Is There the Iliad Was Composed before the Art of Writing Was Applied to the Composition of Poetry - Research Paper Example

?What evidence is there that the Iliad was composed before the art of writing was applied to the composition of poetry? The poem that we know as The Iliad comes from an age so far back in history that we cannot be entirely sure of its exact origins. Its form is a long poem in the epic style, which means that there is a heroic context with great themes of war, fate and national pride. This paper examines the proposition that the work was composed before the art of writing was applied to the composition of poetry by examining first the historical evidence and secondly the textual evidence for this proposition. The two sets of evidence are considered together with the intention of finding a definitive answer to this question. In the introduction to the text of the poem in English G.S. Kirk points out that the Greeks started to use writing around 725 B.C. which was relatively late compared to their neighbours, the Mesopotamians who had used their cuneiform script for some thousand years already. (Kirk, 2008, p. ix). Using items like figure scenes and vases, quotations in other poets, and mention of the Iliad and Odyssey in other surviving writings, Kirk notes that historians have dated the composition of The Iliad been around this time, or possibly as late as 680 B.C,. Archaeological evidence and historic individuals mentioned in the text would suggest that the battles between the Greeks and the Trojans which are described in the poem took place another 600 years before the time of Homer, around 1200 B.C. This means that a very long time had passed before the material came to be worked on by Homer. It is theoretically possible that even older oral versions existed on which Homer perhaps based his work. There is no evidence of this, however, and so older sources have to remain a speculation. It is clear that in the time of Homer, Greek civilization was not heavily dependent on writing. There are some inscriptions from this period but they are very brief. The technical limitations of the early Greek script made it unlikely that Homer could have made much use of it as a writing aid for such a long poem, according to Kirk. Moreover, Kirk points out that the audience for the poem were certainly not readers: “ He (= Homer) composed for people who were essentially non-literate, who listened to poetry as their ancestors had…” (Kirk, 2008, p. x) This dating evidence proves that there was plenty of poetry existing in written form before Homer came along. The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, was written in Sumerian script, and dates from around 2000 B.C., well before the Trojan wars. The Iliad was composed in Greek many centuries after this, and so in an absolute sense it is not true to say that it was composed before anyone had used writing for poetry. In a local and Greek sense, however, this is a possibility worth investigation, because the Greeks may indeed have composed, performed, heard,and preserved The Iliad in only oral form. Scholars have carefully studied the surviving text of The Iliad to try and work out if there are clues to its origin in the way it is written. The presence of many formulaic phrases which are repeated again and again is explained as a feature of oral literature: the hexameter form requires that a certain rhythm be maintained, and so these ready-made little phrases are called upon to fill spaces in the poetic line in a predictable way. An example of this is the way the named characters in the epic have a little descriptive phrase attached to them such as “Agamemnon, Atreus’ son” (Book 1, p. 1) which is varied as “The son of Atreus,/ ruler of the great plain, Agamemnon…” (Book 1, p. 3) or “… son of Atreus, tamer of horses (Book 2, p. 18). These epithets add interest to the story because the heroes are mentioned often, and it could become even more repetitive if the simple names were used without these variations. Finnegan explains the so-called “Homeric epithet” as a structural device: “The poet had at his disposal this series of traditional patterns built up over the years (so there was something in the theory of multiple authorship) but he was not passively dominated by them: he used them to create his own poem as he performed them.” (Finnegan, 1992, p. 60) Examples of oral literature in the modern world have been studied to see if this principle holds true here also, and Finnegan notes that similar techniques have been observed in Yugoslavia, where poets perform very long poems, over 10,000 lines, without written notes, and also use set phrases: “One of the most significant points to emerge from the study of Yugoslav oral poets is the absence of a fixed text – the primary text or archetype so often sought for in classical studies.” (Finnegan, 1992, p. 65) Finnegan urges caution, however, in assuming that the presence of these formulaic phrases, and even formulaic scenes like the banquet, the battle, setting out for a journey, etc., are firm proof of oral composition. She notes with reference to Bantu poetry in South Africa, that there are oral poems and also some written poems in this culture, and they both share this formulaic style. “Theorists have now to accept that since there can be both an ‘oral’ and a ‘literary’ use of formulae one cannot necessarily discriminate between ‘oral’ and ‘written’ on the basis of a ‘formulaic’ style alone.” (Finnegan, 1992, p. 70) Elizabeth Minchin notes that Homer uses a lot of lists and catalogues in The Iliad which she regards as “the defining feature of the oral genre.” (Minchin, 1996, p. 3) The term “list” is defined as “those passages in Homer where the poet presents a sequence of four or more place names, personal names, or items, all modified by little or no descriptive material (Minchin, 1996, p. 4) Catalogues are similar, but are amplified by some supplementary writing such as “enlivening description or