Speak, Memory

[jporter]

> From: Dedalus <dedalus204 at mediaone.net>
> 
> It is generally believed that Homer used the raw material of the oral Greek
> tradition to shape and fashion _The Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ some time during
> the eighth century B.C.E.  Interestingly, this is also the century in which
> the Greeks learned to write again (following the fires that destroyed their
> >Minoan culture sometime in the last century of the second millenium B.C.E.).

Timing.

> I seem to recall a professor from college, ages ago, who mentioned that there
> had been basic "stories" floating about ancient Greece by various rhapsodes
> the stories were essentially skeletal, but each poet elaborated according to
> the needs of the rulers and palace audiences he'd encounter in his travels.
> Homer seems to have used these stories as the basis, elaborated according to
> his taste, and that's what we have today.  Competition was likewise common, as
> was the earliest Dionysian festivals that gave life to tragedy and comedy.
> Several rhapsodes would compete before their audiences in the palaces by
> telling the same myths, and elaborating accordingly.

That would make sense, and local influences would have been respected and
preserved by that sort of tradition, before reproduction of the epics became
more standardized, and through recursion began to take on "a life of their
own," which would have created the need for an author, or the name of an
author, for the growing standard- an eigenvalue.

> Unfortunately, I have no notes or documentation for this --- only the memory
> of what a wonderful university professor once told us.  Memories of an oral
> tradition.  Oh, the irony.

But meaningful. Anonymous sources seem to appeal to the that portion of each
of us, for better or worse, which we have in common. One can almost sense
the loss in the meaningfulness of the experience provided by a local
"rhapsode" on a given holiday, after standardization had begun to set in-
the growing curse of a more perfect memory: no doubt. (This might be good
place for a pun on the interdiction against going home again?)

Lethewards,

jody

 
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