| dc.description | Though oral tradition is not usually concerned with texts such as Julian of Toledo's Prognosticon, I hope I have convincingly demonstrated that even here, in a work comprised mostly of remembered quotations of Patristic authors we see the traditions of oral memory and composition at work. The peripheral elements of this text, its titles and glosses, provide evidence of just such a mode of composition. From another perspective, we might want to classify the Prognosticon with such works as Plato's Symposium, which record the purported conversation of a group of friends. Perhaps some will decide that the references to oral composition and conversation are mostly artifice or even a pose, rendered in a strictly literate context. Yet, the evidence of the titles and even the glosses to Julian suggest that we can see in the surviving medieval manuscripts some actual evidence of oral composition and a tradition of commentary aided by memory. | eng |
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