
How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory? - vo2maxer
https://daily.jstor.org/how-do-we-know-that-epic-poems-were-recited-from-memory/
======
devindotcom
I read some of the classic epics before learning about their mode of delivery
and memorization, and was a bit perplexed at some of the repetitions and
formulae.

Then I learned that, for example, some characters would have multiple epithets
(grey-eyed, neat-ankled, all-seeing, etc) that in Greek would be selected
essentially not because they were the best descriptor, but because they were
the ones that would complete the line within the meter! So if there were two
extra syllables, the reciter would use one of these, but if there were three
extra, they could use one of the other two.

There are a bunch of these formulaic sayings, lines, or even entire little
episodes, that could be recited to gain a little time to remember the next
part, or speed up the action if the audience was flagging, and so on. The
entire form was structured around live performance and improvisation. That was
really revelatory for me.

Naturally they lose something in being recorded in static form - retaining
other forms of natural beauty and (as hnaa points out in another comment)
their symmetry, symbolism and meta-construction. Still such a pleasure to
read!

~~~
hnaa
Yep, all of the "wine-dark sea"s and "rosy-fingered dawn"s might have worked
as filler while the poet was queueing up the next part of the narrative.

~~~
hprotagonist
kennings, as this game is called in anglo-saxon, aren’t filler per se. Though
they are also a memory aide (for the poet and the audience), they are
primarily part of the way the skill of a scop (bard/epic poet) was judged was
by how cleverly he could choose the right kenning for the mood and meter of
where in the poem he was.

A saxon kenning for poet is “story-weaver”, and that’s actually very apt.

~~~
pjc50
Yes, it reminds me of the "memory palace" trick that's taught for remembering
e.g. numbers by associating them with a series of images. And similar tricks
with "themes", audible or visual, are still used for particular characters in
some modern media.

~~~
hprotagonist
yes. and for long works like Beowulf that were told episodically, the
repetition of events serves the same purpose as the 90-second “last time on
dragon ball Z...” recaps of fight hilights.

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divbzero
Alvaro de Menard wrote an excellent summary of the long debate surrounding the
_Who was Homer?_ question. In his article [1] de Menard describes how Parry’s
hypothesis accounted for aspects of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ that could not
be explained cleanly by prior theories.

[1]: [https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/01/17/having-had-no-
pr...](https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/01/17/having-had-no-predecessor-
to-imitate/) "Having Had No Predecessor to Imitate, He Had No Successor
Capable of Imitating Him"

~~~
goto11
Thank you, that is a much better article on the subject.

~~~
bambax
Yes, fantastic article! Should be submitted as such.

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hnaa
This is how the books of the Odyssey are structured:

TROY

\----

1\. Kikones (innocent city is ambushed)

2\. Lotus Eaters (temptation, delay)

3\. Cyclops (monster)

4\. Aeolus (greedy crew delays journey)

5\. Laestrygonians (monster)

6\. Circe (temptation)

7\. HADES

8\. Sirens (temptation)

9\. Scylla (monster)

10\. Cattle/Sun (greedy crew delays journey)

11\. Charybdis (monster)

12\. Calypso (temptation, delay)

13\. Phaecia (innocent city is ambushed)

\----

ITHACA

The episodes make a perfect reflection across the Hades episode; Circe and
Sirens are both forms of temptation, Scylla and Laestrygonians are both
monsters, etc. Also notice the smaller reflections inside of this large one:
Scylla and Charybdis are similar monsters in the same way that the Cyclops is
similar to the Laestrygonians.

It's perhaps easier to remember a number like 12140904121 than it is to
remember a series of random digits.

~~~
irrational
This is called a Chiastic structure (from the greek letter chi which looks
like an X - i.e., the shape the chiastic structure makes if you indent each
succeeding level).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiastic_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiastic_structure)

"These often symmetrical patterns are commonly found in ancient literature
such as the epic poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey."

~~~
hnaa
[https://theopolisinstitute.com/the-chiastic-structure-of-
lor...](https://theopolisinstitute.com/the-chiastic-structure-of-lord-of-the-
rings/)

------
cperkins
A very important aspect that Parry and Murko uncovered is that _music_ was the
thing that helped them memorize these incredibly long works. The guslari
played a one string "gusle" (iirc) and recited the work along with a song.

Some of the guslari bards could not perform the recitation without their
instrument.

And, fwiw, I recall that some assert that the guslari bards were all
illiterate. It has been asserted (not by me) that literacy interferes with the
guslari activity of memorizing and replaying enormous epics.

Check out Ted Goia "A Subversive History of Music" for an overview - but there
is a lot of other scholarship on this.

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Ar-Curunir
Did scholars really believe that verbal transmission of poetry/religious was
rare? It's a well documented trait of tons of Proto-Indo-European cultures
such as Celtic, Norse, Germanic, Greek, Iranian, and Indic.

~~~
xamuel
There's even a Platonic dialogue, the "Ion", in which Socrates converses with
a rhapsode whose entire life career is reciting Homer. Seems unlikely that
Plato would just make up something like that from whole cloth.

