Dark Age and Oral Poet

Extract

Increasing acceptance that the Iliad and Odyssey are in essence oral poems, built by one or two monumental composers out of traditional elements of various dates, has altered the perspective of the problem of Homeric composition. We have become more interested in the question of which parts of the poems can be associated with which phases of the tradition; or, if this question cannot be precisely answered, in the broader problem of the general stages of development of an oral heroic tradition in Greece.

Recently there has been great emphasis on the importance of the Mycenaean period for the formation of the dactylic hexameter tradition. This emphasis has been helped by the partial understanding of the Linear B tablets, although they contain, of course, no hint of Mycenaean poetry. On the other hand they do confirm the identification of the Arcado-Cypriot forms in Homer as Mycenaean in derivation, and they add a few new forms to those known from inscriptions in, or grammarians' reports of, the dialect of classical Arcadia and Cyprus.