Homeric Questions

CHAPTER 1. Homer and Questions of Oral Poetry

CHAPTER 1 Homer and Questions of Oral Poetry 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 at 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 1. Cf. N 1990a:17– 51. 2. See 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. 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 selfevident 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” (sē´mata lugrá) that Bellerophon is carrying to the king of Lycia (Iliad 6.168, 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 7.89–90).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, HOMERIC QUESTIONS 14 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...