~~~
posterboy
missing the mark by half a millenium at least though

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avetisk
It’s funny how much we limit our understanding of the past by our own current
limits.

Back in the days I had quite old teachers who knew few dozens long poems by
heart and most of them learnt in their youth.

I think that the way we manage our memory and the context as well as the ratio
short/long term memory demands scoped to that context is totally different and
is diverging from old times.

As for the writing, there are many instances of long novels where the author
radically changes the style even nowadays.

Last but not least, we have inherited a disfigured version of those epics. The
originals sung by their authors are long gone. Thus the iterative divergence
by the following generations of bards in terms of style and even in
addition/deletion is inevitable.

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kylek
I've always found Pathas fascinating-

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_chant#Pathas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_chant#Pathas)

------
pjc50
> This also provides us with an elegant explanation for the Bellerophon story:
> epic poetry preserved the idea of writing even though the technology had
> been lost for over 500 years

Wait, what?

~~~
Metacelsus
The ancient Greek civilization was one of the only ones to have lost writing.
Linear A and Linear B were the original forms; the current Greek alphabet was
adopted later based on the Phoenician one.

See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages)

~~~
posterboy
what? How can you speak of _the_ civilization, as if them were unified at
either of these points in times?

Koine probably marked unification at least in writing, not earlier than 300 BC
if I recall correctly.

On top of that, Linear A is not even clearly identified yet.

A very interesting topic.

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lordleft
God I love heroic epithets. I wish they would come back in modern life:
“swiftly coding Dylan” or “ceaselessly refactoring Anna”

~~~
posterboy
suchlike do exist in literature (Dennis the mennace?), and occosionally in
artist names (Evil Knevil, Zedric the Entertainer, Slick Rick, Ghostface
Killah, L[adies] L[ove] cool J.) and I'm sure some exist in the specific
pattern you suggested though I don't remember any.

Reddit-memes are full of these, too, _bad luck Brian_ for example.

And _Jane likesbynames Doe_ is a known productive pattern as well.

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acqq
"The Singers and their Epic Songs" Murko 1928:

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4ee8/15e13dd1afd301639f7167...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4ee8/15e13dd1afd301639f716717a0f965a9122c.pdf)

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ilamont
I saw a documentary about 10 years ago featuring an older Irish speaker who
could recite Gaelic-language epic tales from memory. Not sure if they were
poems, but they were kind of sing-songy (and required a younger man, a
professor of Irish literature, to serve as an interpreter on camera).

Some information here about the tradition:

[http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-
heritage/...](http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-
heritage/folklore-of-ireland/folklore-in-ireland/traditional-storytelling/)

------
sacado2
Interestingly, AFAIK, when it was told the Finnish epic, the Kalevala, was not
even memorized. Well, parts of it at least. Rune singers were improvising
some/most of it as they were singing the story. And they were improvising
lines that had to respect the meter. And it's poetry, so it had to use
alliteration.

They could memorize thousands of lines of poetry, and improvise it on the go,
all while singing to a melody. I think that's pretty badass, quite frankly.

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dr_dshiv
The Homeric epics and Homeric Hymns were written down in a "public works"
event by Peisistratos in 6th century BC Athens [1] -- for the new institution
of the panathenic festival. Both the oral culture and literate transmission of
Homer are worth celebrating!

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peisistratos](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peisistratos)

------
awinter-py
ugh what's up with writing an article about a book without saying the name of
the book? It's The Singer of Tales

Also how do you write this article without using the word 'epithet'? The whole
book is about epithets

Best modern oral work using epithets is Brad Neely's wizard people (listen to
it without the video, the video only detracts)

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frandroid
> Though saturated in corporate narratives and televisual plots, we evidently
> still make up songs about heroes.

Love this.

------
imvetri
I see the article meant to educate readers in to put in a perspective. I'm not
able to grasp it. Would you help me out

~~~
mikestew
I’m assuming English is a second language for you, and I will piece together
the author’s assumptions for you as best I can. Please forgive incorrect
assumptions.

It had been assumed that Homer’s “writings” were indeed written down by
whoever was Homer. Whether Homer was one person, or a collection of writers
collectively named Homer, is the subject of debate. But it has been widely
assumed that it was initially written down, and not passed orally, because no
one can remember that much. Turns out...

So one dude makes recordings of more modern oral traditions, and concludes
that Homeric writings very well could have been initially oral. And then the
dude dies young and under mysterious circumstances.

As personal commentary, the argument against passing the story orally forgets
that just about all Buddhist writings started out as oral and not written (as
one example).

I hope that is helpful for you.

~~~
imvetri
Thanks for the details. I would like to chat more, I tried to type here but
content were going out of context, if you are interested email me at
svetrivel.91 @ gmail.com.

~~~
mikestew
I’m just a translator, I don’t have any particular interest the subject. So
don’t think I’m ignoring you when I don’t email. :-)

