John Miles Research Articles

Text as Tradition – Tradition as Text

From its inception, early Christianity exhibited a kind of textuality that differs in striking ways from modern, academic textuality. While the various skills comprising literacy (reading, writing, and so on) were rare and unevenly distributed in the early Roman imperial period, nevertheless the early Christians and other Jews lived in a world crowded with texts. Many of these texts existed in some relation to traditions that already enjoyed a history of performance and interpretation. These traditions, which predated their expression in written texts, perform critical functions in the composition, reception, and interpretation of "oral-derived texts", or texts with roots in an active oral tradition. This essay applies the work of John Miles Foley and, especially, Samuel Byrskog to explore how to read oral-derived texts within the context of their encompassing tradition and the history of that tradition's performance. The commemoration of Jesus' threat against the Jerusalem Temple in the years between Jesus' public life and the destruction of the temple provides an example of such a reading.

"A bruised reed shall he not break": John Miles's portraits of patients at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum. Part 2.

This is the second of two papers which examine a series of portraits of patients at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum (REA) which were undertaken in the 1880s by John Miles, who, as well as being a professional painter, was also an inmate of the Morningside institution. Alongside the portraits by Miles, we began, in Paper 1, to discuss a second series of portraits of the same patients, contained in a collection, entitled Bruised Reeds. In this paper we focus on the remaining portraits in this collection, before discussing the wider implications of the two series of portraits. These two series are of interest for several reasons. They are an example of patient art, only a small portion of which has survived from nineteenth century asylums. They are also in the tradition of patient portraiture. The patients in the portraits have been identified and their case notes examined. This information complements the portraits and helps to build a fuller picture of individual patients and their life in the Morningside Asylum. The case notes also reveal the symptomatology and behaviour of the patients. We discuss if the Bruised Reeds portraits were also by Miles, and suggest they were not.

"A bruised reed shall he not break": John Miles's portraits of patients at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum. Part 1.

This is the first of two papers which examine a series of portraits of patients at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum (REA) which were undertaken in the 1880s by John Miles, who, as well as being a professional painter, was also an inmate of the Morningside institution. The portraits by John Miles are of interest for several reasons. They are an example of patient art, only a small portion of which has survived from nineteenth century asylums. They are also in the tradition of patient portraiture. Miles's work is of interest because he was both a professional artist and a patient. His portraits also provide some insight into the patients' world: their appearance, demeanour, posture, clothing and their surroundings in the asylum. The patients in the portraits have been identified and their case notes examined. This information complements Miles's portraits and helps to build up a fuller picture of individual patients and their life in the Morningside Asylum. The case notes also reveal the symptomatology and behaviour of the patients. Alongside the portraits by Miles, we discuss a second series of portraits of the same patients and contained in a collection entitled 'Bruised Reeds'. We discuss if these portraits were also by Miles.

Building and Maintaining Links: A Review of John Miles Foley’s Pathways Project

Building and Maintaining Links: A Review of John Miles Foley’s Pathways Project

‘Faith Then Cometh by Hearing’: Latin Orality and the Typological Framework of the Milagros de Nuestra Señora

This study examines Latin phrases that are inserted throughout the Milagros de Nuestra Senora, and work in conjunction with vernacular formulations that critics have often identified as examples of orality. My investigation draws on recent approaches to medieval culture like that of John Miles Foley and Peter Ramey who understand orality and literacy as categories that are simultaneous rather than contrary. In some cases, I find that Berceo’s Latin interjections are elliptical, insofar as missing words and phrases from inserted fragments appear to be meaningful in new vernacularized contexts. In other cases, however, these insertions are more completely recontextualized, and can take on very distinct, even paradoxical senses in their new settings. In this way, this essay not only sheds light on the Latin orality that Berceo expected his audience to possess or be familiar with, but also considers how this evidence might relate to the efforts of ecclesiastical reformers as well as the experiences of pilgrims on the road to Santiago.

