Théorie de l'oralité et analyse stratigraphique du texte homérique : le concept de « poème traditionnel »
Authors: Cerri Giovanni 
Published: April 2013

Iliad and Odyssey as Traditional Poems

The Oral-Theory and the stratigraphie analysis of the Homeric text are not truly incompatible. The only hermeneutic model that can adequately explain the genesis of the Iliad and the Odyssey is the concept of "traditional poem" as it was defined by Gilbert Murray. The "traditional poem" is a work which a specific culture sees as its primary pedagogical instrument, a canonic point of reference. Hence, this culture preserves it and hands it down over centuries but, at the same time, keeps adding to it and reworking it to make it always adequate to its needs, which inevitably change with the passing of time. An exhaustive demonstration of this assumption, tested with absolute philological rigor not only on the Homeric poems but also on the Bible and especially on some of its books, such as Judges, can be found in Murray s work The Rise of the Greek Epic, the first edition of which came out in 1907, the fourth in 1934. In my opinion, this work has too often been neglected by recent critics, unfortunately including scholars of the Parrian trend who, if they had taken it into account, would probably never have associated such penetrating analyses of the technique of oral epic poetry with such a banal solution of the Homeric Question (the Iliad and the Odyssey as extempore texts, a happy day dictated by a single rhapsode for a single registration).

But how was this ever-growing traditional text progressively fixed within an archaic oral culture like that of Greece? Two alternative -or possibly even complementary- explanations come to mind:

1) The first and more obvious one was suggested by Murray himself: an ever broader and more complete stock of copies was used as a source for public recitations by individual bards, or especially renowned bardic schools, or some of the Panhellenic religious centers where rhapsodic contests were regularly held. If so, the Peisistratid edition would represent only one of the final links of the chain.

2) It cannot be ruled out, however, that the text may have been fixed also, or even completely, by memory. It is well known that most exponents of the oral school believe that the oral epic tradition was founded exclusively on improvisation, not memorization, and that the notion itself of a rigid text is peculiar to literary cultures. A decisive influence in this direction was exercised by the theorization proposed by M. Parry and A. Lord on the basis of their field investigations among Yugoslavian bards, exponents of a still living tradition. However, other, equally valid comparative evidence shows that, in some oral cultures, while improvisation is also practiced, especially prestigious songs are learned by heart and repeated rather faithfully. It is precisely this type of memorization that may have progressively developed from a certain period onward in specific milieus of Archaic Greece for the purpose of preserving the Iliad and the Odyssey more faithfully.

These two ways of fixing the text can be regarded as either alternative or complementare: it is plausible that both were at work in different times and places, only to interact later under circumstances that it would be absurd to attempt to reconstruct in any but the most general terms. Different Homeric texts were gradually fixed in different places. Ours goes back to one or more of them. For a long time, recitations based on a canonic text must have coexisted with freer improvisations drawing on the stories of Achilles'1 Menis and Odysseus'1 Nostos.