5. Homer as an Oral-Traditional Poet* Some misconceptions have arisen about the “oral theory” and about the quality of the Serbo-Croatian oral-traditional epic and its possible relevance to an understanding of the Homeric poems. They are the subject of this paper. Much of its burden is to demonstrate to the Homerist how the superb singer in the South Slavic tradition can make… Read more
4. Avdo Međedović, Guslar* Demodocus, I praise you beyond all mortal men, whether your teacher was the muse, the child of Zeus, or was Apollo. —Homer, Odyssey 8.487-488 Avdo Međedović of the village of Obrov, a half-hour’s walk from Bijelo Polje in eastern Montenegro, died sometime during 1955 at the approximate age of eighty-five. It may well be… Read more
3. Homeric Echoes in Bihać* In the Milman Parry Collection of Oral-Traditional Literature in the Harvard University Library are a number of texts that tell of the return of a hero after a long captivity to find his wife about to marry again. [1] This basic Odyssean tale attracted Parry because of its similarity to the Homeric… Read more
2. Homer’s Originality: Oral Dictated Texts* In his impressive book Heroic Poetry, Sir Cecil M. Bowra places Homer “in the middle of an important change produced by the introduction of writing. ” “Behind him [Homer] lie centuries of oral performance, largely improvised, with all its wealth of formulae adapted to an exacting metre; these he knows and uses fully. But if he… Read more
1. Words Heard and Words Seen* It seems superfluous to remark that in the history of mankind words were heard before they were seen. For the majority of people, as a matter of fact, words still are heard rather than seen, and even those who have learned to visualize words as containing particular letters in a particular sequence continue to operate much… Read more
Introduction [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] It is of the nature of things that Homer and… Read more
Acknowledgments I thank the good friends and colleagues who urged me to publish a selection of my papers, especially most recently James Hankins, Richard Janko, and Jan Ziolkowski. I am also grateful to Gregory Nagy for encouragement and for accepting the volume into the series Myth and Poetics of which he is editor. I deeply appreciate his gracious foreword, and thank him for many other kindnesses over… Read more
Foreword Gregory Nagy Epic Singers and Oral Tradition, by Albert B. Lord, is a particularly distinguished entry in the Myth and Poetics series. My goal, as series editor, has been to encourage work that helps to integrate literary criticism with the approaches of anthropology and pays special attention to problems concerning the nexus of ritual and myth. A model of such integration and emphasis is Lord’s… Read more
Works Cited Austin, J.L. 1955. How to Do Things with Words. Ed. J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. 2nd ed. 1962. Cambridge, MA. Bowra, C.M. 1961. Greek Lyr ic Poetry From Alcman to Simonides. London. Burkert, Walter. 1979. Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley, CA. Burkert, Walter. 1977. Greek Religion. Trans. John… Read more
Chapter V: The Descent of the Goddess The Apotheosis of Difference Ὣς ἔφασαν κοῦραι μεγάλου Διὸς ἀρτιέπειαι καί μοι σκῆπτρον ἔδον δάφνης ἐριθηλέος ὄζον δρέψασαι, θηητόν· ἐνέπνευσαν δέ μοι ἀυδὴν θέσπιν, ἵνα κλείοιμι τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα… Hesiod, Theogony How is the poetic voice constituted? The question has vexed critics in one form or another from the time poetry became… Read more
