Leo Treitler
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199214761
- eISBN:
- 9780191713897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199214761.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter develops a plausible representation of the way that chants might have been made that would be a way into a critical account of them as sung language. Its objective is genetic criticism — ...
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This chapter develops a plausible representation of the way that chants might have been made that would be a way into a critical account of them as sung language. Its objective is genetic criticism — an objective well suited to the study of a tradition whose products are not appropriately regarded as autonomous works. It discusses a phenomenon that is more symptomatic than instrumental: the identification of Gregory the Great as the author of the plainchant. It describes the important points of Frederic C. Bartlett's theory on remembering, especially as they might illuminate the problem about oral transmission.Less
This chapter develops a plausible representation of the way that chants might have been made that would be a way into a critical account of them as sung language. Its objective is genetic criticism — an objective well suited to the study of a tradition whose products are not appropriately regarded as autonomous works. It discusses a phenomenon that is more symptomatic than instrumental: the identification of Gregory the Great as the author of the plainchant. It describes the important points of Frederic C. Bartlett's theory on remembering, especially as they might illuminate the problem about oral transmission.
Leo Treitler
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199214761
- eISBN:
- 9780191713897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199214761.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
The ongoing discussions about the Homeric Question and about orality and literacy in the language arts resonate to such a degree with parallel questions as regards the history of music. These ...
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The ongoing discussions about the Homeric Question and about orality and literacy in the language arts resonate to such a degree with parallel questions as regards the history of music. These discussions are considered by way of a review of two recent books about the subject: The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology by John Miles Foley and Oral-Formulaic Theory: A Folklore Casebook, edited by John Miles Foley.Less
The ongoing discussions about the Homeric Question and about orality and literacy in the language arts resonate to such a degree with parallel questions as regards the history of music. These discussions are considered by way of a review of two recent books about the subject: The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology by John Miles Foley and Oral-Formulaic Theory: A Folklore Casebook, edited by John Miles Foley.
Leo Treitler
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199214761
- eISBN:
- 9780191713897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199214761.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter examines seven introit tropes or trope groups. It argues that the problem of transmission is critical for the understanding of the musical situation in the central Middle Ages. Tropes ...
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This chapter examines seven introit tropes or trope groups. It argues that the problem of transmission is critical for the understanding of the musical situation in the central Middle Ages. Tropes are critical for the study of transmission; for their time coincides with the first epoch of music writing, and their sources provide us with substantial evidence about the way they were apprehended in the communities in which they were current.Less
This chapter examines seven introit tropes or trope groups. It argues that the problem of transmission is critical for the understanding of the musical situation in the central Middle Ages. Tropes are critical for the study of transmission; for their time coincides with the first epoch of music writing, and their sources provide us with substantial evidence about the way they were apprehended in the communities in which they were current.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Homer is hard not to read as a unified and intelligible author. However, it is difficult to avoid feeling at the same time that the Homeric poems are, to some degree, falling apart. Similar phrases ...
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Homer is hard not to read as a unified and intelligible author. However, it is difficult to avoid feeling at the same time that the Homeric poems are, to some degree, falling apart. Similar phrases and epithets keep recurring in different places with slightly new emphases, and narrative elements in the poems seem often shadily to repeat one another. Achilles is often swift of foot; Hector is very often called ‘horse-taming’; encounters between warriors seem often to be governed by flexible but discernible laws. These features—that modern scholars would attribute to the oral composition of the poems—give the impression that the Iliad and the Odyssey stem from a unified vision, since many of the new turns of phrase that one encounters read like variant versions of idioms that one has already met, and several narrative episodes—say council scenes—seem like revisions of ones that have gone before.Less
Homer is hard not to read as a unified and intelligible author. However, it is difficult to avoid feeling at the same time that the Homeric poems are, to some degree, falling apart. Similar phrases and epithets keep recurring in different places with slightly new emphases, and narrative elements in the poems seem often shadily to repeat one another. Achilles is often swift of foot; Hector is very often called ‘horse-taming’; encounters between warriors seem often to be governed by flexible but discernible laws. These features—that modern scholars would attribute to the oral composition of the poems—give the impression that the Iliad and the Odyssey stem from a unified vision, since many of the new turns of phrase that one encounters read like variant versions of idioms that one has already met, and several narrative episodes—say council scenes—seem like revisions of ones that have gone before.
