History of Media: From orality to writing — Oral Cultures and Memory
How societies without writing composed, stored and checked knowledge, from Homer's formulas to Inca khipus and talking drums.
Try 3 questions
1. What did Milman Parry conclude about how Homer's epics were composed?
- By one scribe in a single sitting
- From older Egyptian written scrolls
- Orally, using ready-made formulas
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Answer: Orally, using ready-made formulas
Parry showed that the epics' repeated, metrically fixed phrases are the working tools of poets composing aloud in performance, not of writers at a desk.
2. Why do the Homeric epics repeat phrases like "rosy-fingered Dawn" and "swift-footed Achilles" so often?
- Scribes used them to fill damaged pages
- Ancient Greek had few words for color
- Stock phrases fit the meter while performing
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Answer: Stock phrases fit the meter while performing
Each epithet fills a specific slot in the hexameter line, so a singer could keep the rhythm going while composing on the spot.
3. To test Parry's theory in the 1930s, where were living oral epic singers recorded?
- In northern India
- In rural Ireland
- In Yugoslavia, in the Balkans
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Answer: In Yugoslavia, in the Balkans
Parry and Albert Lord recorded South Slavic guslars, who still composed long heroic songs in performance, offering a living model of how Homer might have worked.
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