How oral epics became books

nanwan

How oral epics became books
Textualization of Oral Epics. Edited by Lauri Honko. (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs, 128.) Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000. viii + 392 pp.

Hard (ISBN 3-11-016928-2), 128 ?
www.deGruyter.com

One of the more reflexive topics in folklore studies to have emerged over the last few years is an awareness of the process by which oral performances have been rendered into print for various audiences. Textualization of Oral Epics, edited by the esteemed Finnish folklorist, Lauri Honko, is a collection of essays by an incredible international gathering of some of the most accomplished scholars in the study of oral epic and folklore in the West. As John Miles Foley writes in his contribution on the textualization of South Slavic epic and its implication for oral-derived epic (beginning with Homer), the collection is one of stories – stories of how “epics-become-books”, in terms of cultural contexts, roles of informants and collectors, the acts of intersemiotic translation from performance to final printed product, and many other issues raised and discussed in numerous ways throughout the chapters.

Theory and practice in the making of oral epics
The volume begins with an introductory essay by Lauri Honko on text as process and practice in terms of oral epics, including a discussion of the term “text” in regards to orality and writing. Much of the material is a refinement of ideas formed over a long career of examining oral epic and tempered in the process of textualizing a Tulu epic (discussed in his own chapter) in his landmark work, Textualising the Siri Epic (1998). Of especial value are the precise definitions and concise discussions of concepts that resonate through many essays in the volume, sometimes in different terminological guise. These include “pool of tradition”, “epic register”, “multiforms”, “epic idiolect”, “mode of performance”, and less obvious yet important ones such as “tradition-orientation”– a singer’s stance towards the tradition – and the process of “mental editing” between (and maybe during) performances. He also offers opinion on other phases of the process, including transcription, translation, editing, publishing, and a short discussion on copyright and oral material. Epic studies in particular are seen as ideal for interdisciplinary studies, inviting participation from a variety of fields and approaches, many reflected in the subsequent pages. As seems characteristic of much of Honko’s work, theory is grounded in practice – and often the practical, sometimes delivered in pithy, knowing statements such as, “The accuracy of translation automatically increases when the translator knows that the original text will be available to the reader” (p. 31).

The essays offer a variety of descriptions of the textualization process from different cultural areas and historical eras, the authors providing candid testaments to how they or others did it. The range of tales of textualization suggest that the process is in fact a bundle of processes that tend to unfold in a similar direction, through a range of differing means. The venerable Arthur T. Hatto presents accounts of textualization, particularly on thorny questions of phonemic transcription, for a whole corpus of epics from Siberia and certain contiguous regions, including Ainu, Altaic, Buryat, Evenk, Jakut, and Ob-Ugrian. The processes described at times reveal rather complex agendas of different collecting agents and organs, as well as the spirited determination of many collectors and scholars to re-visit their own written and/or recorded efforts or the earlier efforts of others in order to insure the preservation of the materials. In some instances, the vagaries of working with living traditions on the brink are all too apparent, as in the story of the prolonged and tortuous collection efforts made to set down the Khanty oral epics, which seems to have involved layers of collector-transcribers (and at times singers), all with only part of the requisite skills to produce accurate textualizations. Hatto also includes information on a nineteenth century Arabic version of a Kirghiz epic and adds a few thoughtful paragraphs on the value of versions of “mental texts” in otherwise less than desirable transcriptions, giving Kroeber’s textualization of Inyo-kutavêre’s Mohave epic as an example.

Juha Pentikäinen provides a glimpse into the process of making written texts to complement videotape. In his work on various Siberian groups (specifically the Nanaj of the Amur River region), it becomes clear that the textualization process is not simply one of converting words and gestures to representations in print. Knowledge of the cultural context was key to even accessing the material briefly made available after the death of a particular clan shaman. With only a nine-day window (determined by local custom), Pentikäinen had to depart Moscow and arrive on the scene in hopes of shooting some ritual footage, and begin negotiations for a drum and other ritual materials that the shaman had verbally willed to him. After reading Pentikäinen’s account of the textualized ritual honoring the shaman that he subsequently videotaped, the words seem like pale ghosts on the page, emphasizing once more that they are merely a scholar’s hard-wrought props for grasping at ephemeral phenomena.

Empirical approaches to oral epics
John William Johnson takes on the question of authenticy and textualizations of oral epics made in Western languages primarily for educated Western readers. He discusses the appearance of electronic collecting devices, fluency in language and use of native speakers, fieldwork and ethnographic understanding, accuracy in the actual publications, and how the use of digital technology may enhance cooperation among specialists in a number of fields (literary folklorists, musicologists, computer experts, etc.). Thus, conceptions of authenticity are recognized as emerging processes, subject to dynamic change just as the oral epics to be textualized. He also notes the recurring realization that epic traditions tend to be performed in parts rather than in linear wholes, a concern voiced by others in the volume.

In his essay, “Silencing the Voice of the Singer”, Karl Reichl offers a concise treatment of his experiences in the textualization of Turkic (Uzbek, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kirghiz) oral poetry and epic, focusing on the question of documenting a single performance, versus the creation of representative master text for a given story, and the strategies of “total documentation” versus the textualization of a given performance into what he calls a “critical edition”. He suggests that creating an “edition” (a textualized version of a specific performance) is more in line with the current direction of epic studies than attempts to create an all-encompassing master text, and his advice on textualization is geared in that direction. Aside from contextual and linguistics concerns, he reflects on the inclusion of paralinguistic features, particularly music, and phenomena such as pauses for tea drinking during a performance.

Textualization of ancient epics
Several of the papers deal with the textualization of ancient traditions from various cultures around the world. Joseph Harris attempts to recover the textualization processes from families of ancient Old Norse elegy traditions, and compares them (not greatly to his satisfaction) with other traditions in contiguous parts of northern Europe. John Brockington, writing on the textualization of Sanskrit epics reviews the “oral” elements of major Sanskrit epic traditions, provides comparative textual histories, and suggests that the merging of certain stylistic features in the Ramayana and Mahabharata stories may have something to do with the “Indian concept of oral transmission rather than writing as the agency for fixing a text” (p. 211).

Minna Skafte Jensen traces questions on the writing of the Iliad and Odyssey back to F. A. Wolf’s Prolegomena ad Homerum, written in 1795. That early scholar noted that “oral transmitters tend to change their texts all the time” and suggested that it would be impossible ever to “establish the original form of the two Greek epics” (p. 57) – concepts still under discussion by modern scholars. Reviewing the ensuing attempts to deal with the “Homeric questions”, is exacerbated by a further question – why were the texts recorded at all (and offering an intriguing model in which winners of epic singing contests were rewarded with opportunities to have their mostly fully informed performances written down by teams of scribes), leading in a way to the question of why recent scholars have found it desirable to compose long, coherent poems based on oral performances, leading further to questions of interest and choice on the part of Western scholars working in non-Western areas during the Imperial age and the culture-based choices they made. She also raises the question of the influence of scribe/collectors on the organization of performance of oral material in the non-typical context of performances for collectors.

Working with the singer of epics
In “The Textualization of Swahili Epics”, Jan Knappert item by item relates experiences and advice gained from collecting Swahili epics (an appendix lists 75) since the early 1960s. Many insights are made into the art of human relationships in the collecting and translation process, with sections devoted to poets, local scholars (who may have expertise in local knowledge such as housebuilding, boatbuilding, fishing and hunting, etc.), and the oral singers. One exemplary anecdote deals with the author being “tested” by a local poet who listened to him read part of an epic cycle he had brought for him to examine, the test resulting in the opening of many doors in the community.

Dwight Reynolds is one of the several participants in the volume who wrote at some length on the choices he personally made in preparing his textualization of “The Epic of the Banî Hilâl Bedouin Tribe” (Sîrat Banî Hilâl), which he collected from a knowledgeable singer in the last years of a tradition now seemingly on its last legs. He describes his experiences as an apprentice performer, and his strategies in taping, transcription, and preparing a “definitive” text for publication, aided by two young local men. He also details his interaction with the poet Shaykh Tâhâ, with whom he cooperated in editing the poet’s performances, which years later would be prepared for publication. In negotiating the compromises inherent in preparing a published text (what to do with asides, audience input, musical notation, original language transcription, etc.), he identified four major levels of audience, each with their own needs and agendas of reception. The text was designed to meet to some extent the needs of locals, epic scholars, more general scholars, and an educated reading public.

American folklorist Dan Ben-Amos describes in frank detail his decades long encounter with the “deep Edo” epic register in his experience in textualizing the “Agboghidi” in Benin, a process interrupted by a ten year hiatus from the field, and incorporating the patience to become fluent enough in the epic register (a fluency not shared even by the average audience members) to carry out the tortuous translation process in concert with native helpers. What is striking is his persistence in pursuing the elusive meaning of the epic teller Iditua’s phrasing in an epic register combining prose narration, measured speech, and songs, a search which involved interviewing many other singers, as well as the singer himself, to reconcile the lacunae in meaning in the national epic.

Reconstructing performance
A major voice in the ethnopoetics movement in the United States, Dell Hymes, presents a concise overview of his thoughts on Native American oral art, focusing in part on forms that combine the modalities of singing and speaking, sometimes in a cante fable form that may be included in a discussion of epic, and in comparison with Slavic and Finnish traditions. The chapter includes many sample passages of Native American texts in various transcription and translation formats that in their penultimate form are designed to aid in the “recovery of performance”.

