The Homeric poems as oral dictated texts

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 1-13

  Janko, Richard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 3042595063     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/48.1.1     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. M. Parry, The Making of Homeric Verse, ed. A. Parry (Oxford, 1971), p. 451 (written in January 1934)
2. The Language of Hesiod (Oxford, 1972)
3. Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Epic Diction (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 15-16, 192,220-1
4. See M. L. West, 'The date of the Iliad', MH 52 (1995), 203-19, esp. pp. 204f
5. For a survey see B. B. Powell, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 186-220
6. 'D'Homère aux origines proto-mycéniennes de la tradition épique', pp. 1-96 in J. P. Crielaard (ed.), Homeric Questions (Amsterdam, 1995), esp. pp. 21-6
7. For similar datings see A. C. Cassio, e la circolazione dell'epica in area euboica', Annali di Archeologia e Storia Antica 1 (1994), 55-67, esp. p. 64, n. 66
8. The theory was developed by A. B. Lord, 'Homer's originality: oral dictated texts', TAPA 84 (1953), 124-34
9. I have argued other aspects of this case in 'The Iliad and its editors: dictation and redaction', CA 9 (1990), 326-34 (published in Italian translation as 'L'Iliade fra dettatura e redazione', SIFC 10 [1992], 833-43)
10. and in a review of H. van Thiel, Homeri Odyssea, Gnomon 66 (1994), 289-95
11. as well as in The Iliad: A Commentary. IV: Books 13-16 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 37-8 (necessarily with extreme brevity there)
12. Cf. similarly M. L. West, 'Archaische Heldendichtung: Singen und Schreiben', in W. Kullmann and M. Reichel (edd.), Der Übergang von der Mündlichkeit zur Literatur bei den Griechen (Tubingen, 1990), pp. 33-50
13. D. Bynum (ed.), with A. B. Lord, Ženidba hadji-Smailagina Sina, Kazivaoje Avdo Meaedović (Cambridge, MA, 1974)
14. A. B. Lord (trans.), The Wedding of Smailagić Meho, by Avdo Mededović (Cambridge, MA, 1974)
15. So H. Lloyd-Jones, 'Becoming Homer', New York Review of Books (5 March 1992)
16. cf. Rosalind Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1992), p. 49
17. Epic Singers and Oral Tradition (Ithaca, NY, 1991)
18. A. B. Lord, ed. M. L. Lord, The Singer Resumes the Tale (Ithaca, NY, 1995)
19. and O. Taplin, Homeric Soundings (Oxford, 1992), p. 35
20. 'Words and Speakers in Homer', JHS 106 (1986), 36-57. I do not of course accept his conclusion that this supports a written origin for the epics
21. A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA, 1960), p. 21
22. Oral Poetry (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 18-22
23. M. P. Nilsson, The Mycenaean Origins of Greek Mythology (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1932)
24. R. Janko, The Iliad: A Commentary. IV: Books 13-16, p. 13
25. P. Wathelet in Y. Lebrun (ed.), Linguistic Research in Belgium (Wetteren, 1966), pp. 145-73. For further examples see Janko (n. 33), pp. 9-14
26. G. P. Shipp, Studies in the Language of Homer, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1972). He was obviously wrong to suppose that they are interpolated
27. See A. T. Hatto, The Nibelungenlied (London, 1965), pp. 370-95
28. 'The epic cycle and the uniqueness of Homer', JHS 97 (1977), 39-53
29. J. J. Duggan, The Song of Roland: Formulaic Style and Poetic Craft (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973), pp. 1,213-18
30. E.g. R. B. Rutherford, Homer. Odyssey Books XIX and XX (Cambridge, 1992),ad loc
31. For other instances, see J. M. Foley, Traditional Oral Epic (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990), p. 28, n. 18
32. Die typischen Scenen bei Homer (Berlin, 1933)
33. So the theory of G. Nagy, most clearly expressed in his article cited in n. 7, that the progressively wider and wider diffusion of the Homeric poems resulted in their gradually becoming more and more fixed. However, the reverse outcome would seem more likely, as is indeed supported by the plethora of early papyrus texts with inorganic additional lines; and one is entitled to ask why the resulting texts contain so many minor oddities, which would surely have been tidied up in any process of this kind. The theory faces the same problems as the memorial transmission posited by G. S. Kirk, cogently refuted by A. Parry ('Have we Homer's Iliad?', YCS 20 [1966], 175-216)
34. On the probable influence of the latter on Homer, see W. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution, trans. M. E. Pinder and W. Burkert (Cambridge, MA, 1992), pp. 114-20
35. A. B. Lord, 'Homer, Parry and Huso', American Journal of Archaeology 52 (1948), 34-44, esp. p. 42 (reprinted in Parry [n. 1], p. 476
36. E.g. I. Morris, 'The use and abuse of Homer', CA 5 (1986), 81-138
37. On early kingship, see P. Carlier, La Royauté en Grèce avant Alexandre (Paris, 1984), esp. pp. 195-214 on Homer
38. J. Lenz, Kings and the Ideology of Kingship in Early Greece (Diss. Columbia, 1993)