The Psalmic Oral Formula Revisited: A Cognitive-Performative Approach

Abstract In the wake of Milman Parry’s and Alfred Lord’s groundbreaking discovery of oral composition in Homeric epics, biblical scholars analyzed the formulaic language of the biblical Psalms with a view toward establishing a similar compositional function. This approach met with little success. Among the many recent refinements to the Oral-Formulaic theory is the distinction between oral composition and oral conception, a distinction which allows for identifying oral features of a “text” which do not necessarily reflect composition in performance. The goal of this article is two-fold. First this article proposes a new model for identifying oral formulas based on the theory of prototypical categorization developed within the field of cognitive sciences, particularly cognitive linguistics. Second, this article argues that the psalmic oral formulas are best understood as linguistic registers which evoke a performance arena, a feature of orally derived literature described most extensively by John Miles Foley.

Dog guides as witnesses with specific reference to Miles and Houellebecq

Since Wild Dog first crawled from the Wet Wild Woods and laid his head on Woman’s lap, he has helped man, not only to hunt and protect, but also as guide. A guide with enhanced senses in the physical world who could find a way across unmarked landscapes, a clever empathic being who could lead man to certain places or to specific individuals. No wonder then that the best-known ancient dog deities accompany humans as guides, often on their way to the afterlife. Dog guides—not to be confused with guide dogs—have remained a constant feature of the representation of dogs in literature, reflecting as much of the nature of these dogs as of the nature and needs of the humans they attend. In this way, the human-animal relationship also reveals how the solipsistic tendencies of human self-definition limits our capacity for being in the world. In the two contemporary novels that form the basis of my enquiry, La Possibilité d’une île (2005) by Michel Houellebecq and Op ’n dag, ’n hond (2016) by John Miles, the agency of dog guides introduces an intriguing element of distancing, reminding us that the self has meaning only in relation to another and that human concerns are not absolute.

Michael Selwyn Longuet-Higgins. 8 December 1925—26 February 2016

Michael Longuet-Higgins was a geometer and applied mathematician who made notable contributions to geophysics and physical oceanography, particularly to the theory of oceanic microseism and to the dynamics of finite amplitude, sharp-crested wind-generated surface waves. The latter led to his pioneering studies on breaking waves. On a much larger scale, he showed how ocean waves produce currents around islands in the ocean. He considered wider aspects of the physics of waves, including wave-driven transport of sand along beaches, and the electrical effects of tidal streams. He also contributed to subjects of a geometrical character such as the growth of quasi-crystals, the assembly of protein sheaths in viruses, to chains of circle themes and to a wide variety of other topics. He was an extraordinary applied mathematician, using the simplest forms of mathematics to demonstrate and discover highly complex nonlinear phenomena. In particular, he often thought of problems involving water waves using his unique knowledge of geometry and then tested his theories by experiment. Along with Brooke Benjamin FRS, Sir James Lighthill FRS, Walter Munk FRS, John Miles and Andrei Monin, Michael Longuet-Higgins stands out as one of the towering figures of theoretical fluid dynamics in the twentieth century. His contributions will have a continuing influence on our attempts to understand better the processes that influence the oceans.

The Remediation of the Epic in Digital Games: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Abstract This paper examines whether certain computer games, most notably RPGs, can be thought of as examples of the postmodern epic. Drawing on more recent critical frameworks of the epic, such as the ones proposed by Northrop Frye, Adeline Johns-Putra, Catherine Bates or John Miles Foley, the demonstration disembeds the most significant diachronic features of the epic from its two main media of reproduction, that of text and oral transmission, in order to test their fusion with the virtual environment of digital games. More specifically, I employ the concept of “epic mode” in order to explain the relevance of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim for the history of the epic typology, which must now be understood as transmedial. I illustrate the manner in which this representative title assimilates the experience and performance of the epic, as well as several meaningful shifts in terms of genre theory, the most notable of which is an intrinsic posthuman quality. The experience of play inherent to Skyrim does not only validate the latter as an authentic digital epic of contemporary culture, but it also enhances the content, role and impact of the typology itself, which is yet far from falling into disuse.1

Miles

Technology can improve most aspects of vehicle dynamics except for ‘feel’, as John Miles laments in his final column

Die politiek van die mens-hondverhouding in <i>Op ’n dag, ’n hond</i> van John Miles

The politics of the human-dog relationship in Op ’n dag, ’n hond by John Miles. This article investigates the way in which the human-dog relationship is presented in the novel Op ’n dag, ’n hond by John Miles. The premise of this article is that the novel can be read within the theoretical framework of Posthumanism, in which the embodied communalities of humans and animals (dogs) are emphasised. Despite the differences between the human and nonhuman animal, it is possible to constitute relationality, based on their shared physical mortality. The investigation will focus on the visual paradigm of the novel: the reciprocal view between dog and human, human and dog, which contradicts anthropocentricism and establishes an intersubjective relationship. The dog as guide embodies a moral agent that causes the teacher to look downward, into the underworld, as well as backward to the past. This, in turn, foregrounds the issues of loyalty and betrayal, and the balance between good and evil in a human life.