In the final essay in the collection, Anna-Leena Siikala approaches the textualization process from a post-modern perspective, discussing discourses of myth, history, and geneaology in the oral tradition known as korero in the Southern Cook Islands in Central Polynesia. Describing the korero as “superstories” (following Honko), she traces the historical contexts and processes in which the mytho-historical discourses of korero, marked by generic intertextuality in a multidimensional “superdiscourse” of power, were communicated in acts of creative reconstruction and entextualization in writing.

Past testimonies and future methodologies
Textualization of Oral Epics includes a well-balanced set of perspectives and experiences on the theory and craft of creating textualizations of oral epics. It is valuable not only in bringing questions of the textualization process to the forefront, but by providing real and practical testimony about how the process may or has been carried out in different historical eras. While strategies and goals may differ, the fact that we are more aware of what has happened in the past and among contemporaries will allow for the making of more informed choices for those wishing to engage in the complex task of providing a print (or digital) referent for living oral traditions. The collection also allows for the developing of perspective on certain types of textualizations that otherwise might be discounted. With clearer information on exactly what processes were followed in moving from the oral to print, the range of choices and expectations on such acts are clarified and widened.

This seems especially so in the case of what Honko has called “tradition-oriented” epics, those highly edited works, often made from a pastiche of versions to create a complete, polished, linear narrative often used to represent the oral life of a particular group. These texts have been created in relation to many oral traditions worldwide, the best-known being the Finnish Kalevala. They would also include the dozens (if not hundreds) of epic texts from ethnic minority groups in China (such as the Miao,Yao, Yi, Dai, Hani, and Zhuang in the southwest), an area somewhat underrepresented in this volume. Such texts, in a variety of formats, have been made since 1949 by teams of collectors and editors at local and national level cultural bureaus and published in Chinese translation for both scholarly and more general audiences, sometimes in bi-lingual editions.

With more information available on just what has happened to oral material in the move from momentary voice to more physically stable representations in print, scholars and others can better assess concerns such as accuracy, fullness of content, input of local collaborators and editors, etc., as well a whole host of questions involving politics of representation. The accounts of the individual authors concerning their own experiences in collecting and editing often amount to frank revelations of personal triumphs and pitfalls, compromises in collecting, transcribing, translating, and editing – a process succinctly summarized in Foley’s essay as “what gets recorded, what gets published, what gets received?” – as well as practical experience in building rapport, which often determines whether the projects will even take place. What is unanswered (at least fully) in the stories of how texts became, are the impulses that propel the collector/translators to dedicate rather large portions of their lives – years or even decades – to a task so difficult. I have no answer, but can only gratefully thank the authors for their efforts.

Mark Bender
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio, U. S. A.

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nanwan

FF Network No. 21
(March): 22-27

Oral and oral-derived epics in a global view
Part -I

Lauri Honko, Jawaharlal Handoo and John Miles Foley (eds.),
The Epic: Oral and Written. Central Institute of Indian Languages: Mysore, 1998. 234 pp. ISBN 81-7342-055-6.

This volume gathers papers delivered during six panel sessions organized by Lauri Honko for the 11th Congress of the International Society for Folk-Narrative Research, held at the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore, India in January 1995. As such, the collection contains selected reports originating within the framework of a group of approximately 70 active scholars from five continents and 22 countries, known as the "Folklore Fellows in Oral Epics", who at the time of the book's publication had met four times in the years 1993-96. Essays from the first meeting in Turku, Finland in June 1993 appeared as "Epics Along the Silk Roads" in issue 11/1 of the journal Oral Tradition, edited with an introduction by Lauri Honko, while the second, smaller meeting (in Turku, June 1994) addressed "Modes of Performing Epics." The result of the third meeting in Mysore in 1995 is what we find here, while the papers of the fourth meeting in Turku, June 1996 appeared in a volume "Textualization of Oral Epics" in October 2000.

The Epic: Oral and Written was published by the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India, with support from the Academy of Finland. Jawaharlal Handoo, John Foley and Lauri Honko each shared editorial duties at different points in the project. The book opens with Lauri Honko's thoughtful introduction, while the authors and essays themselves are grouped under four thematic headings according to the following scheme: "Oral Composition of Epics" (Lauri and Anneli Honko, John Miles Foley, Minna Skafte Jensen), "Epic Traditions in India" (Heda Jason, John Brockington, Mary Brockington, Susan S. Wadley), "Epic and History" (Doris Edel, Isaac Olawale Albert), and "Integrating Oral and Written" (Lauri Harvilahti, Kirsten Thisted, Jiangbian Jiacuo, Jia Zhi).

In his introduction Honko orients the focus of the diverse essays by presenting a theoretical framework in which the material might be best approached. Research on lengthy oral and semi-oral epics has rapidly improved in the last two decades, Honko tells us, primarily as a result of the quality and amount of fieldwork recently conducted concerning epic and epic-related genres in Africa, Central Asia, India, and Oceania. The study of epic in general, and of oral epic in particular, has almost always been conceived under the influence of the Homeric epics (p. 12), a historical circumstance that has caused distortions in the analysis of traditional supernarratives. Tradition-oriented supernarratives, and the many genres and sub-epics that constitute them, ostensibly stand to gain more from an analysis of their place within the linguistic environment, functional context, and tradition systems in which they live rather than from external comparison to an overburdened exemplum of Homer. To put it another way, the existence of comparative material matching the length of Homeric poetry now exists in abundance, and some of it, including epics collected in Bosnia and Hercegovina, even reveal certain genric similarities to Homer, while the living epics of Kirghizia, Tibet, and Mongolia easily dwarf the length of the Homeric material. In the case of Greece, furthermore, no written tradition survived to relate the facts of the origin or contemporaneous interpretation of Homeric poetry, and so those poems forever remain an anomalous case in which all analysis is involved to some degree in speculative retrieval, philological reconstruction, and aesthetic evaluation - which has sometimes resulted in the development of terminology lacking the coherence and logic of fieldwork-based analyses.

Honko divides epic into three categories: 1) literary, 2) semi-literary or tradition-oriented, and 3) purely oral epics (10). Milton's Paradise Lost exemplifies the first, left outside the focus of the present work. Honko also refrains from a full-length discussion of the third, `pure' oral epic category, whereby especially the claim to "purity" opens "a long chain of questions, even disputes" (12). It is thus the second category of "oral and written" epic which attracts the focus of the papers collected here. Honko adds, "One volume is not going to solve many problems, but it is certainly one way of screening the issues and showing the scholars' view on what should be in the focus of our joint enterprise." If there is one defining feature of the book, Honko's quote points directly to it: theoretical studies of the interrelation between oral and written epics, presented alongside rich fieldwork reports analyzing oral performance and strategies of textualization, provide the reader with a broad range of material that will reward repeated study.


Units in purely oral composition


Lauri and Anneli Honko's article analyzes certain "units of composition" found in the "purely oral" Siri epic as sung and dictated by Gopala Naika - a singer, tradition, and ritual context that they have been collecting and analyzing for over a decade. At the time of the Congress in Mysore, the three-volume Siri Epic project prepared by the Honko-led research team had not yet appeared, and so this essay presents a dense but focused account of (and an excellent introduction to) the many questions, approaches, and solutions that guide the massive 699-page Textualisation of the Siri Epic (FFC 264).

By comparing certain differences in the sung and dictated versions of the epic, the Honkos develop an analytic scheme that covers both emic and etic units. As they put it, "The critical moment in creating a methodology for an analysis of oral epics is choosing the units of composition. Theory must be brought into harmony with empirical field material. We have confronted this fact in our fieldwork among the speakers of Tulu in South Karnataka." (34) The Honkos delimit their units on the basis of both external narrative logic and internal divisions mentioned by the singer in interviews, and they settle on the following scheme as a provisional framework for the description of narrative variation. "Multiforms" are defined as "repeatable and artistic expressions of variable length which are constitutive for narration and function as generic markers." (35) They are based on the texture of the singer's language and can be anywhere from 2 to 120 lines long. The overall narrative line of the song is referred to as the "path of composition", which corresponds to Naika's own use of the word saadi `path' to describe the progression of narrative (43). A "step" is a minimal narrative move within a multiform and along that same path. An "episode" is a unit divided on the basis of narrative logic and overarching plot structure; it excludes non-narrative singing, but can include numerous multiforms. "Description" is a longer narrative unit consisting sometimes of multiple episodes, and it matches closely certain concepts found in ancient Indian poetics. Based on thick documentation and in conversation with previous folkloristic methodology, the Honkos demonstrate that their scheme explains both segmentations in the singing itself as well as wider plot variation in both synchronic and diachronic frames.

After presenting the framework, the article then analyzes three appearances of a "Having a divine child description" (where one will find the occurrence of a multiform within a multiform [49]) as well as the multiforms "Silken Cradle," "Name-Giving," and "Caring." Each example is clearly presented and exhaustively analyzed. The Honkos take care to provide ample text in the original Tulu language so that readers can see for themselves the textural variation and reasons for their recalibration of oral-formulaic methodologies. The research team's attempt to match their analytical scheme to the emic language of the singer, as well as their subsequent analyses on the basis of this framework, will be of great methodological assistance to folklorists planning their own future projects; by constantly referring this question back to similar problems raised by ancient Indian poetics, the Honkos' take an additional step forward by opening a truly astonishing range of questions whose depth and significance will take many, many years to unravel. In this article, the reader is witness to epoch-making research.

