Orality, Textuality, and the Homeric Epics: An Interdisciplinary Study of Oral Texts, Dictated Texts, and Wild Texts

by Jonathan L. Ready

Overview

Written texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey achieved an unprecedented degree of standardization after 150 BCE, but what about Homeric texts prior to the emergence of standardized written texts? Orality, Textuality, and the Homeric Epics sheds light on that earlier history by drawing on scholarship from outside the discipline of classical studies to query from three different angles what it means to speak of Homeric poetry together with the word "text".

Part I utilizes work in linguistic anthropology on oral texts and oral intertextuality to illuminate both the verbal and oratorical landscapes our Homeric poets fashion in their epics and what the poets were striving to do when they performed. Looking to folkloristics, part II examines modern instances of the textualization of an oral traditional work in order to reconstruct the creation of written versions of the Homeric poems through a process that began with a poet dictating to a scribe. Combining research into scribal activity in other cultures, especially in the fields of religious studies and medieval studies, with research into performance in the field of linguistic anthropology, part III investigates some of the earliest extant texts of the Homeric epics, the so-called wild papyri. By looking at oral texts, dictated texts, and wild texts, this volume traces the intricate history of Homeric texts from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period, long before the emergence of standardized written texts, in a comparative and interdisciplinary study that will benefit researchers in a number of disciplines across the humanities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198835066
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/25/2019
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	9.70(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jonathan L. Ready, Professor of Classical Studies, Indiana University

Jonathan L. Ready is a professor of classical studies at Indiana University. He is the author of Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives: Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia (Oxford University Press, 2018), as well as numerous articles on Homeric poetry. He is also the co-editor of Homer in Performance: Rhapsodes, Narrators, and Characters (University of Texas Press, 2018) with Christos C. Tsagalis and serves as the co-editor of the annual Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic (Brill).

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I Oral Texts and Oral Intertextuality