Joel P. Brereton and Stephanie W. Jamison
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- March 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190633363
- eISBN:
- 9780190633400
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190633363.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This chapter investigates the vexed problem of the dating of the Ṛgveda, which is complicated by the oral nature of the text: because it was composed within an oral tradition, which valued the use ...
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This chapter investigates the vexed problem of the dating of the Ṛgveda, which is complicated by the oral nature of the text: because it was composed within an oral tradition, which valued the use and reuse of traditional verbal formulations, it is hard to pinpoint the date when a particular poetic work was crystallized; and because it was transmitted only orally for several millennia, there are no datable manuscripts or inscriptions that can fix the earliest date of composition. The chapter also treats the question of authorship: on the basis of poem-internal evidence as well as on the later index to the Ṛgveda, we can conclude that the thousand or so hymns were composed by a large number of named individual poets, who belong to named poetic lineages or families over several generations.Less
This chapter investigates the vexed problem of the dating of the Ṛgveda, which is complicated by the oral nature of the text: because it was composed within an oral tradition, which valued the use and reuse of traditional verbal formulations, it is hard to pinpoint the date when a particular poetic work was crystallized; and because it was transmitted only orally for several millennia, there are no datable manuscripts or inscriptions that can fix the earliest date of composition. The chapter also treats the question of authorship: on the basis of poem-internal evidence as well as on the later index to the Ṛgveda, we can conclude that the thousand or so hymns were composed by a large number of named individual poets, who belong to named poetic lineages or families over several generations.
Benjamin Sammons
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- July 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190614843
- eISBN:
- 9780190614867
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190614843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
From a corpus of Greek epics known in antiquity as the “Epic Cycle,” six poems dealt with the same Trojan War mythology as the Homeric poems. Though they are now lost, these poems were much read and ...
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From a corpus of Greek epics known in antiquity as the “Epic Cycle,” six poems dealt with the same Trojan War mythology as the Homeric poems. Though they are now lost, these poems were much read and much discussed in ancient times, not only for their content but for their mysterious relationship with the more famous works attributed to Homer. This study shows that these lost poems belonged, compositionally, to essentially the same tradition as the Homeric poems. It demonstrates that various compositional devices well-known from the Homeric epics were also fundamental to the narrative construction of these later works. Yet while the “cyclic” poets constructed their works using the same traditional devices as Homer, they used these to different ends and with different results. The essential difference between cyclic and Homeric epics lies not in the fundamental building blocks from which they are constructed, but in the scale of these components relative to the overall construction of poems. This sheds important light on the early history of epic as a genre, since it is likely that these devices originally developed to provide large-scale structure to shorter poems and have been put to quite different use in the composition of the monumental Homeric epics. This study includes many new suggestions about the overall form of lost cyclic epics and about the meaning and context of the few surviving verse fragments.Less
From a corpus of Greek epics known in antiquity as the “Epic Cycle,” six poems dealt with the same Trojan War mythology as the Homeric poems. Though they are now lost, these poems were much read and much discussed in ancient times, not only for their content but for their mysterious relationship with the more famous works attributed to Homer. This study shows that these lost poems belonged, compositionally, to essentially the same tradition as the Homeric poems. It demonstrates that various compositional devices well-known from the Homeric epics were also fundamental to the narrative construction of these later works. Yet while the “cyclic” poets constructed their works using the same traditional devices as Homer, they used these to different ends and with different results. The essential difference between cyclic and Homeric epics lies not in the fundamental building blocks from which they are constructed, but in the scale of these components relative to the overall construction of poems. This sheds important light on the early history of epic as a genre, since it is likely that these devices originally developed to provide large-scale structure to shorter poems and have been put to quite different use in the composition of the monumental Homeric epics. This study includes many new suggestions about the overall form of lost cyclic epics and about the meaning and context of the few surviving verse fragments.
