Speak, Memory

[Paul Mackin]

In a long Encyclopaedia Britannicaa article on Homer the following
relates to Jody's question:

Stabilizing the text
An important and difficult question, which affects the accuracy of
modern Homeric texts, is that of the date when the epics became
"fixed"--which means given authoritative written form, since oral
transmission is always to some extent fluid. An alphabetic writing
system reached Greece in the 9th or early 8th century BC; before
that was a gap of 200 or 300 years, following the collapse of
Mycenaean culture and the disappearance of Linear B writing (with
each sign generally representing a syllable), during which Greece
seems to have been nonliterate. During that interval, certainly, much
of the epic tradition was formed. The earliest alphabetic inscriptions
to have survived, a few of them containing brief scraps of hexameter
verse, date from about 730 BC. Therefore, if Homer created the
Iliad at some time after 750 BC, he could conceivably have used
writing to help him. Some scholars think that he did. Others believe
that he may have remained nonliterate (since literacy is not normally
associated with oral creativity) but dictated the poem to a literate
assistant. Still others believe that the poems may have been
preserved orally and not too inaccurately at least until the middle
years of the following, the 7th, century, when "literature" in the
strict
sense appeared in the poetry of Archilochus. There are objections
to all three theories, but this much can be generally agreed: that the
use of writing was in any case ancillary, that Homer behaved in
important ways like a traditional oral poet. Some scholars are
convinced that certain of the more subtle effects and
cross-references of Homer's poetry would be impossible without
the ability to consult a written text. That is doubtful; certainly the
capacities even of ordinary oral poets in this direction are constantly
surprising to habitual literates. (See textual criticism.)

At least it may be accepted that partial texts of the epics were
probably being used by the Homeridae and by professional reciters
known as rhapsodes (who were no longer creative and had
abandoned the use of the lyre) by the latter part of the 7th century
BC. The first complete version may well have been that established
as a standard for rhapsodic competitions at the great quadrennial
festival at Athens, the Panathenaea, at some time during the 6th
century BC. Even that did not permanently fix the text, and from
then on the history of the epics was one of periodical distortion
followed by progressively more effective acts of stabilization. The
widespread dissemination of the poems consequent upon the growth
of the Athenian book trade in the 5th century and the proliferation of
libraries after the 4th was followed by the critical work of the
Alexandrian scholar Aristarchus of Samothrace in the 2nd century
BC, and much later by the propagation of accurate minuscule texts
(notably the famous manuscript known as Venetus A of the Iliad),
incorporating the best results of Greco-Roman scholarship, in the
Byzantine world of the Middle Ages. Rare portions of either poem
may have been added after, but not long after, the main act of
composition; the night expedition that results in the capture of the
Trojan spy Dolon and that fills the 10th book of the Iliad, some of
the underworld scenes in the 11th book of the Odyssey, and much
of the ending of the Odyssey after line 296 of the 23rd book
(regarded by Aristarchus as its original conclusion) are the most
probable candidates on the grounds of structure, language, and
style.

Even apart from the possibilities of medium-scale elaboration, the
Iliad and the Odyssey exemplify certain of the minor inconsistencies
of all oral poetry, and occasionally the composer's amalgamation of
traditional material into a large-scale structure shows through. Yet
the overriding impression is one of powerful unity.

jporter wrote:

> While I tend to agree concerning Benny, and the GR opening (but more
> on aesthetic grounds- since by now, you must all recognize, that I
> enjoy as many different interpretations of pynchon as possible- the
> Baudy Benny and the GR Holocaust opening are just not to my taste,
> although I accept them as someone else's). The Odyssey is a horse of a
> different feather, however, and by its very nature seems to resist
> being lumped with those two written works.
>
> When did the Homeric epics become reduced to the certainty of the
> written word?
>
> In their original productions/performances they were purely mnemonic,
> were they not, even the invocation of a particular muse, by a
> particular author/performer, would have been a mnemonic act, no? Any
> possible audience irritation over which muse might have been conjured
> at a particular telling, has to be conjecture offered from the luxury
> of the age of standardized reproductions, does it not?
>
> If the performer invoked the daughter of memory by chanting a name,
> and the tale was well received, did the audience believe it was the
> muse which was supplying the tale, or the performer's memory?
>
> The invocation of Muses was, I'm speculating, not merely a convention
> at the time of the origination of the epics. If that were so, did
> audiences of the time really consider Homer to be The Author of the
> epics, or, just the best medium of the time for conveying The Myths.
>
> no expert,
>
> jody
>
>
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