Homer's Originality: Oral Dictated Texts

Abstract

In his impressive book, Heroic Poetry (London 1952), Sir Cecil M. Bowra places Homer the middle of an important change produced by the introduction of writing. Behind him (Homer) lie centuries of oral performance, largely improvised, with all its wealth of formulae adapted to an exacting metre; these he knows and uses fully. But if he also knows writing and is able to commit his poems to it, he is enabled to give a far greater precision and care to what he says than any improvising poet ever can. Since it is almost impossible to believe that the Iliad and Odyssey were ever improvised, and the richness of their poetry suggests some reliance on writing, we may see in them examples of what happens when writing comes to the help of the oral bard. He continues to compose in the same manner as before, but with far greater care and effectiveness. I These are the latest words in Homeric scholarship and they demand our atteintion. Bowra has ranged widely in the field of oral epic, realizing full well the importance of the comparative method in scholarship. He has focused our studies now on the period of transition from oral to written technique, and he is right. It was inevitable that a solution of whether or not Homer was an oral poet would be sought ill a compromise which would make him both; that is to say, an oral poet who writes. The motivating force behind this solution is the. reluctance to associate the greatness of Homer's poetry, the unity of his poems, his originality or individuality, with unlettered oral song. The feeling seems to be growing that the work of Milman Parry twenty years ago was an attack on the citadel of Homer's creative greatness. This is far less apparent in Bowra than in Prof. H. T. Wade-Gery's recent book, The Poet of the Iliad (Cambridge 1952), which is more typical of this increasing sentiment.2 He also accepts