The Silence of the Muse

The Silence of the Muse Yukai Li Homeric scholarship has tended to take the Muse at her word—she who is the daughter of Memory, the all-knowing, the keeper of tradition—or rather, more correctly, specifically not at her word, since she never speaks. But the Homeric Muse must speak: she must bring the words and knowledge of the epic past to the singer at the moment of performance and thus underwrite the relationship between the Homeric poet and the Homeric tradition. In the wake of Milman Parry, the general consensus that the Homeric poems are the product of a long performance tradition and yet are also to be read as literary texts has only made the Muse all the more important in her role as the mediator between the individual poem and its tradition. In what follows, I propose to examine the connection between the figure of the Muse and the presuppositions of Homeric scholarship. How is the way in which we understand the voice and the silence of the Muse linked to the ways in which we think about Homer and the Homeric tradition? Next to the voice and the silence of the Muse, which serves as an image of or an emblem for questions of origin, continuity, and authority in the Homeric tradition, the core of my argument is the concept of kleos, meaning "fame, glory, or rumour." If kleos is what, in important ways, holds the Homeric tradition together—since kleos is what the hero wants and what the Homeric poet celebrates—then how we understand kleos is intimately connected with how we understand the Muse. It is possible, although I do not think anyone does this, to bring together Muse and kleos in a very literal configuration and say that the Muse conveys the kleos of the hero to the poet who celebrates him, thus guaranteeing the continuity and authority of the Homeric tradition with the Muse as its origin. Against this configuration of Muse, kleos, and tradition, we might raise the most basic and most trivial objection: "Sing of the wrath," says the poet of the [End Page 91] Iliad; "Speak to me about that man," says the poet of the Odyssey—but why then is it still the poet who sings the poems? If the literal configuration of Muse and kleos is impossible, since the Muse does not literally speak, we must then confront the questions of what it means for the performance of epic that the Muse does not speak, and what kind of song comes into being in the wake of the Muse's silence. The consideration of these questions takes place inescapably in the wake of the theory of orality, which has, of course, never been merely an assertion of the fact that the Homeric poems were orally composed but has always brought with it particular ways of thinking about the nature of poetry in the Homeric tradition. In the early parts of this essay, I will demonstrate as a point of departure some aspects of a relatively coherent series of linked propositions that underlie how scholars in the oral theoretical context approach the concept of kleos. It is helpful to briefly outline these propositions of oral theory: first, the assertion that the Homeric poems were orally composed and not written has tended to oppose the presence of oral performance with the distance of written texts; John Miles Foley, especially, examines the epiphanic aspects of oral performance (1999). Second, oral performance, as the epiphany of the truth and authority of the oral poetic tradition, insists on its own continuity and self-identity; this insistence on self-sameness is in conflict with what is known about the plain fact that oral traditions change and one performance is not the same as another.1 Consideration of the question of self-identity then breaks into two parts: recognising, on the one hand, that the Homeric tradition "objectively" proceeds via diachronic changes, but also incorporating a "subjective" perspective from within the tradition that this tradition is "ancient and immutable" (Nagy 1996b.17). The third proposition is that the insistence on the self-identity of the oral tradition, even if it is only a...