John Miles Foley's contribution, entitled "The Rhetorical Persistence of Traditional Forms in Oral Epic Texts", is a valuable contribution to contemporary debates surrounding the interpretation of texts based on, or originating in, oral traditional performance. His chapter outlines a program for reading oral-derived texts by blending oral-formulaic theory, ethnography of speaking, and ethnopoetic approaches into an interpretive methodology that retrieves oral traditional rhetorical structures latent in oral-derived or tradition-oriented texts. The radicality of the tearing of oral performance away from its context in order to create visible textuality, Foley demonstrates, still leaves determinate traces of intralinguistic structures, networks of meaning, and story-patterns that would remain obscure if measured only by the canons of literary poetics. By beginning with the question of "what becomes of oral traditions, committed, in myriad ways, to textual form?" (85), and continuing with the goal of "how to ascertain as well as possible how a given text continues the tradition of reception" (90), Foley draws attention to the essential question of how to recover, interpret, and understand the phenomenal and semantic features in performance that are both preserved and lost, and, ultimately transformed (and frequently still legible) through the process of notation and textualization.

It is by "reading" in this way - by tracing and recreating traditional modes of signification and their still-legible rhetorical structures - that the poem's life and afterlife, through reception and vigilant interpretation, continue to appear to later readers. A fuller elaboration of these reading methodologies can be found in Foley's Singer of Tales in Performance.


The debate on transitional text


Minna Skafte Jensen's point of departure is Albert Lord's use of the term "transitional text" to describe certain texts that depend on both oral performance and writing for their form and structure. In The Singer of Tales, Lord first presented the idea of a hypothetical "transitional text" in order to deny, based on his empirical observations of singers in the former-Yugoslavia, that writing could help a living singer improve his composition by means of written media; for Lord, written and oral composition were incompatible.

Lord's initial disagreement was with Homeric scholars who frequently argued that writing must have been used to improve orally composed materials in order to produce an epic as complex and polished as Homer's. Lord, in response, countered by arguing that the notion of a "transitional text" was not only foreign to the singers whom he had observed in Yugoslavia but ultimately meaningless in a context where separate compositional techniques (the one written, the other oral) exist side by side. Lord therefore concluded that the use of the notion of a "transitional text" in the Homeric case was fundamentally flawed. According to Lord, the Homeric poems might well have been dictated to scribes, with a pace allowing the singer to eliminate metrical and lexical infelicities, but they certainly were not written down by the poet himself; writing and oral composition were two separate techniques, "contrary and mutually exclusive. - - The written technique ... is not compatible with the oral technique, and the two could not possibly combine, to form another, a third, a `transitional' technique" (quoted by Skafte Jensen, p. 94). Interestingly, in The Singer of Tales Lord also proposed other appellations for similar sorts of intermediate, intermedial, or tradition-oriented texts, including "autograph oral" and "oral dictated" texts, the latter of which is a favorite point of contention among Homerists, the former of which seems to have gone relatively unnoticed of late.

However, Lord famously revised his view that the "transitional text" is an impossibility, much the result of having read more closely certain poems in South Slavic traditions in which literate authors exhibited an undeniable competence in both oral and written compositional forms, sometimes in the same poems and in the same `literary' collection. The crucial essay where Lord announces his change of mind is "The Transitional Text" (in A. B. Lord, The Singer Resumes the Tale, Cornell UP, 1995.) As Skafte Jensen points out, Lord's "The Merging of Two Worlds: Oral and Written Poetry as Carriers of Ancient Values" (in John Miles Foley [ed.], Oral Tradition in Literature: Interpretation in Context, University of Missouri Press, 1986) is also essential. According to John Miles Foley's The Theory of Oral Composition (IUP, 1988, p. 49, 55), Lord first considers the possibility of "transitional texts" in an article published in 1968 (entitled "Homer as Oral Poet", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 72: 1-46), but also discusses the topic in 1986 in "erspectives on Recent Work on the Oral Traditional Formula" (Oral Tradition 1: 467-503), to which Skafte Jensen also refers.

After the change of mind, Lord explained with characteristic clarity that "transitional texts" could, in his opinion, be found in cases where oral traditional rhetorical modes were skillfully used in literate compositions by authors who grew up in and around living traditions and had early on composed oral epics but later become fully literate poets. However, it is important to remember that the hypothetical case of a skilled singer of long narrative who also personally uses writing in order to improve the quality of his or her own oral composition, remained, for Lord, anomalous.

Skafte Jensen, knowing all of this very well and presenting it clearly, wants to revisit and reaffirm Lord's initial denial of "transitional texts" in order to shield Homeric studies from the reappearance of the idea of writing-as-an-aid-to-composition, and so she presents her discussion as a critique of the concept of the "transitional text" in general. Skafte Jensen first reviews some of Lord's better critics (certain medievalists and anthropologists who argued, in opposition to Lord, for a continuum of texts between oral and written), and then discusses recent theories concerning the origin of the Greek alphabet and its relation to Homeric transcription in order to demonstrate that Homerists have once again reinstated the "transitional text" as an explanatory model. She points out that recent Homeric scholars such as Barry Powell, in particular, have returned to Lord's notion of "transitional text" in order to argue that writing was responsible for the original form of the poems (certainly writing was essential at some point, but how remains a vexed question).

Rejecting Romantic hypotheses about the "fixation" of early Homeric texts and the oral tradition that gave rise to them, Skafte Jensen's essay wisely separates the notion of "transitional text" from "oral dictated text." She argues that the use of writing for fixation is based on a fallacious conception of history-as-progress, or of the development of culture as oral-to-written, and she recalls the fact that in early Greece writing technology had other, performative functions, particularly in funeral inscriptions, and graffito, where the voice of the written inscription is one of performative authority. Her conclusions not only square with folkloristic research but also reaffirm "the relevance in general of the oral comparison" (112) by rejecting the recent obsession among Homerists with the notion of "fixation": "... the idea of fixation has in general been rather prominent. What if this is totally misdirected? In a way, I think we should consider letting go of the idea altogether" (108).

To this suggestion one would like only to add: could we not also let go of the term "transitional text" itself, and adopt a less teleological, and more phenomenologically precise, term? Is not the notion of a "transition" from "oral" to "written" historically and folkloristically naive? Not surprisingly, Lauri Honko answers this question in the introduction to this volume when he writes that, "The idea of a predominantly one-way traffic from oral to written has been replaced by the more complex models concerning, for example, oral styles in written text and the `written-like' handling of materials in oral performance; the visible or invisible use of notebooks and manuscripts in the oral performances of epics; various forms of `copying' oral text; the transfer of ownership of oral texts, the mental editing of textual elements, oral and written, between performances, the intertextual formation of mental texts in the mind of the singer, etc. This discussion has generally made the border between orality and literacy more fluid than before." (26) (Also Kirsten Thisted's essay, discussed below, explicitly rejects the term altogether.)


by
Aaron Tate
University of Missouri

nanwan

FF Network No. 21
(March): 22-27

Oral and oral-derived epics in a global view
Part -II

Lauri Honko, Jawaharlal Handoo and John Miles Foley (eds.),
The Epic: Oral and Written. Central Institute of Indian Languages: Mysore, 1998. 234 pp. ISBN 81-7342-055-6.


Epics across continents

In perhaps the most ambitious article in its own way, Heda Jason offers an analytical framework for "the description of epic traditions in the Euro-Afro-Asian area (Christian Europe; Moslem North Africa, Near East and Central Asia, non-tribal India, both Hindu and Moslem; and partly, Buddhist Tibet and Mongolia)" (117). Although Jason begins by advocating an ethnopoetic genre of epic, she next provides an abstract categorical framework into which the epics of these regions can be arranged according to four components: compositional structure, internal complexity, mode of characterization, and relation to historical reality, the last of which is then subdivided into "historical", "national", "universal" and "mythic" epics.

The question raised by such an ambitious framework is whether these categories (which are open to the charge of being one scholar's opinion only) have been erected on the basis of empirical observations (i.e., collected texts, oftentimes of fragmentary material, translated primarily into English, German, and Russian, sometimes with little or no contextual information), or are strictly theoretical divisions irrespective of historical transformations and functional variation. To put it another way, if we take the case of the Gesar narrative, an epic whose traditional life has flourished from Ladakh to Tibet and Mongolia and deep into Russian-Mongol Buryatia, one wonders if its myriad versions might not have penetrated many of her categories of "mythic", "universal" and "national" epic in different contexts and at different moments in the life of the tradition and its performers. In any event, her suggestions are provocative, her knowledge encyclopedic, and her essay a welcome contribution to the classic debate surrounding the classification and typology of folklore materials in general, and tradition-oriented epics in particular.

John Brockington's article on formulaic expression in the Ramayana provides a useful inventory of different formulaic repetitions and their functions in the epic, and notes that formulary expressions are not randomly deployed but exhibit a distinctive narrative function. Brockington argues that formulaic padas appear more and more frequently in later parts of the Ramayana in order to imitate a tradition already in decline, and he concludes that this higher frequency of formulaic language is "not an index of orality but rather a sign of decay of the genuine oral tradition" (137), a reversal of earlier oral-formulaic approaches in which scholars attempted to prove the oral provenance of a text by means of statistical or quantitative measures alone.

Mary Brockington gives a provocative and plausible account of the historical interaction in certain Indian traditions of "The Two Brothers" motive (AaTh 303) and the "Stepmother Redaction", the latter of which Kurt Ranke studied extensively in his 1934 FF Communications volume, Die Zwei Brüder. Although Brockington's article is brief, she adduces a copious number of variants and secondary works in order to demonstrate how "The Two Brothers" and "Stepmother Redaction" have almost certainly influenced each other's development in passing through the Ramayana, international folktale traditions, and back again. The "Appendix: Selected Texts and Variants" gathers variants distributed as widely as Bosnia and South Asia.

