. — connects to: Pre-print cultural exposure was limited to sermons, frescos, and travelling spectacles — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 27