Editor's Column

Editor's Column John Zemke With this volume, "Parallelism in Verbal Art and Performance," prepared under the direction of guest editors Frog and Lotte Tarkka, Oral Tradition accommodates a baker's dozen plus one explorations into a technique for holding in poetic consciousness two or more complementaries of several different orders. The standard modus operandi of this column is to introduce by way of brief summaries, specific articles and how they stand in relation to one another. Frog and Lotte Tarkka's nearly exhaustive "Introduction," however, relieves me of the task, and affords me the opportunity to reflect on one aspect of the poetic experience that parallelism conjures: the apperceptive stilling of the successive advance of time, or in the words of Octavio Paz, the perception of "the present, the source of presences." How metering suspends the three dimensional fracturing of time and returns us to the experience of its elasticity, when: "the doors of perception open slightly and the other time appears, the real one we were searching for without knowing it: the present, the presence." For the full text of Octavio Paz's 1990 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "La búsqueda del presente" ("In Search of the Present"), see https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1990/paz-lecture-s.html. Now, poaching Frog's correspondence about the volume, the organization of these fourteen essays concerning different orders of parallelism reflects five touchstones, arranged by emphasis and approach: Meaning (Fox, Tarkka, Hull); Relation to verse (Kaartinen—repetition; Kallio—melody; Fabb—cognitive processes); Formal Typology (of verses—Holm and Saarinen, beyond verse—Frog I); Specific Traditions and Types (Stepanova, Cruz, Turpin); and, finally, Theorizing Parallelism and Embodied Performance (Lindfors, Frog II). It is, nonetheless, useful to review the scope of the languages of the poetic traditions reviewed: San Juan Quiahje Chatino, an Oto-Manguean language spoken in the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico (Cruz); Western Sumatran Minangkabau, Ipili, Mongolian, Toraja, and Asmat (Fabb); Rotense, Tetun, and Atoni, (Fox); Finno-Karelian languages (Frog I); as well as Danish, English, Khanty, Lithuanian, and Old High German (Frog II); Zhuang, a form of Tai-Kadai spoken in the highlands of Western Guangxi, Southern China (Holm); Ch'orti', a Mayan language spoken in sourthern Guatelmala (Hull); Bandanese (tur wandan), spoken in two villages in the Kei Islands (Kaartinen); British and American English (Lindfors); the Ingrian dialect of Finnish, and the closely related Finnic languages Izhorian and Karelian (Kallio); Karelian (Stepanova); Arandic, a Pama-Nyugan language spoken in Central Australia (Turpin); and, finally, Karelian (Tarkka). This issue of Oral Tradition appears in virtual space thanks to the combined efforts of the staff of the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition—Mark Jarvis, Hannah Lenon, Lauren Anderson, Vida Bonney, Elise Broaddus, Katy Chenoweth, Emily Horn, Jennifer Spitulnik, Evelyn Yamoah, and Professor Sean Gurd. 2017 witnessed a profound reshaping of the human resources that manage the affairs of the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition. A new fiscal regime entailed the separation of Mark Jarvis, Hannah Lenon, and Jennifer Spitulnik from the Center on the last day of the month of June. Their absence, the loss of their intellectual contributions and collegiality profoundly affect accomplishing the work of the Center. I wish them continued success in all of their endeavors. Research Assistants Lauren Anderson, Vida Bonney, and Emily Horn have taken on new challenges that augur much success. Professor Sean Gurd's ambitious research agenda now requires his full attention. The absence of his advice and good work is sorely felt, yet I feel certain that the loss incurred by the Center will be amply compensated by the questions his research poses to Classical Studies and the rewards to be had in answering them. Finally, as is customary, I want to recognize the colleagues who referee submissions for Oral Tradition—they deserve special recognition and kudos, even in their anonymity. Their expertise and judgment informs every editorial decision and I am deeply appreciative of having their guidance. With their invaluable counsel all of us working on the journal can continue aspiring to the standards of scholarship established by the founding editor, John Miles Foley. Professor Foley worked tirelessly to ensure that Oral Tradition offer a venue for...

Multimedial Parallelism in Ritual Performance (Parallelism Dynamics II)

This article approaches parallelism as a semiotic phenomenon that can operate across verbal art and other media in performance. It presents an approach to different media and the uniting mode as construing metered frames. Multimedial parallelism is analyzed as a phenomenon resulting from the coordination of expressions in relation to these frames to form members of parallel groups. The focus is on rituals that involve interaction with the unseen world. Discussion of parallelism between speech and empirical aspects of extends to the potential for presumed parallelism between speech and unseen objects, agents, and forces. John Miles Foley's concept of performance arena is extended to performers' and audiences' perceptions and expectations about reality in ritual performance. The mapping of otherworld locations and cosmology onto empirical spaces in is also discussed.