Susan S. Wadley's paper is based on many years of fieldwork (from 1968 to the present) and offers penetrating insight into the many interacting oral and written traditions surrounding the North Indian Dhola epic. The many manifestations of the epic are widely divergent in form, style, and even content, and her detailed discussion of the possible and actual variations is intriguing. Perhaps the most surprising anecdote concerns the singer Matol, with whom Wadley has worked extensively, a literate singer who produced philosophic versions of the epic filled with verbal games, textural sculpting, and theoretical interpretations but a minimum of narrative continuity. Matol's career as a performer, however, is entirely another matter, since he leads a troop of Dhola performers who present the epic by way of harmonium accompaniment, bowed instruments, percussion, and multiple singing. The existence of such variation in one individual, from rapturous musical performance to studied philosophical epics, is a fine example of the flexibility of traditional reception and the capacities of individual performers to remold the pool of tradition in myriad ways.

The inclusion of a category reserved for the relation between "epic and history" is a refreshing and provocative choice on the editor's part. Doris Edel's account of the proliferation of Irish Táin epics and the surprising stability that governs their many versions gives rise to the proposal that a "mental text" once belonged to the singers, tellers, and tradition, even before written versions appeared. The question of the point of contact between onomastics, historical events, narrative dissemination, and geography is broached here, and the addition of maps, graphs, and other visual aids make the article a unique and useful study.

Isaac Olawale Albert's account of Nigerian Yoruba singers and their place in relation to regional royalty is not only fascinating in and of itself, but useful for helping readers to understand and conceive the position singers might have once held (and in some cases continue to hold) in official courts, while the analysis of the value and degree of accuracy or `truth' that such singers are expected to create, narrate, codify, and preserve, is similarly stimulating.

Lauri Harvilahti provides a dense and informative study of various ways in which variation in performance, genre, metrics, and music can be recovered and analyzed within a corpus of collected texts, and his particular point of departure is material from Ingria. Harvilahti begins by considering the possibility of "incompetence in performance", which is to say, instances in which performances for collectors were disfigured by external, contextual, or functional factors. His example is the singer Naastoi, who in West Ingria once sang excellent songs for the collector V. Alava, but in the following year produced only sixteen verses of one song and another with the help of a daughter-in-law, neither of which compared in scope or complexity to the earlier collected songs. Whereas some interpreters might conclude from this "thin" information that the later materials represented a decay in the tradition or a decline in a particular singer's ability, V. Alava's diary explains that this was certainly not the case: instead, the singer was "in a bad mood" (195) at the time of subsequent collection and did not wish to sing on account of various feasts taking place in the village at the time. Without this contextual information, any number of erroneous hypotheses concerning the singer's failure to produce comparable singing might have been offered. Harvilahti's point, however, is that the ethnopoetic context explains that what V. Alava witnessed was an instance of "incompetence in performance," albeit for perfectly explicable reasons, not a decline in the tradition. This study reminds the reader that performance traditions do not always produce texts suitable for typological analysis, hierarchical arrangement, and systematic historical-developmental interpretation.

Harvilahti's essay, however, goes farther. He outlines different modes of performance in Ingria, and sketches the diversity of thematic concerns performed there, thereby demonstrating the complexity of the tradition and the heterogeneity of texts that its collectors produced. In Ingria, for example, lyrical and lyric-epic women's songs span the semantic spectrum from everyday themes of family life, birth, and courtship, to mythical songs and aetiological poems. Harvilahti invokes Matti Kuusi's observation that women's singing in the region makes frequent use of a "poetic" first person singular "I" as the subject of the poem, even when "the poetic `I' does not necessarily represent the singer herself" (197) but instead reperforms the experiences of the traditional community by means of a first person singular that compresses and expresses in a traditionally referential manner the emotive particularities of the song for its hearers.

What is so curious, and so interesting, Harvilahti explains, is that "certain scenes and formulas centered around the poetic `I' link together poems that do not belong together contentually" (198), but instead form "extensive networks" that include domestic themes of the daughter's fear of isolation in marriage quite alongside mythic, aetiological poems otherwise without thematic relation. Harvilahti concludes that the predominance in this region of a deictic "I" spread across genre and otherwise distinctively different thematic material offers an instance of "adaptation prompted by the lyric-epic poetic network," which is to say, a local tradition of performance that has adapted to the particular narrative concerns of the singers and audience found there, by means of the traditional narrative forms, genre, and techniques available to them. The additional analyses of ways in which notated melodies can be brought to bear on texts, and the demonstrations of metrical incongruencies between collected melodies and collected verses, serve not only to shed light on the Ingrian tradition itself but also to offer useful strategies for folkloristic analysis that will be of interest to a wider audience of folklorists.

Kirsten Thisted's account of the history of collecting in Greenland adds another important, nuanced voice to the discussion of tradition-oriented epics. In fact, Thisted's essay is so nuanced and detailed that it could have easily appeared in any of the sections of this book (except, of course, the section on India) without further qualification. She explains the process and influence of Danish collectors working in Greenland as early as 1823, and presents a useful depiction of certain issues debated, at the instigation of Hinrich Rink, by the Danish administration concerning literacy, `spiritual decline,' and technological change in Greenland. After a section on "early principles of editing" and a critical evaluation of famed Greenlandic collector Knud Rasmussen's work, Thisted not only synthesizes her findings (212-13) but adds them to the debate surrounding "transitional texts" and "transitions" from orality to literacy. Significantly, Thisted reacts to Lord's use of the term "transitional text" by suggesting that it be discarded. Rejecting the implications of teleological development from orality to literacy latent in so many discussions of tradition-oriented texts, Thisted instead argues that one should discuss the "transformation" of oral storytelling into a written medium, or a "meeting" between "traits" of oral and written poetics preserved by authors and editors who enjoyed relative degress of competence and incompetence in both performed and written media (218). In doing so, she eliminates much of the unnecessary debate in which the strawman of `orality-vs.-literacy' is fruitlessly set up and knocked down ad nauseum.

Following Brian Street explicitly, Thisted pluralizes the notion of writing technology into "literacies" and thereby vastly but fruitfully complicates any attempt to write a single "history" of an oral-cum-written literature from a developmental or sequential point of view. Interested readers of this article will want to consult Victor Mair's extensive scholarship on certain Chinese texts that were based on oral storytelling and contributed to the spread of a prosimetric form or "chantefable" from India, through Buddhism, and into popular Chinese culture; Mair explains that the very translation of this genre of "pien-wen" texts is "transformation texts."

Jiacuo Jiangbian's report on "Gesar in Contemporary Tibetan Society" is a brief but tantalizing review of recent work conducted in Tibet. The epic tradition of Gesar remains vibrant in oral and written form, but its remote location and beguiling multiformity leave much still in obscurity. The reader will find discussions of context, forms of transmission, relations to other Tibetan art forms, and speculation on modes of traditional `persistence' of genre down to the present day.

Jiangbian explains that Tibetans still recite Gesar on feast days, for sacrificial rites, and in religious worship. In times past, according to Jiangbian, warring tribes recited Gesar before leaving for battle in order to secure the protection of the war-god. Merchants recited Gesar before setting off for long travels (along the Silk Road, perhaps?). Since Tibetan society has remained largely illiterate outside of temple life, the recitation of Gesar has served as the primary means of education concerning the history, enlightenment, and national culture among Tibetan communities. The epic is filled with folk proverbs, Jiangbian tells us, and these proverbs have entered the daily speech of the people and often provide norms and exemplars for decision-making and judgment.

Jia Zhi's survey of epics among Chinese minorities concludes the volume and gives a valuable overview of the research presently underway concerning epic traditions that still flourish in China. Jia discusses the topos of "acquisition by divine inspiration" or "god granting" modes of epic-learning (230), a particularly prevalent phenomenon in western China and Tibet in which singers frequently claim to have learned the epic in dreams, during difficult illnesses, from bronze mirrors, and through other revelatory experiences on the steppes and mountain plateaus. Other singers in the region, it is worth noting, are "self-studying" and learn "painstakingly by themselves, during their roaming and begging."

Interested readers will want to read Lang Ying's study of the great Kirghiz Manas-singer Jusup Mamay in a forthcoming issue of the journal Oral Tradition, where Mamay offers several multiform accounts of his own version of the "acquisition by dream" experience. Jia also points the reader to the work of Chinese Tibetologist Yang Enhong, whose decades of fieldwork in Tibet now combined with her research on textualization methodologies is sure to produce a sea-change in the Western understanding of Tibetan epics. Jia's discussion of the documentation of singers carried out by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Ethnic Minorities' Literature and his taxonomy of singers and epics among Chinese minorities will undoubtedly point many in the direction of China, and one looks forward to the results.

