Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

James Redfield. "The Making of the Odyssey." In Essays in Western Civilization in Honor of Christian W. Mackauer. Ed. Leon Botstein and Ellen Karofsky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 1-17. Rpt. in Parnassus Revisited. Ed. A.C. Yu. Chicago: American Library Association. pp. 141-54.

Assumes (1) separate, single authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, (2) that the Iliad was a new form, much longer than anything before it, (3) that the monumental composer of the Iliad was trained in the oral tradition, (4) that the poet's task was turning oime, generic song, into aoide, the actual song, (5) that the Iliad-poet intended an aoide which unlike its precedents would last beyond performance, (6) that an epigonos of the Iliad-poet composed the Odyssey in the same way, (7) that the epigonos was less thoroughly trained in the oral tradition, and (8) that he also intended a lasting poem, virtually the one we now possess. His textual arguments, including discussion of Odysseus as bard, depend on these premises.
Area: AG