Abstract IA27: Novel natural killer cell targets for cancer immunotherapy

Abstract Avoiding immune destruction is a hallmark of cancer. Natural killer (NK) cells contribute to tumor immune surveillance and protection from tumor metastasis. The cell surface Ig superfamily molecule CD96 has recently been shown as a negative regulator of mouse NK cell activity, and we have demonstrated that blocking CD96 with a monoclonal antibody inhibited experimental metastases in multiple tumor models. The anti-metastatic activity of anti-CD96 was dependent on NK cells, CD226 (DNAM-1) and IFN-γ, but independent of activating Fc receptors. Anti-CD96 was more effective in combination with anti-CTLA4, anti-PD1, anti-TIGIT, or doxorubicin chemotherapy. Development of additional anti-mouse and anti-human CD96 mAbs will be discussed. Overall these data demonstrate that blocking CD96 is a new and complementary immunotherapeutic strategy to reduce tumor metastases. The activity of NK cells is also governed by the cytokine IL-15, foreign and self-ligands, and a variety of immunosuppressive factors. We have identified CIS (Cytokine-inducible SH2-containing protein; Cish gene) as the critical negative regulator of IL-15 signalling in NK cells and shown the critical intrinsic role of CIS in suppressing NK cell control of tumor initiation and metastasis. The combination of Cish-deficiency and relevant immunotherapies, such as immune checkpoint blockade antibodies, IL-2, and type I interferon revealed further improved control of metastasis. The data clearly indicates that targeting CIS promotes NK cell antitumor functions and CIS holds great promise as a novel target in NK cell immunotherapy. The relative importance of mechanisms that tumors adopt to evade NK cells remains ill defined. Using mice with NK cells that either constitutively, or are unable to, signal via the TGF-β receptor, revealed that TGF-β signaling induces the transdifferentiation of conventional NK (cNK) cells into ILC1. Functional analysis revealed that host protection from tumor initiation and metastasis is mediated by cNK cells, whereas tumor resident ILC1 and ILC1-like cells appear to offer no host protection. These data indicate the plasticity of cNK cells under pathophysiological conditions and a potential new escape mechanism for tumors from innate immunity. Citation Format: Mark J. Smyth, Eva Putz, Stephen Blake, Aaron Gao, Fernando Guimaraes, John Miles, Bill Dougall, Michele WL Teng, Nicholas D. Huntington. Novel natural killer cell targets for cancer immunotherapy [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Second CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference: Translating Science into Survival; 2016 Sept 25-28; New York, NY. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Immunol Res 2016;4(11 Suppl):Abstract nr IA27.

Oral formulaic composition and associative linking in John Miles Foley's Pathways Project: a review * Oral Tradition and the Internet. Pathways of the Mind. John Miles Foley.

John Miles Foley (1947–2012) was an eminent scholar who studied three traditions of oral poetry: Ancient Greek, Early Medieval English, and South Slavic. He both spearheaded the institutional establishment of oral tradition as an academic field and its popularization through public engagement. In 2002, Foley published a popular book, How to Read an Oral Poem, which introduces an analogy he would subsequently pursue at great length: ‘the singer’s and the audience’s experience of an oral poem is more like a Web-surfing expedition than a forensic examination of a textual corpse’ (Foley 2002b, p. 221). Foley based his last major work, the Pathways Project, on this analogy, spending the last 7 years of his life exploring the ‘fundamental similarities between humankind’s oldest and newest thought-technologies: oral tradition and the Internet’ (Foley 2005a). Foley undertook the Pathways Project among a number of other Web projects he initiated in the final decade of his career. To ‘deepen and enrich’ (Foley 2002b, p. xii) the ideas in How to Read an Oral Poem, he complemented the book with a Web-based ‘e-companion’ (Foley 2002a) offering ‘materials that don’t fit comfortably between the covers of a conventional book’, such as audio recordings. Foley also reworked his scholarly edition of The Wedding of Mustajbey’s Son Bećirbey (Foley 2004), a South Slavic oral epic recorded in 1935 by Milman Parry, combining digitized audio with a transcription and an English translation, and making them freely available on the Web (Foley 2005b). In addition, he founded the Center for eResearch at the University of Missouri and moved the scholarly journal Oral Traditions to an open access model.