In conclusion, it can be said that this collection does a fine job of bringing the problem of tradition-oriented epics into sharper focus. From ancient Greece to the present day, tradition-oriented epics have attracted a mixed bag of speculation concerning compositional integrity, modality of existence, and interpretation of the written materials in question. Analysts have tended to define tradition-oriented epics by pointing out what they are not: they are not purely oral phenomena dependent on an organic functionality within a living context, nor can they be meaningfully analyzed by the same interpretive techniques demanded by the literature of, say, Wordsworth, Joyce, or Beckett. Instead, tradition-oriented epics - stripped of immediate context but for that reason textually reborn - hover somewhere in between and demand a composite methodology that engages both the micrologies of variation as well the critical traditions that allow such variation to be interpreted within a historical context. Nordic folkloristics, because so thoroughly grounded in fieldwork, documentation, and linguistic expertise, are in a particularly strong position to define and develop this methodology. This collection of essays, grounded in the fundaments of Nordic methodologies but generously engaged in an international conversation, certainly goes a long way in placing the discussion on firm empirical and theoretical ground.

by
Aaron Tate
University of Missouri


[ 本帖由 nanwan 于 2003-6-15 17:50 最后编辑 ]

chaogejin

这些摘引很有用。谢谢你的辛苦。
我们国内民俗学界面临的许多学术困惑，能够在FFSS的晚近学术里找到某些相似或有启迪意义的理论成果。
作者Aaron Tate，少年多才，原是密苏里大学的硕士研究生，2001年入康奈尔大学攻古典学和民俗学。有较好的语言基础——拉丁、德文、塞尔维亚-克罗地亚语（他在贝尔格莱德呆了不短时间，与南斯拉夫的学者们一道工作了许久）少量的俄文，还有入门级的蒙古文（他曾经在乌兰巴托短期进修过蒙古语）都为了研究当代史诗演唱。这个小伙子的未来不可限量。
我们刊物《民族文学研究》马上要发表一篇他撰写的关于史诗学的文章——如果我没记错的话。
弗里（John Miles Foley）对他很是器重，曾说过，阿伦是他多年来"the most promising student"。
他很努力，天资优异。不过，我们缺少这样禀赋的人么？咳——————————————

Sylvie

阿伦也好亚伦也好，这位从事古典学研究的Aaron Tate还有一项重要的语言功夫，就是古希腊语Greek，他进入Cornell之后当即又选修了梵语Sanskrit。 去年秋学季，他开始在康奈尔任教，开了一门课："Oral Epics From Central Asia and the Balkans," 同时选修5门课程，可谓“拼命三郎”；这学期他又选修了5门难度更大的语言课程（five more overly difficult language classes）。他到底懂多少门语言，可能他自己也要好好数数。他的史诗研究在多种语言传统之间展开，所以每天只睡5小时，大部分的时间用在语言学习上。在美国完成古典学的博士学位非常具体，尤其是比较研究的学习强度和难度都相当大。不过，美国许多高校的古典学专业还是比较“保守”，而亚伦的古典学立场则始终在living oral traditions上，这些年活跃在国际学术活动中，也被已故的杭柯教授器重。到中国执教，研究蒙藏史诗，也是他的学术“东移”设想中的计划路线吧？所以他一直在跟踪中国史诗研究的相关情况。此外，亚伦“年轻”时是一位吉他高手，“发明”了一种特殊指法，据说只有他会，那时年轻气盛的他，跟两位好友折腾了好一阵子的“音乐”，这对他日后研究史诗的音律确实有太大的好处。
不过这位亚伦·泰德可不是美国有名的词作者，Caedmon's Call 乐队的Aaron Tate（Coming Home，My Calm // Your Storm等） 。

Sylvie

Dialect Change and Diachronic Variation in South Slavic folk singing: The case of Kate Murat.

Aaron Tate, Cornell University

Though the modern study of long narrative folk singing in South Slavic speaking lands was much stimulated by the work of Matija Murko, Milman Parry, Albert Lord in the 20th century, specific research into the diachronic variation visible in one or many singers of a particular region remains a neglected area. This absence is due in large part to an absence of appropriate materials and methods. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, folklorists in the former-Yugoslavia made extensive collections of songs from female singers on the Adriatic islands of Korcula, Mljet, Lastovo, and especially Sipan, some of which afforded an unprecedented view into the diachronic transmission and variation to be found in one highly circumscribed region. While most of this material has appeared only in fragmentary form (in anthologies and edited collections) or not at all, in one particular case we have a singer, Kate Murat, whose repertoire was written down twice, with nearly twenty five years separating the two oral dictations. The most salient difference between the two collections is the shift from the dialect of cakavian to stokavian. In the years 1860-1862 Kate Murat's brother, Vince Palunko, transcribed a group of songs from Kate, and twenty five years later her son, Andro Murat, wrote down as many of the songs as she still knew, which he then submitted to the cultural institution Matica Hrvatska. The latter collection, now entitled Narodne Pjesme iz Luke na Sipanu, appeared in 1996 under the editorial direction of folklorist Tanja-Peric Polonijo. The earlier manuscript remains unpublished, although it has long been known to specialists in Dalmatian song lore; the author of this paper has also investigated it.

In the proposed talk I will detail the parameters of variation in the two collections in three specific areas 1) dialect (including the morphology, phonology, and metrical structure of the poetic language of the songs) 2) genre and 3) narrative sequencing. Already in 1908 Nikola Andric noticed that the dialect of the earlier collection was a form of cakavian, while the dialect of the later collection was clearly stokavian. This remains a mystery to folklorists in Croatia even today, first of all because Sipan was never thought to have been a cakavian speaking island, second because the dialect change is legible in the same songs sung by the same singer within the span of two decades. Vince Palunko, the collector of the first collection, includes comments in his notes to the manuscript collection concerning the then-shifting dialect on Sipan, while Andro Murat, the collector of the second manuscript, includes extensive comments on accentuation, morphology, and lexical peculiarities of the speech of those living on Sipan in his day. Both sets of comments, when taken together, offer a valuable view of the shifting linguistic situation still visible in the manuscripts. Since this case affords us a window onto four essential concerns of modern folkoristsics - dialect change, gender, genre, and narrative patterning, to say nothing of textualization methodologies - an analysis of the two manuscript collections provides a unique opportunity for testing modern folklore methodologies in relation to concrete linguistic problems concerning dialect, transmission, morphology, and phonology in one particular singer's repertoire.

The 13th Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature, and Folklore
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - April 17-20, 2002

Sylvie

Homer and Questions of Oral Poetry

Gregory Nagy

Harvard, Prof. of Comp. Lit.

            Parry and Lord studied oral poetry, and their work provides the key to the primary Homeric question of performance, as we are about to see. It can even be said that their work on oral poetry permanently changed the very nature of any Homeric question.

            The term oral poetry may not fully capture the concept behind it, in view of the semantic difficulties conjured up by both individual words, oral and poetry. Still, the composite term oral poetry has a historical validity in that both Parry and Lord had used it to designate the overall concept that they were developing. I propose to continue the use of this term, with the understanding that oral is not simply the opposite of written and that the poetry of oral poetry is here meant in the broadest possible sense of the word, in that poetry in the context of this expression is not necessarily to be distinguished from singing or song.[1] If indeed oral is not to be understood simply as the opposite of written, it is even possible to speak of oral literature, a term actually used and defended by Albert Lord.[2] Where I draw the line is the usage of “write” instead of “compose” as applied to figures like Homer. There is more to be said about this usage presently.

            Pertinent to this question is a work by Ruth Finnegan, entitled “What is oral literature anyway?”[3] We may note the contentious tone in this question, as it is framed and developed by Finnegan. It has to do with her understandable intent, as an anthropologist who specializes in African traditions, to broaden the concept of oral poetry or oral “literature” as developed by Parry and Lord in order to apply it beyond the specific instances studied by them, certainly beyond Homer and beyond Greek civilization. We may also note a downright hostile tone toward the work of Parry and Lord when the same sort of question is invoked by some Classicists who seek not a broader application of the term oral poetry but rather a discontinuation of any application at all in the case of Homer, let alone any later Greek literature. I write this in an era when scholarly works are produced with titles like Homer: Beyond Oral Poetry.[4]

            The question of formulating the dichotomy of oral and written seems to me in any case irrelevant to another question, whether Homeric poetry can actually refer to writing. It seems to me self-evident that even an oral tradition can refer to a written tradition without necessarily being influenced by it. I should add in this regard my own conviction that Homeric poetry does indeed refer to the technology of writing, and that such references in no way require us to assume that writing was used for the creation of Homeric poetry. The most striking example is the mention of a diptych containing “baneful signs” (sê´mata lugrá) that Bellerophon is carrying to the King of Lycia (Iliad VI 168 / 176 / 178).[5] Another example, to be discussed later on, is a reference made by Homeric poetry to the wording of an imagined epigram commemorating a fallen warrior (Iliad VII 89-90).[6]

            Having considered the implications of oral poetry, let us move to a more precise term, oral traditional poetry. I propose to use the concept of tradition or traditional in conjunction with oral poetry in such a way as to focus on the perception of tradition by the given society in which the given tradition operates, not on any perception by the outside observer who is looking in, as it were, on the given tradition. My approach to tradition is intended to avoid any situations where “the term is apparently also used (and manipulated?) in an emotive sense, not seldom linked with deeply felt and powerful academic, moral, or political values.”[7] While a given tradition may be perceived in absolute terms within a given society, it can be analyzed in relative terms by the outside observer using empirical criteria: what may seem ancient and immutable to members of a given society can in fact be contemporary and ever-changing from the standpoint of empiricist observation.[8] Moreover, I recognize that tradition is not just an inherited system: as with language itself, tradition comes to life in the here-and-now of real people in real situations.[9] A particularly compelling example of the changeability of tradition is the case of orally-transmitted genealogies among the Tiv of Nigeria:

Early British administrators among the Tiv of Nigeria were aware of the great importance attached to these genealogies, which were continually discussed in court cases where the rights and duties of one man towards another were in dispute. Consequently they took the trouble to write down the long lists of names and preserve them for posterity, so that future administrators might refer to them in giving judgement. Forty years later, when the Bohannans carried out anthropological field work in the area, their successors were still using the same genealogies. However, these written pedigrees now gave rise to many disagreements; the Tiv maintained that they were incorrect, while the officials regarded them as statements of fact, as records of what had actually happened, and could not agree that the unlettered indigenes could be better informed about the past than their own literate predecessors. What neither party realized was that in any society of this kind changes take place which require a constant readjustment in the genealogies if they are to continue to carry out their function as mnemonics of social relationships[check wording].[10]

            In sum, there is certainly no need to think of tradition as rigid and unchanging. Still there is a need to develop empirical criteria for determining what is older and what is newer within tradition, and for the past twenty years or so I have been publishing works that apply historical linguistics as well as other approaches for the purpose of coming to terms with the archaeology, as it were, of tradition. This is just the opposite of romanticizing tradition as a concept.[11] The aim, rather, is to study tradition empirically, and thereby to determine objectively both what is being preserved and what is being changed.

