CHS Essentials | Oral Poetics


In this week’s featured CHS Essentials video, Greg Nagy talks about the body of poetry. The word ‘body’ is very important in its use, in that it conveys something that is not just systematic but is also alive; just like oral poetry. Oral poetry comes alive in performance. How does the word ‘kuklos’ or cycle in modern English connect to oral poetics? Watch our featured video to find out:

Professor Nagy suggests two good companions in the exploration of oral poetics. You can find the full-text publications in the links below.

  • Homeric Questions, electronic version of Homeric Questions, originally published in 1996 by the University of Texas Press
  • Poetry as performance: Homer and beyond, originally published in 1996 by Cambridge University Press, published online in 2009 by the Center for Hellenic Studies, with the permission of CUP