Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that the oration of these poems might be akin to jazz playing, where a musician knows the broad, basic structure of a work and fills it in with improvisation.
So then, “the” canonical version of eg the Iliad is just one version that was recorded, and it would have actually varied across the different retellings?
How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
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Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#12I see the article meant to educate readers in to put in a perspective. I'm not able to grasp it. Would you help me out
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#13I see the article meant to educate readers in to put in a perspective. I'm not able to grasp it. Would you help me out
I’m assuming English is a second language for you, and I will piece together the author’s assumptions for you as best I can. Please forgive incorrect assumptions.
It had been assumed that Homer’s “writings” were indeed written down by whoever was Homer. Whether Homer was one person, or a collection of writers collectively named Homer, is the subject of debate. But it has been widely assumed that it was initially written down, and not passed orally, because no one can remember that much. Turns out...
So one dude makes recordings of more modern oral traditions, and concludes that Homeric writings very well could have been initially oral. And then the dude dies young and under mysterious circumstances.
As personal commentary, the argument against passing the story orally forgets that just about all Buddhist writings started out as oral and not written (as one example).
I hope that is helpful for you.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#14Alvaro de Menard wrote an excellent summary of the long debate surrounding the Who was Homer? question. In his article [1] de Menard describes how Parry’s hypothesis accounted for aspects of the Iliad and Odyssey that could not be explained cleanly by prior theories.
[1]: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/01/17/having-had-no-pr... "Having Had No Predecessor to Imitate, He Had No Successor Capable of Imitating Him"
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#15Did scholars really believe that verbal transmission of poetry/religious was rare? It's a well documented trait of tons of Proto-Indo-European cultures such as Celtic, Norse, Germanic, Greek, Iranian, and Indic.
Not to mention the fact that oral transmission never stopped[1][2]. But I think the point isn't that they didn't believe there were epic poems being recited from memory, only that this particular epic, the Iliad and Odyssey, was in doubt. Whether it was a single (or dual) oral epic, or it was a compilation of other poems that didn't come together until after it was written down.
If there was indeed someone spreading a myth that ancient people weren't smart enough to recite a poem like the Iliad, I doubt it was said in an academic context and was instead ideology. An arrogance akin to the oft repeated claim that people once thought the world was flat.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#16Did scholars really believe that verbal transmission of poetry/religious was rare? It's a well documented trait of tons of Proto-Indo-European cultures such as Celtic, Norse, Germanic, Greek, Iranian, and Indic.
No, traditions of oral transmission was well known at the time, especially for illiterate cultures. The question was if Homer was composed and transmitted orally.
The question is valid for Homer because a lot of works from antiquity was composed in writing. E.g the Histories of Herodot was composed in writing by a single person, and transmitted by reading aloud from text.
If the different narrators riffed and improvised based on the formula, then there might never have been a single "Homer" at all. These questions are far from settled.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#17Alvaro de Menard wrote an excellent summary of the long debate surrounding the Who was Homer? question. In his article [1] de Menard describes how Parry’s hypothesis accounted for aspects of the Iliad and Odyssey that could not be explained cleanly by prior theories. [1]: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/01/17/having-had-no-pr... "Having Had No Predecessor to Imitate, He Had No Successor Capable of Imitating Him…
Thank you, that is a much better article on the subject.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#18I see the article meant to educate readers in to put in a perspective. I'm not able to grasp it. Would you help me out
I’m assuming English is a second language for you, and I will piece together the author’s assumptions for you as best I can. Please forgive incorrect assumptions. It had been assumed that Homer’s “writings” were indeed written down by whoever was Homer. Whether Homer was one person, or a collection of writers collectively named Homer, is the subject of debate. But it has been widely assumed that it was initially writ…
Thanks for the details. I would like to chat more, I tried to type here but content were going out of context, if you are interested email me at svetrivel.91 @ gmail.com.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm unsure of your point here--isn't memorizing the text itself much harder than knowing this kind of high level structure, which I venture many people had/have no conscious awareness of anyway?
I think that the oration of these poems might be akin to jazz playing, where a musician knows the broad, basic structure of a work and fills it in with improvisation.
Also akin to freestyle rap, where the storyteller knows the beats of the tale they're telling, and comes up with a particular rhyme on-the-fly for each sentence by following the structure of the verse.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#20The Homeric epics and Homeric Hymns were written down in a "public works" event by Peisistratos in 6th century BC Athens [1] -- for the new institution of the panathenic festival. Both the oral culture and literate transmission of Homer are worth celebrating!