History of Autolalia

I find that autolalia is, in many ways, a lost art form, not unlike Thoreau's claim about walking from the 1850s: "I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived 'from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,' to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, 'There goes a Sainte-Terrer,' a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander."  It is in this tradition that I seek to place autolalia. 

From the Greek αὐτοκ, or “auto” meaning oneself, and λαλιά, or “lalia”, meaning talking or chatter.  The term is not in the Oxford English Dictionary (I am pretty sure that I'm not just making the whole thing up), yet judging from similar entries, this term likely holds a degree of negative connotation.  Related words such as “echolalia”, which is repeating the chatter of others, or  “coprolalia”, which is uttering obscene words (potential blog name, anyone?), are often associated with mental disorders.  Yet, here I wish to dispel the myth that autolalia is a mental disorder. 

The word's Greek origins date back to the great bard Homer (this is not an unusual occurrence in a culture accustomed to oral modes of storytelling).  Whilst travelling the countryside with his wagon of puppets, Homer was frequently documented (often on the road between Athens and Eretria, and occasionally Korinth) reciting his tales quietly to himself.  Homer's cool, calm, collected demeanor was so well known and commonly associated with autolalia, that the performance of “self chatter” was an extremely popular fad between 860 and 855 bce.  The great Athenian king Karanus was a well-known mumbler in the fashion of Homer.  In the later years of Homer's life, once blindness had cast its shadow across his world, autolalia took on a more useful function, as Homer would use his voice as a kind of beacon, like a bat, and listen to the sound reverberate off walls to find his way around urban areas.  Aside, from being associated with intellect and wisdom, autolalia soon took on the form of public entertainment.  Contrary to popular belief, Homer was more than just a storyteller--he was a renowned actor and puppeteer.  In-between episodes of The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer would put on an ancient version of a minstrel show where he played all the characters, talking to himself in the voice of 3, 4 or even 5 different characters, with a puppet on each hand.  Yet the skill of Homer's tonal inflections kept the presentation of each character unique.  In fact, Homer was widely known to have had a different voice and acting style for every character in The Iliad and The Odyssey (I’ve read that he performed a steamy Helen of Troy). 

With the rise of written literature in the west, autolalia became less and less frequently associated with learned culture.  It would not be until the rise of Christianity and the establishment of monasteries across Europe that monks revived autolalia as a respected and learned practice.  It is widely thought that monks were not allowed to speak according to rules intended to limit speech during most hours of the day, yet especially after Compline.  Yet, this is not the case.  The Benedictine rules for silentium only regarded speech between persons; it did not regulate speech to oneself.  In fact, the inside of a monastery was widely acknowledged to be a raucous, confusing place with hundreds of monks all holding conversations between their minds and bodies, oftentimes degenerating into weeping, wailing, moaning, ranting, raving, shouting, yelling, screaming, barking, etc.  Aside from debating the primacy of the mind or body, this unique form of autolalia helped millions of monks over thousands of years to memorize the scriptures, so when minute spelling or syntax changes accidentally found their way into manuscripts, nearly all of the monks in a given order were capable of spotting the error.

I will periodically include more on the history of autolalia, but in the meantime, I hope that I have successfully impressed upon you, gentle reader, that unlike other auto-linguistic issues, autolalia has a renowned history that, in many ways, underpinned the very fabric of western society until the invention of the printing press in 1440.