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The Criticism of an Oral Homer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

J. B. Hainsworth
J. B. Hainsworth
Affiliation:
New College, Oxford
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Extract

Homer is universally praised for the clarity of his style. Yet even to sympathetic or perceptive readers, if their critical remarks really express their judgments, his poetical intention has been singularly opaque: invited to leave town by Plato, as if he were a bad ethical philosopher; lauded by Aristotle for his dramatic unity, as if he were a pupil of Sophocles; criticised by Longinus for composing an Odyssey without Iliadic sublimity; abused in more recent times by Scaliger as indecorous, irrational, improper and undisciplined, as if he were seeking (like Virgil) to portray the perfect exemplar of a renaissance prince; defended by Dacier as a sublime primitive, innocent of taste and art, who achieved perfection ‘par la seule force de son genie’. Some of these judgments are no more than the stock responses of their age to epic poetry. The critic regards the poems from his own point of view; he discovers what he expects to find; and he passes a judgment that illuminates the workings of his own mind but sheds nothing but darkness upon Homer's. The announcement, therefore, of a new criticism by Notopoulos and Lord, a criticism based on the results of comparative study and free from the old prejudices of Analysts and Unitarians, is an event of importance. It may even be the case that the despised anachronistic ‘singer’, that unwashed, mendicant figure lurking in the coffee houses of the Balkans, has something to say. But whatever he says, it will be applicable to Homer only by analogy, and will require verification.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 90 , November 1970 , pp. 90 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1970

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References

1 This paper is a version, slightly revised, of an address delivered to the Hellenic Society on March 19, 1970. My thanks are due to the editor for his prompt publication and for his indulgence towards the faults of what is essentially the record of an oral performance.

2 August Fick's remark, that our Odyssey is an insult to the human intelligence, belongs to Higher, not Literary criticism. On Scaliger see Shepard, S., ‘Scaliger on Homer and Virgil: a study in literary prejudice’, Emerita xxix (1961) 313–40Google Scholar, and for Homer in criticism generally Finsler, G., Homer in der Neuzeit von Dante bis Goethe (1912)Google Scholar, with Foerster, D. M., Homer in English Criticism (1947).Google Scholar

3 Notopoulos, J. A., ‘Parataxis in Homer: a new approach to Homeric literary criticism’, TAPA lxxx (1949) 1–23 Google Scholar and ‘Towards a poetics of early Greek oral poetry’, HSCP lxviii (1964) 45–65.

4 Lord, A. B., ‘Homer as oral poet’, HSCP lxxii (1968) 1–46 Google Scholar (castigating lip-service towards what is oral and traditional, which then ‘forms merely a facade behind which scholarship can continue to apply the poetics of written literature’. Cf. n. 11 below).

5 Bowra, C. M., From Virgil to Milton (1945) 2.Google Scholar

6 Cf. Nagler, M. N., ‘Towards a generative view of the oral formula’, TAPA xcviii (1967) 269–311 Google Scholar (see pp. 290–1). The danger of Nagler's suggestive paper is that it may lead to the equation of ‘traditional’ with ‘derivative’ with a consequent hazard of vacuity, for there is a perfectly good sense in which all speech is derivative (from the structures of grammar and lexicon). I cannot think that a formula (the traditional phrase par excellence) used perhaps twenty times rises into the poet's mind in the same way as any phrase hapax legomenon. Parry, 's initial idea (HSCP xli [1930] 77–8)Google Scholar that Homer must be all pre-existent formulae is, of course, superseded.

7 L'Épithète traditionnelle dans Homère (1928) and ‘Studies in the epic technique of oral verse-making’, HSCP xii (1930) 73–147.

8 Fenik, B., Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad (Hermes Einzelschriften, Heft 21, 1968).Google Scholar

9 HSCP xliii (1932) 14.

10 Singer of Tales (1960) 99.

11 Bowra, , Tradition and Design in the Iliad (1930) 66 Google Scholar; Carpenter, Rhys, Folktale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics (1946) 165, 172Google Scholar; Whitman, C. H., Homer and the Heroic Tradition (1958) 13–14 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lesky, A., History of Greek Literature (trans. Willis, and Heer, de, 1966) 63–4Google Scholar; Russo, J. A., ‘Homer against his tradition’, Arion vii (1968) 275–95.Google Scholar

12 From Virgil to Milton 3.

13 Combellack, F. M., ‘Milman Parry and Homeric artistry’, Comparative Literature xi (1959) 193–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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17 See the papers cited above, n. 3.

18 Carne-Ross, D. S. in Logue's, Patrocleia of Homer (1963) 53 n. 2.Google Scholar

19 HSCP lxviii (1964) 48.

20 μ 44, 183, ω 63, cf. A 248, Γ 221 ff.

21 Cf. Lang, M., ‘Homer and oral techniques’, Hesperia xxxviii (1969) 159–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Bassett, S. E., Poetry of Homer (1938) 26 ff.Google Scholar The illusion consists in the maintenance of narrative as if by one present without the intrusion of the poet's contemporary situation.

23 Singer 150–7.

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25 Professor R. Browning reminds me of the effect of their epics upon the Huns, ( Priscus, , FHG iv, p. 92 Google Scholar).

26 I 189, θ 73, cf. α 338.

27 α 325, 337. The effect holds in the world of the similes, ρ 518–20.

28 Ion 535e.

29 Jaeger, W., Paideia 2 (1939) 34 ff.Google Scholar

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31 Poiesis, 116 ff. The argument is based on the narrative order.

32 As was frankly admitted by earlier scholars, e.g. van Gennep, A., La Question d'Homère (1909) 52 Google Scholar, ‘Un bon guslar est celui qui joue de ces clichés comme nous avec des cartes’, cf. Parry, , HSCP xli (1930) 77–8.Google Scholar

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34 Preface to Plato, 147.

35 YCS xx (1966) 134–6.

36 Edwards, M. W., ‘Some stylistic notes on Iliad xviii’, AJP lxxxix (1968) 257–83.Google Scholar Whallon, W., Formula, Character, and Context (1969) 1 ff.Google Scholar

37 TAPA xcviii (1967) 310–11.

38 Poetics 1459330–7.

39 The passage is appreciated, from the conventional standpoint, by Owen, E. T., The Story of the Iliad (1947) 110–15.Google Scholar Fenik, , Typical Battle Scenes, 78–105 Google Scholar, examines the repeated structures and motifs.

40 E.g., Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs, 242–3.

41 Chadwick, H. M. and Chadwick, N. K., The Growth of Literature, ii 441.Google Scholar

42 Singer 159–60.

43 Russo, , Arion vii (1968) 286–94Google Scholar, analyses further examples, especially Od. v init.

44 Homer and the Heroic Tradition, 249 ff.

45 See Songs 261–3 and Singer 168.

46 Cf. Singer 92.

47 Cf. Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs, 239. The informant (Zogić, a great stickler for ‘accuracy’) accused bad singers of adding to a song to get the reputation of being better singers. ‘That's what people like, the ornamenting of a song.’

48 See Singer 78.

49 Il. E 297–317 and 431–53.

50 Aeneas, Menelaos with Antilochos, Hector I, Odysseus, Hector II, Il. E 541–710.

51 Singer 148.