            I approach my Homeric Questions by applying the concept of oral traditional poetry to Homer. For this purpose, I find it essential to introduce an inventory of ten further concepts. Each of these ten concepts derives from the necessity of having to confront the reality of performance in oral poetry, either directly in living oral traditions or indirectly in texts that reveal clear traces of such traditions. The centrality of performance to the concept of oral poetry will become apparent as the discussion proceeds.

            Some of the terms used in the inventory that follows are new ones for those who have not worked with oral poetry. Most of these concepts I have taken from the disciplines of linguistics and anthropology. Other terms that I use may be traditional for Classicists but still require some reassessment in terms of oral poetry.  

            1. fieldwork

            The fundamental empirical given for the study of oral poetry is the procedure of collecting evidence about the performance of living oral traditions as recorded, observed, and described in their native setting. Let us call this procedure fieldwork.[12] “Although much talked about in negative criticism,” Lord says in his Introduction to Epic Singers and Oral Tradition, “living oral-traditional literature is still not very well known, and I try over and over again in the course of this book to acquaint the reader with some of the best of what I have had the privilege to experience and to demonstrate the details of its excellence.”[13] Lord spoke from experience, and this background of experience is his fieldwork. It is this background that confers on him an authority that the vast majority of his critics who are Classicists utterly lack. Paradoxically, Lord’s modesty about his experience in fieldwork, which is a salient feature of his scholarship, is matched by the arrogance displayed by those of his critics who at times seem to take a grim sort of pride in their unfamiliarity with non-Classical forms of poetry like the South Slavic oral traditions. It is as if such marvels of the so-called Western World as the Homeric poems should be rescued from those who truly understand the workings of oral traditions. Lord’s Epic Singers and Oral Tradition lays claim, once and for all, to the legitimacy and importance of exploring the heritage of “Western” Literature in oral traditional literature.

            2. synchrony vs. diachrony

            The terms come from linguistics.[14] Fieldwork in the study of oral poetry as it is performed requires a synchronic perspective, for purposes of describing the actual system perpetuated by the tradition. When it comes to delving into the principles of organization underlying the tradition, that is, the reality of cultural continuity, the diachronic perspective is also needed. Techniques of linguistic reconstruction can help explain otherwise opaque aspects of the language as it is current in the tradition: that is to say, the diachronic approach is needed to supplement the synchronic, as well as vice versa.[15]

            3. composition-in-performance

            The synchronic analysis of living oral traditions reveals that composition and performance are in varying degrees aspects of one process. The Homeric text, of and by itself, could never have revealed such a reality. The fundamental statement is by Lord: “An oral poem is composed not for but in performance.”[16]

           4. diffusion

            Only the diachronic perspective reveals this aspect of oral tradition, interactive with the aspects of composition and performance. Patterns of diffusion can be either centrifugal or centripetal. Further discussion below.[17]

            5. theme

            For purposes of this presentation, a working definition of theme is a basic unit of content.[18]

            6. formula

            Another working definition, to be debated at length in the discussion that follows: the formula is a fixed phrase conditioned by the traditional themes of oral poetry.[19] The formula is to the form as the theme is to the content.[20] This formulation presupposes that form and content conceptually overlap. Parry’s own definition is worded as follows: the formula is “a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea.”[21]

            7. economy (thrift)

            As Parry argues, Homeric language tends to be “free of phrases which, having the same metrical value and expressing the same idea, could replace one another.”[22] This principle of economy or thrift is an observable reality only on the level of performance.[23]

            8. tradition vs. innovation

            To repeat, oral tradition comes to life in performance, and the here-and-now of each new performance is an opportunity for innovation, whether or not any such innovation is explicitly acknowledged in the tradition.[24]  

            9. unity and organization

            Related concepts: unitarians vs. analysts, neo-analysts.

            In terms of oral poetics, the unity and organization of the Homeric poems is a result of the performance tradition itself, not a cause effected by a composer who is above tradition.[25]

            10. author and text

            In terms of oral poetics, authorship is determined by the authority of performance and textuality, by the degree of a composition’s invariability from performance to performance. The very concept of text can be derived metaphorically from the concept of composition-in-performance.[26]            

            In the wake of this inventory of ten concepts that I find essential for approaching my Homeric Questions, I also offer, before proceeding any further, a list of ten examples of usage that I find commonly being applied in misleading ways by some contemporary experts in Homeric poetry. My aim is not to quarrel with anyone in particular but rather to promote more precise usage concerning oral poetics in general. The sequence of the following ten examples of what strikes me as misleading usage corresponds roughly to the sequence of the preceding inventory of ten crucial concepts pertaining to oral poetics:

            1. “Oral theory.”

            It is a major misunderstanding, I submit, to speak of “the oral theory” of Milman Parry or Albert Lord. Parry and Lord had investigated the empirical reality of oral poetry, as ascertained from the living traditions of South Slavic oral poetry as well as other living traditions. The existence of oral poetry is a fact, ascertained by way of fieldwork. The application of what we know inductively about oral poetry to the text of the Iliad and Odyssey, or to any other text, is not an attempt to prove a “theory” about oral poetry. If we are going to use the word theory at all in such a context, it would be more reasonable to say that Parry and Lord had various theories about the affinity of Homeric poetry with what we know about oral poetry.

            2. “The world of Homer.”

            To say in Homeric criticism that the “world” or “world-view” that emerges from the structure of the Iliad and Odyssey is the construct of one man at one time and place, or however many men from however many different times and places, risks the flattening out of the process of oral poetic creation, which requires analysis in the dimensions of both diachrony and synchrony.[27] This caveat is relevant to the question whether the overall perspective of Homeric poetry is grounded in, say, an age dating back to before the middle of the thirteenth century B.C.E. or, alternatively, in the eighth century B.C.E.[28] More on this question below.

            3. “Homer + [verb].”

            To say in Homeric criticism that “Homer does this” or “the poet intends that” can lead to problems. Not necessarily, but it can. Granted, such usage corresponds to the spirit of conventional Greek references to the creation of epic poetry by Homer. {tag 501}For the ancient Greeks, however, Homer was not just the creator of epic par excellence: he was also the culture hero of epic itself.[29] Greek institutions tend to be traditionally retrojected, by the Greeks themselves, each to a proto-creator, a culture hero who is credited with the sum total of a given cultural institution.[30] It was a common practice to attribute any major achievement of society, even if this achievement may have been realized only through a lengthy period of social evolution, to the episodic and personal accomplishment of a culture hero who is pictured as having made his monumental contribution in an earlier era of the given society.[31] Greek myths about lawgivers, for example, whether they are historical figures or not, tend to reconstruct these figures as the originators of the sum total of customary law as it evolved through time.[32] So also with Homer: he is retrojected as the original genius of epic.[33]            

            Thus the usage of saying that “Homer does this” or “the poet intends that” may become risky for modern experts if they start thinking of “Homer” in overly personalized terms, without regard for the traditional dynamics of composition and performance. And without regard for synchrony and diachrony.[34] To say that “Homer wrote” is the ultimate risk, on which more below at number 10.

            Suffice it to note for now that the generic characterizations of Homer and other early poets seem to be a traditional function of the poetry that represents them. This is not to say that the poetic tradition actually creates the poet; rather, the tradition has the capacity to transform even historical figures into generic characters who represent and are represented by the tradition.[35] We may recall the formulation of Paul Zumthor: “Le poète est situé dans son langage plutôt que son langage en lui.”[36]              

            4. “Homer’s poetry is artistically superior to all other poetry of his time.”

            The preeminence of the Iliad and Odyssey as the definitive epics of the Greeks is a historical fact, at least by the fifth century. Or, as can be argued, it is a historical eventuality. The attribution of their preeminence, however, to artistic superiority over other epics is merely an assumption. What little evidence we have about other epics comes from the fragments and ancient plot-outlines of the so-called Cycle. If the poetry of the Cycle were fully attested, it is quite possible that we would conclude that the Iliad and Odyssey are indeed artistically superior. The question, however, might still remain: by whose standards? The more basic question is not why but how the Iliad and Odyssey became preeminent.[37] One available answer is based on the concept of greater diffusion for the epic traditions of the Iliad and Odyssey in comparison to other epic traditions. More on which below.

            5. “The formula made the poet say it that way.”