1 Oral Texts and Entextualization in the Homeric Epics 15

Introduction 15

1.1 Performance, Oral Texts, and Entextualization 16

1.2 Application to the Homeric Epics 28

1.2.1 The Preexistence of Tales and Songs and the Object-Like Status of Utterances in the Homeric Epics 28

1.2.2 Entextualization in the Character Text I 34

1.2.3 Entextualization in the Character Text II 51

1.2.4 The Poet and Entextualization 66

1.3 Homerists on Texts 72

2 Oral Intertextuality and Mediational Routines in the Homeric Epics 75

Introduction 75

2.1 Oral Intertextuality and Mediational Routines 75

2.2 Mediational Routines in the Homeric Epics 81

2.2.1 The Source Text 82

2.2.2 The Target Text 82

2.3 Metapoetic Implications 95

Part II The Emergence of Written Texts

3 Textualization: Dictation and Written Versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey 101

Introduction 101

3.1 The Dictation Model 104

3.2 A Comparative Approach 108

3.3 The Process of Recording by Hand 114

3.3.1 The Challenges of Manual Transcription 114

3.3.2 Steps to Work around These Challenges and their Effects 118

3.3.3 The Rare Exceptions 122

3.3.4 Dictated Texts versus Sung Texts 123

3.3.5 What was Written Down 127

3.3.5.1 The Collector as Gatekeeper 127

3.3.5.2 The Scribal Process 128

3.4 The Collector's Impact on the Oral Text 130

3.4.1 Unwitting Interference (or the Collector's Presence) 131

3.4.2 Purposeful Interference 135

3.5 Editing 140

3.5.1 Field Notes 140

3.5.2 Editorial Work in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 141

3.5.3 Editorial Work from the Second Half of the Twentieth Century until Today 152

3.6 Best Practices 157

3.7 The Collector's Text versus the Performer's Oral Performance 158

3.8 The Formulations in Section 3.1 Reevaluated 163

3.9 The Evolutionary Model's Transcript 173

Excursus: The interventionist Textmaker and Herodotus's Histories 178

Part III Copying Written Texts

4 The Scribe as Performer and the Ptolemaic Wild Papyri of the Homeric Epics 185

Introduction 185

4.1 The Ptolemaic Wild Papyri of the Homeric Epics 187

4.2 The Nature of the Variation: Not Scribal Error 192

4.3 Accounting for This Variation 197

4.4 The Scribe as Performer 203

4.5 The Scribe as Performer and the Ptolemaic Wild Papyri of the Homeric Epics 215

4.5.1 The Wild Papyri and the Comparanda 215

4.5.2 When? 221

4.5.3 Who? 228

5 Scribal Performance in the Ptolemaic Wild Papyri of the Homeric Epics 235

Introduction 235

5.1 Juxtaposing the Wild Papyri and Helmut van Thiel's Text 237

5.2 Competence and Entextualization 248

5.2.1 Cohesion 250

5.2.2 Coherence 255

5.3 Competence and Completeness 257

5.3.1 Characters do More Things 258

5.3.2 Nothing is Assumed 264

5.4 Competence and "Affecting Power" 268

5.4.1 The Emotions 269

5.4.2 The Fulfillment of Expectations and the Groove 272

5.5 Tradition, Traditionalization, and the Intertextual Gap 276

5.6 The Bookroll 281

5.7 The Performing Scribe 283

5.8 Scribal Performance and the Alternatives 286

Conclusion 291

Works Cited 295

Index of Greek Passages 349

Index of Terms 353

Editorial Reviews

"Through readings of Homeric passages, examination of variant readings of "wild" papyri, and, above all, wide-ranging comparative evidence, Ready expands our understanding of "text" and retrieves versions of textuality that take place within oral performance." — Yukai Li, Phoenix

"This landmark study will interest not only Homeric scholars, but scholars of oral performance, epic poetry, transmission of traditional texts, the relation of the oral and written, and related themes, and serves as a touchstone for further research on these epic questions." — Mark Bender, Journal of Folklore Research Reviews

"This dense and technical book far transcends its highly specialised subject area of Homeric oral epic poetry. Its wide comparative reading works both ways: Homerists are introduced to folklore studies, while folklorists have much here to consider about the interaction of collector/transcriber/editor/performer in all oral forms and the mediated relationship between the written and the oral." — The Katharine Briggs Award Judges, The Katharine Briggs Award, The Folklore Society

"Ready neatly maneuvers past older discussions of the Homeric Question by advancing fresh arguments from a performance perspective. The combination of comparativist chops and heterodox dismantling of previous hypotheses will turn heads. This book breaks new ground and will change the course of Homeric studies." — Professor Jonathan Burgess, University of Toronto

"Already an established authority on Homer, orality, and the epic literary world, Jonathan Ready adds yet further lustre to his international reputation in this fine new book. Not only is it notable for its unusually imaginative and knowledgeable transdisciplinary reach, it leads us, magnificently, into new ways of looking at old texts, their emotion, as well as their imagery and origins." — Professor Ruth Finnegan, The Open University

"An admirable achievement of JLR in this book is his demonstration, by way of a wide-ranging cross-cultural collection of examples, that the logistics of dictation actually have a skewing effect on the 'orality' of a performer... I note my appreciation of the references made to comparative studies of oral traditions in general, which the author applies most deftly to the Homeric text...A related strongpoint, to be found in the last part of the book, is the author's survey of comparative evidence relevant to theories about the scribe as performer,...I conclude by affirming that JLR has succeeded in showing that Homeric performance, to repeat what I have already quoted from the author's own wording, is capable of outliving the moment." — Gregory Nagy, Gnomon 5/95

"Orality, Textuality, and the Homeric Epics: An Interdisciplinary Study of Oral Texts, Dictated Texts, and Wild Texts is a masterful work by an outstanding scholar. This book is a rich resource that I recommend to anyone interested in orality, writing,... It offers the best discussion of "scribal performance" available." — Frog, University of Helsinki, Journal of American Folklore 136

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