comment, often rendered through narrative.” (Minchin, 1996, p. 4) Examples cited are lists like the rivers : “all that flow/ seaward from Ida: Rhesus, Heptaporus,/ Caresus, Rhodius, Granicus, Aesepius,/ Scamander’s ancient stream, and Simois/ round which so many shields and crested helms/ had crashed in dust with men who were half gods.” (The Iliad, book 12, p. 204) The lists to some extent interrupt the flow of the narrative, and turn instead to some descriptive or factual detail that demonstrates the poet’s knowledge, but above all, his ability to recall some items in a predictable word-for-word form. Stories can be retold in a variety of ways, using different words, but lists require much more exact remembering: “because of the very density of the information which it conveys, a list sung cannot be a spontaneous creation, composed at the moment of performance. It must be prepared in advance.” (Minchin, 1996, p. 7) The audience will often know what the list should contain, and in what order, and so for the performer of an oral poem, this is a little tour-de-force, showing off his memory skills. The pace of the narrative can thus be changed by the oral poet who introduces a set piece like a list of items or heroes: “He may use a list to express directly the gathering pace and intensity of events; he may used a list to herald a climax…” (Minchin, 1996, p. 17) An example of this can be found at the start of a battle : “After Diomedes came the Atreidae,/Agamemnon and Menelaus, and then/ the two named Aias, jacketed with brawn;/ then came Idomeneus and his lieutenant/ Meriones…” (The Iliad, Book 8, p. 134) The list goes on to include Eurypylus, Teucer, Aias and then shifts to list all of the enemy such as Orsilochus, Ormenus, Ophelestes, Daetor etc. The purpose of all these names in quick succession is, according to Minchin to “evoke the turmoil of battle, the frenzy and the scramble… it puts names to faces, it individualises the actors: these warriors are people.” (Minchin, 1996, p 17) This draws the audience into the narrative, and it enthrals them because it demonstrates the great feats of memory that the poet is capable of. It seems likely that this is a good argument in favor of the composition of The Iliad being oral in the first place, before being written down long after this first stage in its existence. One possible further eventuality is that the text, or parts of it, were composed in writing, and that there is a deliberate decision to make it as similar to oral poetry as possible, in order to preserve a sense of excitement. This would mean that the poem combines elements of written and oral form in its earliest phases of existence. Some scholars have argued that there are discontinuities in the text which point to the putting together of different portions. It is argued even that there may be more than one author and scholars have different opinions on the authorship of both The Iliad and The Odyssey. Tradition has it that Homer is the author of both, but this is largely conjecture, because there is no proof that the same person wrote both poem, or even that there was really a man called Homer. Price points to a section of book nine of The Iliad (pp. 148-149) where Phoenix is introduced as the leader of a delegation in one line, and then a little later, it transpires that Odysseus is the leader. He argues that the text is a combination of two things which are incompatible, suggesting layers of textual composition over a period of time: “Phoenix has been introduced at a later stage into an embassy which consisted of Ajax and Odysseus only.” (Page, p, 297-298) This is quite a convincing piece of evidence on multiple layers of text, but it could just as well apply to the manuscript tradition which came in later centuries, as to the original composition of the poem, and so it is not proof of the oral origins of the poem. In summary, then, there are indeed features which could indicate that The Iliad was composed specifically as an oral poem, intended to be delivered to a “live” audience. The epithets, lists and discontinuities are all evidence that point to a stitching together of pieces of material, small phrases and larger sections, partly as an aid for the performer to remember key elements of the story, and partly to remind the audience who is who and what is happening in the story. It is likely that the plot would be generally known, since the stories are very important semi-historical pieces which mean a lot to Greek culture, and so the enjoyment of the listeners would be not so much in hearing what happens next, but in re-living the tale that they know so well already. A modern parallel might be a child asking for the same bed-time story night after night. The words of the telling might be different on each occasion but from the point of view of the child the story is the same each time. It is not possible, however, to be absolutely certain that writing was not used because so little historical evidence has survived from this early period in Greek history, and there are even doubts about the authorship of the text that has survived in later manuscripts. References Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992. Homer, The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. Oxford World Classics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Kirk, G. S. “Introduction.” in Homer, The Iliad, translated by Robert Fitzgerald. Oxford World Classics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. vii – xviii. Mackay, E. Anne. Signs of Orality: the oral tradition and its influence on the Greek and Roman World. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Minchin, Elizabeth. The performance of lists and catalogues in the Homeric epics. In Ian Worthington, (ed.) Voice into Text: Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece. Leiden: Brill, 1996, pp. 3-20. Page, Denys Lionel. History and the Homeric Iliad. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959. Read More