            Such a requirement of oral poetry is often assumed, without justification, by both proponents and opponents of the idea that Homeric poetry is based on oral poetry. I disagree. To assume that whatever is being meant in Homeric poetry is determined by such formal considerations as formula or meter (as when experts say that the formula or meter made the poet say this or that) is to misunderstand the relationship of form and content in oral poetics. Diachronically, the content—let us call it theme—determines the form, even if the form affects the content synchronically.[38]
     

            6. “The meter made the poet say it that way.”

            I suggest that this kind of reasoning stems from misunderstandings of Parry’s definition of the formula as “a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea,” which I have already quoted above in the corresponding number 6. I have written at length about the relationship of formula and meter, and I start here by repeating my central argument that formula shaped meter, from a diachronic point of view, rather than the other way around.[39]

            {tag 818}A convenient way to examine any possible misunderstandings about the relationship between formula and meter is to consider the attempted refutation of Parry’s concept of the formula in Ruth Finnegan’s book on oral poetry.[40] Ironically, Finnegan’s book seems to be misreading Parry’s concept at the very point where it attempts to undermine its validity. In her description of Homeric epithets, Finnegan says that they “are often combined with other formulaic phrases—repeated word-groups—which have the right metrical qualities to fit the [given] part of the line.”[41] She adduces the words of Parry himself: “in composing [the poet] will do no more than put together for his needs phrases which he has often heard or used himself, and which, grouping themselves in accordance with a fixed pattern of thought [italics mine], come naturally to make the sentence and the verse.”[42]

            As one critic has noticed, “we see here that Parry is saying much more than Finnegan.”[43] The formula is “not just a phrase that the poet is free to choose according to his metrical needs, since the formulas are regulated by the traditional themes of the poet’s composition.”[44] By contrast, as this critic has pointed out,[45] Finnegan assumes that formulas have a life independent of themes: “As well as formulaic phrases and sequences [italics mine], the bard has in his repertoire a number of set themes which he can draw on to form the structure of his poem.”[46] The assumption here is that formulas are merely stock phrases repeated simply to fill metrical needs: the oral poet “can select what he wishes from the common stock of formulae, and can choose slightly different terms that fit his metre ... and vary the details.”[47] Such a definition overvalues traditional form and undervalues, in contrast to the views of Parry and Lord, the role of traditional content.[48]         Using the premise that formulas are simply a matter of repeated phraseology that fits the meter, Finnegan faults the Parry-Lord approach to oral poetry: “Does it really add to our understanding of the style or process of composition in a given piece to name certain repeated patterns of words, sounds or meanings as ‘formulae’? Or to suggest that the characteristic of oral style is that such formulae are ‘all-pervasive’ (as in Lord [1960]. 47)?”[49] In light of what can be adduced from the writings of Parry and Lord, however, Finnegan’s criticism seems unfounded.

            If we may understand the formula as “the building-block of a system of traditional oral poetic expression,”[50] then it seems no longer reasonable to find fault with Lord’s observation that formulas are ‘all-pervasive’ in oral poetry.[51]

            7. “The poet had only one way of saying it.”

            Once again, such a requirement of oral poetry is often assumed, without justification, by both proponents and opponents. But the principle of economy or thrift is a tendency, not a constant, as I have argued in earlier work.[52]

            8. “Homer had a new way of saying it.”

            A specific instance of number 3 above. Granted, to the extent that the performer controls or “owns” the performance in conjunction with the audience, the opportunity for innovation is there. Such innovation, however, takes place within the tradition, not beyond it. Given that performance itself is a key aspect of oral tradition, and that tradition comes to life in the context of performance and in the person of the performer, I disagree with those who concentrate so much on the person that they forget about the tradition in which that person performs—a tradition that can be inductively observed from the rules inherent even in the context of performance.[53] As in the case of number 3, the risk is to make “Homer” overly personalized, without regard for the traditional dynamics of composition and performance. And without regard for synchrony and diachrony.

            9. “The poem is so obviously unified and organized that the poet must have become somehow emancipated from the oral tradition.”

            {tag 557}Such a reaction stems from descriptions of oral poetry in terms of improvisation (or extemporization)—terms that can easily be misunderstood. To many, for example, such terms suggest that “anything goes.” A most useful response, with vigorous criticism of a wide variety of misunderstandings, is the work of D. Gary Miller.[54] His key argument is this: “Mental operations ‘generate’ as little as possible; they search for stored expressions of varying degrees of suitability to the speaker’s goal.”[55] Also valuable is his refutation of the following three common assumptions about “improvising oral poets”:

            A. “Oral poets do not plan.”

            B. “Oral poetry is characterized by a ‘loose’, unorganized structure.”

            C. “An oral poet could not see the whole epic sequence in the beginning.”[56]

            Refusing to consider the possibility that there are principles of unity and organization at work in a living oral tradition is symptomatic of a lack of appreciation for oral tradition itself, with emphasis on the word tradition. There is a common pattern of thinking that serves to compensate for this lack: it is manifested in the assumption that the poet must have somehow broken free of oral tradition. This assumption entails an unquestioning elevation of a reconstructed single individual to the rank of a genius or at least a transcendent author, who can then be given all or most of the credit for any observable principles of unity and organization.[57] Unity and coherence may be the effect of something traditional, rather than the cause of something untraditional.[58]

            10. “Homer wrote.”

            The most extreme version of the reaction described in number 9. This way of thinking, as I will argue below, stems not only from a lack of first-hand knowledge about oral poetry. Those who make this claim, or those who simply make this assumption, have conceptualized authorship without having first thought through the historical realities of the era that produced Homeric poetry.

            Having come to the end of this list of ten examples of what I consider misleading usage concerning oral poetics, let us return to the primary question of my Homeric Questions, concerning performance. For me, the key element in the triad of composition, performance, and diffusion has throughout been the second. Without performance, oral tradition is not oral. Without performance, tradition is no longer the same. Without performance, the very idea of Homer loses its integrity. More than that, the very essence of the Classics becomes incomplete.

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to be continued
[ 本帖由 Sylvie 于 2003-6-18 06:23 最后编辑 ]

Sylvie

Homer and Questions of Oral Poetry

Gregory Nagy

Harvard, Prof. of Comp. Lit.


[1]Cf. N 1990a.17-51.

[2]Cf. Lord 1991.2-3, 16. On the disadvantages of the term, see Martin 1989.4, who also quotes Herzfeld 1985b.202: “Even the recognition of folk texts as ‘oral literature’ ... merely projected an elegant oxymoron: by defining textuality in terms of ‘literature’, a purely verbocentric conception, it left arbitration in the control of ‘high culture.’”

[3]Finnegan 1976.

[4]Bremer, de Jong, and Kalff 1987.

[5]N 1990b.207. For an archaeological attestation of a writing tablet in the format of a diptych made of boxwood, with ivory hinge, dated to the late 14th or early 13th century B.C.E. see Bass 1990.

[6]See cross-ref.{tag 773} below.

[7]Finnegan 1991.106.

[8]It is from this perspective that I have used the word tradition in my previous work as well, e.g. N 1979.3. More explicitly in N 1990a.57-61, 70-72 (cf. also pp. 349, 411). I therefore find the criticism of Peradotto 1990.100n2 unjustified. I would add the observation, derived from the reference to my own work just given, that there can be different levels of rigidity or flexibility in different traditions, even in different phases of the same given tradition. Also, that there are situations where the empirical methods of disciplines such as linguistics can be applied to determine what aspects of a given tradition are older or newer.

[9]Cf. N 1990a.17n2, with bibliography on the useful concepts of parole and langue.

[10]Goody and Watt 1968.32, following the work of Bohannan 1952; cf. Morris 1986.87. Further discussion in Jensen 1980.98-99 and Thomas 1989.178-179n58 and 188n85.

[11]Pace Lloyd-Jones 1992.57, who claims that my approach romanticizes tradition; his arguments have been anticipated by the counter-arguments in N 1990a.1.

[12]For an enlightening introduction to the term, see Nettl 1983.6-7, 9.

[13]Lord 1991.2.

[14]For a useful summary, with bibliography, see Ducrot and Todorov 1979.137-144; cf. N 1990a.4.

[15]N 1990b.20-21. See also cross-ref.{tag 953} above.

[16]Lord 1960.28. My use of the term performance is not intended to convey any connotations of a stage-presence, as it were, on the part of the performer. I have in mind rather the performative dimension of an utterance, as analyzed from an anthropological perspective. For a pragmatic application of the word performative, see for example Tambiah 1985.123-166. Cf. Martin 1989.231: “authoritative self-presentation to an audience.”

[17]The word will not be used in the sense of a “diffusionist” approach, familiar to linguists and folklorists.

[18]Cf. N 1990b.9n10, following Lord 1960.68-98; for an altered working definition, see Lord 1991.26-27.

[19]N 1990b.29.

[20]Cf. Lord 1991.73-74.

[21]Parry 1971 [1930].272.

[22]Parry 1971 [1930].276 (italics mine).

[23]N 1990b.24, following Lord 1960.53.

[24]Cf. N 1990a.55-56.

[25]N 1979.6-7.

[26]N 1990a.53; further discussion below. It is hazardous to retroject to the ancient world our contemporary notions of the “author”—notably the individual author. On the semantic problems of retrojecting our notions of the individual, see Held 1991.