Book Review: Essays on Orality and Memory in Honor of Werner Kelber: Richard A. Horsley, Jonathan A. Draper and John Miles Foley (eds.), Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark

Book Review: Essays on Orality and Memory in Honor of Werner Kelber: Richard A. Horsley, Jonathan A. Draper and John Miles Foley (eds.), <i>Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark</i>

Unity and Difference in Andean Songs

Unity and Difference in Andean Songs Charles Maurice Pigott (bio) In this essay I textually analyze a selection of Andean songs that I collected during doctoral fieldwork in the Peruvian Andes, between 2010 and 2011.1 Song is an important oral tradition in the Andes, where verse is normally accompanied by music and dance. Many song-genres (such as those presented here) are only performed during particular festivals, while others (for instance, the waynu) are part of daily life. The diversity of songs makes it difficult to classify “genres” according to Western lines of interpretation, which is why in this essay I have adopted an emic perspective and listed each song according to its place within the wider context of the festival. As John Miles Foley states (2002:36), “when dealing with the genres of oral poetry, expect a cornucopia. … Examine all defining features of each oral poem according to its idiosyncrasies rather than according to a prepackaged set of expectations,” for “care must be exercised to ‘read’ each oral genre on its own terms first.” Accordingly, this essay adopts an ethnopoetic model of analysis, reading “upwards” from the text rather than “downwards” from preconceived notions or categories. Indeed, “we need to make the effort to speak and hear the right language as fluently as we can manage, even if that effort entails a degree of culture shock” (20). Only by entering the “world” of the poetry—and, in the case of this essay, this means deep textual analysis in tandem with knowledge of the wider cultural context—can we reveal the underlying motivations of the texts in question.2 My research involved traveling among various villages in Bolognesi and Pomabamba provinces, Ancash department, Peru, in search of local song traditions. My focus was on the linguistic and literary aspects of the songs, and particularly how they can elucidate the concept of “identity.” The songs presented here are extracts from the verses sung during the Masha festival in the village of Mangas, Bolognesi. I examine their portrayal of two major aspects of identity-creation, namely “unity” and “difference.” Mangas is well-known across Bolognesi for its traditional festivals, which have earned this village the popular designation as el pueblo de brujos (“town of witches,” a designation not necessarily used in a derogatory manner). The principal language of the songs is Ancash Quechua, a member of the Quechua 1 branch of the Quechua language-family, according to Torero’s (1974, 2002) classification. Quechua 1 is spoken in the central Peruvian Andes, whereas the Quechua 2 branch extends from southern Colombia to northern Chile and Argentina, its original range roughly coterminous with the borders of the Incan Empire. Given the far greater diversity of Quechua 1, we know that it is much older than Quechua 2 (Parker 1976:27–28), despite the very common misbelief—even by Quechua 1 speakers—that the Quechua (a Quechua 2 variety) of the former Incan capital, Cuzco, represents an original standard. In common with many Amerindian language-families, Quechua is polysynthetic and agglutinating. A polysynthetic language is one that “allows the formation of extremely long words with many affixes” (Parker 1976:29, my translation). An agglutinating language is one where the affixes “undergo very little fusion or morphophonemic change” (29); in other words, adding new affixes does not change the form of those already there. All Quechua affixes are suffixes, and most of the suffixes can combine spontaneously with any word-root so that words are often formed ad hoc as meaning is fine-tuned by the addition of different suffixes. According to Mazzotti, Quechua can therefore “better express tonalities and affects without depending entirely on an extensive vocabulary” (2003:101). How such suffixes interact in the creation of meaning is thus a central issue for the current essay. An additional linguistic concern arises from the influence of Spanish now being omnipresent across the Andes, to the extent that it can be viewed as a second native language. As a result, the texts analyzed here incorporate aspects of Spanish to greater or lesser degrees.3 The Masha Festival The festival of Masha traditionally takes place every November in Mangas and lasts for two weeks. It centers...

