Intricately constructed, this well-documented work addresses issues related to the emergence of written Homeric texts in a manner that advances our understanding of how written texts with oral linkages are created in epic traditions around the world. Three major sections address key issues: Part I: Oral Texts and Intertextuality; Part II: The Emergence of Written Texts; and Part III: Copying Written Texts. All sections comprise key conversations in the study of epic, orchestrated into several sub-themes that both summarize past studies and suggest new perspectives and pathways. The bibliography is a “must read” for any student of epic literature, offering a list of key sources from both Homeric studies and studies on epic/oral literature in Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas. This short review will highlight some key ideas of this multi-layered volume.
Section 1 of Part I draws on theoretical sources in linguistic anthropology, folkloristics, and Homeric studies in a discussion of oral performance, intertextuality, and entextualization, the latter defined as “what performers do when they create an utterance capable of outliving the moment” (15). In a review of how entextualization works, the author discusses the process from many angles. Ready acknowledges how his intersectional, cross-disciplinary explorations into Homer, in juxtaposition to other epic traditions and the use of oral performance theory, is influenced by the works of Richard Martin and John Miles Foley, among others. To mention one topic from this rich chapter, several interesting pages are spent probing how paralinguistic bodily movements, gestures, mime, and simple objects used in performance aid the entextualization process by keeping spoken utterances in mind throughout the performance and contribute to the process of narrative cohesion. He cites Harold Scheub’s work on a Xhosa storyteller in South Africa who used a stick along with gestures in a performance—which recalls the function of stylized gestures and folding fans in East Asian storytelling traditions.
In Section 3 of Part II, the author begins by a succinctly laying out approaches to how the Odyssey and the Iliad were created, citing the evolution of the idea of the “dictation model,” beginning with an observation by Albert Lord that the texts were dictated by a poet/singer to a scribe. Alternate models include that of direct writing by a poet competent in the technology of writing, suggested by Martin L. West, which has its critics. The discussion then moves to Gregory Nagy’s “evolutionary model,” with its five phases of a process lasting centuries in an interplay between oral and written, that ultimately crystalizes in written versions. Ready offers his own perspectives on these approaches, suggesting later dates of composition than suggested by the “dictation” adherents, and pulling into play more contemporary studies on living epics today, notably the Kirghiz Manas epic of Central Asia so well-studied by Karl Reichl. It is this sort of interplay between Homeric texts and contemporary ethnographic accounts of epic performance and textualization, such as collected in Lauri Honko’s classic The Textualisation of Oral Epics and a wide range of monographic studies, that spark Ready’s idea of epic textualization as that of a “co-creation” potentially involving various actors.
Section 3 of Part II, on practices of textualizations, gives nuanced discussion on the many means and modes used to get orally performed content into a written format, and the types of permutations and causes the processes entail based on five parameters involving documented instances of examining both pre-Parry-Lord theory (which laid the foundations for contemporary transcription methods) and post-Parry-Lord methods, favoring manual transcription, interrogating who initiates transcription projects (privileging those initiated by the collector), diversity of international examples, and multi-stage compositional process. Ready is careful to avoid such pitfalls as confirmation bias as he reviews theories of how Homer got into print in juxtaposition with ethnographic studies made in recent times where behavior of performers and scribes/collectors/editors, while not always transparent, is at least more accessible.
Section 5 of Part III, “Scribal Performance in the Ptolemaic Wild Papyri of the Homeric Epics,” provides an opportunity to explore the collaborative nature of textual production in “wild” works that lay outside accepted written assemblages, using a term for later fragmentary texts written on papyrus. Ready argues that such examples, whether in the Homeric tradition, or elsewhere, should be considered as “performances” (235) in the sense that the wild, performing scribe is seeking to create a text to satisfy demands of an immediate audience as justification for departing from accepted written versions (including performance texts). Such modifications can be made for various reasons and involve embellishments, amplifications, and other creative deviations. These actions parallel how a performer manipulates oral materials into the narrative of the moment, at once demonstrating competence and satisfying audience needs and expectations. Ready’s use of Richard Bauman’s ideas on verbal art underlie much of the discussion in this chapter.
Ready’s “co-creation” concept adds new perspectives to the way we look at oral-connected texts and their creation, reassessing the much-debated theories of production of the Homeric texts. “Co-creation”—in a dynamic between received texts (oral or written) and the active scribes, which from today’s perspective would include collectors, translators, and editors of various sorts—allows us to look beyond monolithic names such as “Homer” or ideas like an anonymous “oral tradition” to acknowledge the often multi-layered cohort of hands that produce, in a process of replication continuing in the modern publication world, versions of epic narratives.
This landmark study will interest not only Homeric scholars, but scholars of oral performance, epic poetry, transmission of traditional texts, the relation of the oral and written, and related themes, and serves as a touchstone for further research on these epic questions.
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[Review length: 932 words • Review posted on May 20, 2021]