[27]A model for a combined synchronic and diachronic approach: Sherratt 1990. Reacting to Martin’s application (1989.7-10), with regard to the problem of Homeric composition / performance, of a wide range of comparative evidence about different kinds of performer-audience interaction, Griffin 1991.5 invokes “the unambiguous evidence, on the subject of Homeric performance, of the Homeric poems,” referring to the descriptions of performances like those of Phemios in Odyssey i. My response is to ask this question: how exactly are such performances as those of Phemios “Homeric?” In other words, how does the Homeric representation of poetry correspond to the essence of Homeric poetry itself? Can we simply assume, with Griffin, that there is no gap between the two kinds of “poetry?” The results of my own study of the question suggests that there is indeed a gap (see especially N 1990a.21, 14 where I develop the concept of “diachronic skewing”).

[28]On the world of Homeric poetry in the second millennium B.C.E., see Vermeule 1986, especially p. 85n28. For the perspective of the eight century B.C.E., see Morris 1986. Commenting on Moses Finley’s title, The World of Odysseus (1977), Catenacci 1993.21 suggests that a more apt title would be The Possible World of Odysseus, citing further bibliography on theories of “possible worlds.”

[29]N 1990a.78-81. On the meaning of Homêros, see cross-ref. n{tag 668} below.

[30]Cf. Kleingünther 1933.

[31]For an illuminating discussion of culture heroes in Chinese traditions, cf. Raphals 1992.53: Yi invents the bow; Zhu, armor, Xi Zhong, the carriage, Qiao Chui, the boat.

[32]N 1985.33 and N 1990a.170, 368.

[33]Cf. N 1990a.55, especially with reference to Plato Ion 533d-536d. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the dramatized first-person speaker claims the identity of Homer: detailed discussion in N pp. 375-377 (expanding on N 1979.8-9) and N 1990b [1982].54 (cf. Clay 1989.53 with n111 and p. 55 with n116).

[34]Carey 1992.285 argues that, “in his approach to Greek literature in general, Nagy overemphasizes the tradition at the expense of the individual.” I would counterargue that my approach gives due credit to tradition in contexts where many contemporary Classicists overemphasize the individual poet at the expense of tradition: see especially N 1990a.79-80.

[35]N p. 79, in response to Griffith 1983.58n82.

[36]Zumthor 1972.68.

[37]N 1990a.72 and n99, with bibliography.

[38]Detailed discussion in N 1990b.18-35, explaining the results of N 1974.

[39]Ibid.

[40]Finnegan 1977.

[41]Finnegan p. 59.

[42]Parry 1971 [1930] 270.

[43]Davidson 1994.62.

[44]Davidson, ibid., in response to the claims of Finnegan 1977.62 about the metrical conditioning of formulas. On the relationship of formula and meter, see N 1990b.18-35; cf. Lord 1991.73-74. For further criticism of Finnegan’s interpretation of Parry’s understanding of the formula, see Miller 1982b.32.

[45]Davidson , ibid.

[46]Finnegan 1977.64.

[47]Finnegan p. 62.

[48]See Davidson 1994.60-62 and N 1990b.18-35; cf. Lord 1991.73-74. For a wide-ranging critique of various definitions of the formula, with special reference to Austin 1975 (11-80), Finnegan 1977 (54-55, 73-86), Kiparsky 1976, Nagler 1974 (23), see Miller 1982a.35-48. (I leave open, however, the question of whether or not there was a distinct Aeolic phase in the development of Homeric diction.)  

[49]Finnegan 1977.71.

[50]Davidson 1994.62.

[51]Martin 1989.92 observes: “only a deracinated, print culture would view Homeric formulas as devices to aid the composition of poetry.” Rather, formulas “belong to the ‘composition’, if you like, of personal identity in a traditional world” (ibid.). All this is not to say that we cannot find gaps in Parry’s argumentation. For an attempt at pinpointing such gaps, I cite the subtle arguments of Lynn-George 1988.55-81. The issues raised by Lynn-George call for an Auseinandersetzung, the scope of which would surpass what is being attempted in this presentation.

[52]N 1990b [1976].24. See also Martin 1989.8n30 disputing Shive 1987 on the questions of economy and extension. I notice that Janko 1982.24 uses the expression “the tendency to economy” in the following formulation: “The tendency to economy is only properly applied within the poetry of the same composer, and even there, as Edwards has shown [Janko p. 241n16 cites Edwards 1971 Ch. 5], it was less strict than has been thought.” Actually, the more basic point is that the principle of economy is to be observed on the level of individual performance: Lord 1960.53f; cf. also Lord 1991.73-74. For a demonstration of the remarkable degrees of economy in Homeric composition, see also Visser 1987, who shows that each of 25 expressions for “he killed” in the Iliad occupies a distinct metrical slot.

[53]Again, N 1990a.79. There are, of course, areas where rules do not apply, inviting free variation. I borrow the concept of free variant from the field of descriptive linguistics(try Bloomfield). This concept is particularly useful for describing those aspects of tradition where innovation is most likely to take place (thanks to Loukia Athanassaki, December 30, 1990); see also Martin 1989.151n16.

[54]Miller 1982b.5-8.

[55]Miller p. 7.

[56]These three assumptions are restated and then refuted by Miller pp. 90-91. I agree with Miller (p. 46) that that “much paper has been wasted” on the “pseudo-issue” of “whether improvisation-composition involves memorization or not” (he provides bibliography), “partly out of misunderstanding Lord, and partly out of misconceptions about the nature of language in general and improvisation in particular.” For more on the pitfalls of using the concept of memorization, see Lord 1991.236-237. I am sympathetic, however, to the idea of a dichotomy of improvisation vs. memorization as discussed by Jensen 1980.13, provided that the two terms are used in a diachronic context, referring respectively to relatively more fluid vs. more static phases of oral tradition. On the distinction of fluid vs. static phases, see cross-ref.{tag 929} below.

[57]The concepts of unity and single author are not necessarily the same thing. I can justify, at least in terms of my “evolutionary model,” to be discussed below, the doubts expressed by Sealey 1957.330 about a “single author” of the Iliad and Odyssey—as if he were a historical reality. Still, I have no doubts that the notion of such a single author was indeed a historical reality in the ancient world. Further, I will argue that this notion was connected with the notion of a unified and singular corpus of heroic poetry.

[58]N 1979.41, 78-79. On unity and coherence in the structure of evolving institutions like the Olympics, cf. N p. 7.


Selected Bibliography on "Homeric Questions"

A New Companion to Homer. ed. Ian Morris and Barry Powell. Leiden, 1996

Ages of Homer: A tribute to Emily Thounsend Vermeule. Austin, 1994

Allen, T. W. Homer: The Origins and Transmission. Oxford, 1924

Chantraine, P. Grammaire Homérique I-II. Paris, 1953

Chadwick, J. The Decipherment of Linear B. Cambridge, 1958

Felson-Rubin, Nancy. Regarding Penelope: From Character to Poetics. Princeton University Press, 1994.

Haslam, M. "Homeric Papyri and Transmission of the Text." A New Companion to Homer. ed. I. Morris and B. Powell. Leiden, 1996, pp. 55-100

Hooker, J. T. Linear B: An Introduction. Bristol, 1980

Janko, R. Homer, Hesiod, and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Epic Diction. Cambrdige, 1982

Jensen, M. The Homeric Question and the Oral-Formulaic Theory. Copenhagen, 1980

Katz, Marylin. Penelope's Renown: Meaning and Interderterminacy in the Odyssey. Princeton University Press, 1991

Kirk, G. The Songs of Homer. Cambridge, 1962

Lord, A. The Singer Resumes the Tale. Ithaca, 1995

Lord, A. Epic Singers and Oral Tradition. Ithaca and London, 1991

Lord, A. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Mass., 1960; Second edition, 2000

Martin, R. P. 1989. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Revised paperbound version, Ithaca, 1992

Mazon, P. Introduction à l' Iliade. Paris, 1967

Nagy, G. Best of the Achaeans. revised edition, Baltimore, 1999

Nagy, G. Homeric Questions. Austin, Texas, 1996

Nagy. G. Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. Cambridge, 1996

Nagy, G. Pindar's Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past. Baltimore and London, 1990

Nagy, G. Greek mythology and Poetics. Ithaca, 1990

Nine Essays on Homer. ed. Miriam Carlisle and Olga Levaniouk. Lanham, 1999

Parry, M. The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. ed. A. Parry. Oxford, 1971

Pfeiffer, R. History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age. Oxford, 1968

Powell, B. Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet. Cambridge, 1992

Reading The Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays. ed. Seth L. Schein. Princeton, 1996

Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem I-VII. ed. H. Erbse. Berlin and New York, 1969-1988

The Iliad: A Commentary. ed. G. S. Kirk (vol. I-II), Bryan Hainsworth (vol. III), Richard Janko (vol. IV), Mark W. Edwards (vol. V), and Nicholas Richardson (vol. VI). Cambridge, 1985-1993.

Valk, M. van der. Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad I-II. Leiden, 1964.

Vermeule, E.. Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979

Vermeule, E. Greece in the Bronze Age. Chicago, 1964.

West, M. L. "Archaische Heldendichtung: Singen und Schreiben." Der Übergang von der Mündlichkeit zur Literatur bei den Griechen. Ed. W. Kullmann and M. Reichel. Tübingen, 1990, pp. 33-50

West, Stephanie. The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer. Cologne and Opladen, 1967

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von. Die Ilias und Homer. Berlin, 1916

Wolf, F. A. 1795. Prolegomena ad Homerum. trans., with introduction and notes, by A. Grafton, G. W. Most, and J. E. G. Zetzel. Princeton, 1985


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