Learning to Listen to an All-Day Talker

Abstract: Sixteen years after making a digital video-recording of an oral performance by the late Ray Hicks (1922–2003) of Beech Mountain, North Carolina, I reconsider the storytelling event using three different performance “texts”— the remembered live performance and its fixed text on digital video and in a print transcription. Within the performance excerpt, I find evidence of Richard Bauman's “keys to performance,” features of John Miles Foley's “Immanent Art,” signs of the cocreative “call and response” between teller and audience, and parallels between performance environment and story setting. In this “rereading” of the performance, I investigate the unrestrained comingling of narrative genres—personal story, mountain Mrchen, and local and family lore—that marked Hicks's improvisatory, stream-of-consciousness-style telling. Finally, by revisiting the digital recording long after Hicks's live speech act took place, I “receive” a story from him that I had not been fluent enough in the registers of his spoken, physical, and cultural “dialects” to receive in person sixteen years before.

Poetry’s Politics in Archaic Greek Epic and Lyric

Poetry’s Politics in Archaic Greek Epic and Lyric David F. Elmer (bio) In memoriam John Miles Foley1 The Iliad’s Politics of Consensus In a recent book (Elmer 2013) examining the representation of collective decision making in the Iliad, I have advanced two related claims: first, that the Iliad projects consensus as the ideal outcome of collective deliberation; and second, that the privileging of consensus can be meaningfully correlated with the nature of the poem as the product of an oral tradition.2 The Iliad’s politics, I argue, are best understood as a reflection of the dynamics of the tradition out of which the poem as we know it developed. In the course of the present essay, I intend to apply this approach to some of the other texts and traditions that made up the poetic ecology of archaic Greece, in order to illustrate the diversity of this ecology and the contrast between two of its most important “habitats,” or contexts for performance: Panhellenic festivals and the symposium. I will examine representative examples from the lyric and elegiac traditions associated with the poets Alcaeus of Mytilene and Theognis of Megara, respectively, and I will cast a concluding glance over the Odyssey, which sketches an illuminating contrast between festival and symposium. I begin, however, by distilling some of the most important claims from my earlier work in order to establish a framework for my discussion. Scholars have been interested in the politics of the Homeric poems since antiquity. Ancient critics tended to draw from the poems lessons about proper political conduct, in accordance with a general tendency to view Homer as the great primordial educator of the Greeks. Thus Philodemus, in the first century BCE, wrote a treatise called On the Good King according to Homer, extracting lessons from both poems about the appropriate exercise of power; Dio of Prusa has Alexander of Macedon expounding to his father, Philip, Homer’s preeminent virtue as an instructor of princes (Oration 2).3 Modern scholars have tended instead to treat the poems as documents for early Greek history—or rather, prehistory. In the wake of Milman Parry’s demonstration of the thoroughly traditional character of Homeric poetry, it has come to seem plausible that the poems, by preserving a tradition that antedates our earliest written texts in alphabetic Greek, may offer a precious glimpse into the prehistory of Greek politics. Historians are thus able to offer the poems as evidence for the political forms and structures of late Bronze Age and early Iron Age Greece. Still the best-known example of this kind of argument is Moses Finley’s The World of Odysseus (1978 [1954]), which founds a number of claims about the society of the so-called Dark Age (roughly 1100–800 BCE) on nothing more than the testimony of these two literary texts.4 The appeal of such an approach is readily apparent—it holds the promise of providing access to a period for which textual sources are otherwise lacking—but so are the perils. One must always exercise caution when seeking to correlate a literary text with historical realia.5 This is particularly true when no external documentary evidence is available as a control. In the case of Homeric poetry, an additional problem arises from the very same circumstance that seemed to open up the possibility of a prehistory of Greek politics in the first place, namely, the indebtedness of the Homeric poems to a very lengthy oral tradition, as demonstrated by Milman Parry and Albert Lord. It is in the nature of such a tradition to preserve within its inherited and formulaic diction traces of chronologically diverse periods, so that the “Homeric World” described by Finley is really an amalgam of elements from very different eras.6 For example, within the world of the Iliad, the boar’s tusk helmet worn by Odysseus in Book 10—a Bronze Age piece of equipment that would not have been seen in Greece after, say, the fifteenth century BCE—can happily coexist with Iron Age weapons and implements that first came into use centuries later. A similar kind of synthesis can be observed with regard to marriage customs, burial...