(BELGRADE) One of the (many) great confusions with Homer is the
general academic consensus regarding the Iliad and Odyssey
as the products of an oral tradition by which a general
narrative line became orally transmitted from one generation to
the next, until at last the poems were fortuitously consigned to
writing. The name of Milman Parry is credited with having formulating
the general mechanisms whereby vast amounts of narrative material
could be readily organized, versified, and delivered —magnificently
so— by a Serbian guslar in rhythm with his foot and his one-string
gusle. However, a recent explanation about the oral tradition (as
refers specifically to Homer) has been proposed by Gregory Nagy,
in the sense that, once a general narrative line became established,
each on othe the twentyfour rhapsodies, or songs, of the Iliad
and Odyssey could be performed following the general narrative
line but not necessarily indentical to the previous performance,
thus giving some leeway for variation and spontaneous embelishments
to the narrative linE.
What could be
more obvious of the above than a description of Hecabe. |
|
