The Heritage of Armenian Literature [1] opens up with a chapter about oral tradition. The information about the Armenian oral tradition comes from the History of the Armenians by Moses of Khoren. He mentions different forms of story telling about the ancient Armenian heroes. Zruyts “old and unwritten stories, to which Moses of Khoren attaches a high degree of credibility. Less credible ones, what he terms araspels or legends… Read more
~A guest post by Jacqui Donlon and the Oinops Study Group~ “Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep, even so I will endure… For already have I suffered full much, and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.” The Odyssey v (George Chapman translation)[1] Dear friends, we started out on our journey with this quote (see “The Wine-dark Sea“), and… Read more
We are pleased to announce that Albert B. Lord’s The Singer of Tales is now available, for free, in electronic form on the newly redesigned CHS website. Albert Lord’s book builds on the work begun by Milman Parry during his search for the oral traditions in the Yugoslavia of 1933–35, when he began recording and studying a living tradition of oral poetry to further understanding of how Homeric poetry had… Read more
~ A guest post by Jenna Cole ~ While thinking about oinops in the course of our word study, one passage stood out as unusual because oinops appears in one published edition of the Greek Iliad text but not in another. For Scroll I, line 350, Chicago Homer, which is based on the 1902 Oxford edition by D.B. Munro, gives this: θῖν’ ἔφ’ ἁλὸς πολιῆς, ὁρόων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον: But… Read more
We are pleased to share this recent audio conversation (see below) with Casey Dué and Mary Ebbott, during which they discussed their findings on the poetics of ambush in Iliad 10. During the conversation, they explain why they chose to look at Iliad 1 0 in the light of oral poetics, and examine the evidence for a night ambush as a traditional theme, and how this activity is as heroic as, for… Read more