> Though saturated in corporate narratives and televisual plots, we evidently still make up songs about heroes.
Love this.
How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
51–60 of 62 posts
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#52I read some of the classic epics before learning about their mode of delivery and memorization, and was a bit perplexed at some of the repetitions and formulae. Then I learned that, for example, some characters would have multiple epithets (grey-eyed, neat-ankled, all-seeing, etc) that in Greek would be selected essentially not because they were the best descriptor, but because they were the ones that would complete…
Today, we attach error correcting codes to digital data. The first I learned about was the parity bit on RS232 transmission. The bits of each byte had to add up to a certain value, or the byte was wrong.
Another linguistic example would be the military phonetic alphabet, which intentionally adds extra syllables to each letter for the purpose of making them easily distinguishable even over noisy lines.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#53This is how the books of the Odyssey are structured: TROY ---- 1. Kikones (innocent city is ambushed) 2. Lotus Eaters (temptation, delay) 3. Cyclops (monster) 4. Aeolus (greedy crew delays journey) 5. Laestrygonians (monster) 6. Circe (temptation) 7. HADES 8. Sirens (temptation) 9. Scylla (monster) 10. Cattle/Sun (greedy crew delays journey) 11. Charybdis (monster) 12. Calypso (temptation, delay) 13. Phaecia (innocen…
Charybdis (a whirpool) and Scylla (a multi-headed monster) was the same episode in Homer's Odyssey. That was the whole point of the episode: Ulysses had to decide whether to risk his entire ship and crew or definitely sacrificing a few for guaranteed passage of the rest. The classic trolley dilemma for an audience of bronze-age seafarers. Or perhaps I read a completely different "Odyssey" by a different "Homer"?
You might have? Odysseus chooses Scylla, but then is punished by Zeus after his crew slaughters the Oxen of the Sun; his ship is destroyed and he is sent on its timbers back to Charybdis.
I wonder if there's a good term for when people confuse what an element in a popular work is most famous for for the actual details of that work. Call it the "Play it again, Sam" fallacy.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#54This is how the books of the Odyssey are structured: TROY ---- 1. Kikones (innocent city is ambushed) 2. Lotus Eaters (temptation, delay) 3. Cyclops (monster) 4. Aeolus (greedy crew delays journey) 5. Laestrygonians (monster) 6. Circe (temptation) 7. HADES 8. Sirens (temptation) 9. Scylla (monster) 10. Cattle/Sun (greedy crew delays journey) 11. Charybdis (monster) 12. Calypso (temptation, delay) 13. Phaecia (innocen…
Is the the chronological order of the events? Because the Odyssey is told in a different order.
Yes, this is the order of the journey, not the book order.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, all of the "wine-dark sea"s and "rosy-fingered dawn"s might have worked as filler while the poet was queueing up the next part of the narrative.
kennings, as this game is called in anglo-saxon, aren’t filler per se. Though they are also a memory aide (for the poet and the audience), they are primarily part of the way the skill of a scop (bard/epic poet) was judged was by how cleverly he could choose the right kenning for the mood and meter of where in the poem he was. A saxon kenning for poet is “story-weaver”, and that’s actually very apt.
That's interesting, where can I read more about this?
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#56This is how the books of the Odyssey are structured: TROY ---- 1. Kikones (innocent city is ambushed) 2. Lotus Eaters (temptation, delay) 3. Cyclops (monster) 4. Aeolus (greedy crew delays journey) 5. Laestrygonians (monster) 6. Circe (temptation) 7. HADES 8. Sirens (temptation) 9. Scylla (monster) 10. Cattle/Sun (greedy crew delays journey) 11. Charybdis (monster) 12. Calypso (temptation, delay) 13. Phaecia (innocen…
Is the the chronological order of the events? Because the Odyssey is told in a different order.
I don't think that I can correct the original post at this point, but I meant "episodes" not "books."
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
kennings, as this game is called in anglo-saxon, aren’t filler per se. Though they are also a memory aide (for the poet and the audience), they are primarily part of the way the skill of a scop (bard/epic poet) was judged was by how cleverly he could choose the right kenning for the mood and meter of where in the poem he was. A saxon kenning for poet is “story-weaver”, and that’s actually very apt.
That's interesting, where can I read more about this?
There's probably a lot of literature out there. I like the scholarly essays that accompany Chickering's translation of Beowulf -- maybe start there and follow the reference trail if you get sucked in.
ISBN-13: 978-1400096220
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#58Earlier 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 don't know about this particular case, but I have some (weak, anecdotal) evidence that at least sometimes the high-level structure is harder to remember robustly than the details. I saw an amateur pianist sit down to play (a solo piano version of) Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue". He took from his pocket a bit of paper containing, not the actual score of the piece, but a lot of things of the form "Starts in Bb major",…
compare learning a dozen songs to memorizing a particular order you want to perform them in.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How very daring, comparing dear homer to freestyle rap. I don't disagree, but have to say freestyle is ideally song-writing in real time. Personally, I think this means the opposite of recitation. In practice, it is just-in-time and thus very repetetive (I'm happy I managed to make this comment HN on-topic! Thoughts?). Therefore, it's as variable as any writing, though the constraints may require certain techniques a…
> Personally, I think this means the opposite of recitation.
Possibly true, but my point was that Epic Poems would not have been transmitted merely by recitation of exact learned words, but by a rhapsodist learning the story and internalizing it.
Then it would be conveyed as a mixture of repeated learned verses and freestyle improvisation of parts of the story; that would explain how completely new sections appear in the different versions of epic poems.
Re: How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
#60This is how the books of the Odyssey are structured: TROY ---- 1. Kikones (innocent city is ambushed) 2. Lotus Eaters (temptation, delay) 3. Cyclops (monster) 4. Aeolus (greedy crew delays journey) 5. Laestrygonians (monster) 6. Circe (temptation) 7. HADES 8. Sirens (temptation) 9. Scylla (monster) 10. Cattle/Sun (greedy crew delays journey) 11. Charybdis (monster) 12. Calypso (temptation, delay) 13. Phaecia (innocen…
Charybdis (a whirpool) and Scylla (a multi-headed monster) was the same episode in Homer's Odyssey. That was the whole point of the episode: Ulysses had to decide whether to risk his entire ship and crew or definitely sacrificing a few for guaranteed passage of the rest. The classic trolley dilemma for an audience of bronze-age seafarers. Or perhaps I read a completely different "Odyssey" by a different "Homer"?
Your memory is likely faulty, or you may have read an abridged version.
Odysseus first has to choose between Charybdis and Scylla. He and his (surviving) crew pass Scylla and reach the isle of the sun-god. There, the crew kill and eat the cattle, angering the gods. When they depart, a storm pushes their foundering ship back to Charybdis, which only Odysseus escapes, drifting while clinging to the remains of his ship's mast.