10.13125/2039-6597/2633
In the paper I will discuss the notion of belonging in Ancient Greek oral tradition. I will argue that oral literature, because of the specific nature of oral language, promotes belonging to a particular locus, community and culture. I will demonstrate my argument with an analysis of Homeric Hymn to Artemis 9 and its expressions of belonging to polis Smyrna. In the conclusions I will discuss how all forms of literature, even written literature, to some extent posses these oral characteristics and thus promote belonging to a particular place and culture.
application/pdf
2039-6597
2633
13
en
Blaž Zabel
Between
ancient Greek oral tradition
Belonging in Ancient Greek Oral Tradition
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
7
Belonging in Expression and Representation
2017-06-02
2017-01-31
2017-06-02
2017-06-02
1
Blaž Zabel
2017/06/02
10.13125/2039-6597/2633
Durham University, Department of Classics and Ancient History
2039-6597
13
ancient Greek oral tradition
en
Belonging in Ancient Greek Oral Tradition
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/2633/2503
7
           Belonging in Ancient Greek
                 Oral Tradition
                                  Blaž Zabel


                                Introduction
      Since Milman Parry’s influential research in Homeric scholarship
in the early thirties, orality has been a key concept in classical literature
studies. Parry’s argument is that Homeric poems are oral in their
origin. The Iliad and the Odyssey both have a specific oral-formulaic
structure and are composed of formulaic expressions, a specific feature
of oral composition of poetry. This new perspective shook the world of
classics and Homeric scholarship. Equally ground-breaking was his
methodology. Parry observed that South Slavic bards composed poetry
with a set of formulaic expressions, utilised in the act of performing,
and concluded that, since similar compositional features can be
observed in Homeric poetry, the latter must have been composed
orally as well (Parry 1971).
      After Parry’s death, Albert Lord continued researching oral
literature. With the publication of his work The Singer of Tales, the idea
of the oral nature of Homeric poetry gained worldwide acceptance
(Lord 1962). At approximately the same time, Jack Goody and Ian Watt
extended the idea of orality to culture in general. They understood
early archaic Greece as a culture with an “oral mindset” in opposition
to social and cultural factors of the literate culture (Goody and Watt
1963; Goody 1968). These arguments were further developed by Eric
Havelock in The Muse Learns to Write in the early eighties. He argued
that adoption of the alphabet in Greece greatly changed the mentality
of its culture.



Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/ May 2017)
Blaž Zabel, Belonging in Ancient Greek Oral Tradition



      These researchers all position orality and literacy, and oral and
written literature in strict opposition. Recently, however, such harsh
differentiations have been questioned and severely criticised 1.
Contemporary research (such as the regular conferences and series of
publications named Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World and the
Oral Tradition Journal) tends to dismiss the binary opposition between
orality and literacy and focus on particular oral manifestations in
different cultures. In these attempts to focus on specific examples,
however, we can notice a shift away from theoretical discussions on
orality. It is certainly welcome that this research presents a more
balanced and realistic view on oral and written poetry. However, a
broader context of oral literature is often overlooked. In accordance,
traditional philological methods, such as close reading of the text, have
generally been applied, while theoretical and contextual discussions
have been put aside. Andrew Ford thus observes: «In the study of
Greek literature, however, it is more common to find scholars who
acknowledge the importance of context and occasion for Greek song
only to retreat to texts at the first opportunity» (Ford 2007: 17).
      Discussing belonging in ancient Greek oral poetry can help us to
overcome this drawback. In a recent paper about orality and world
literature, Caroline Levine ascribes a characteristic of “oral portability”
to written literature and a characteristic of “representativeness” to oral
literature, the former summoning the «globalizing patterns of
circulation, translation, and transmission» and the latter implying
understanding «each text as arising from particular cultural, historical,
and economic circumstances» (Levine 2013: 226–227). She argues that

         literature may travel around the world, but fails to represent
      the world, while oral performance may represent many globally
      dispersed cultures but remain stuck in particular places.
      Literature, it would seem, gives us portability without


      1
       See for example Charlotte Eubanks’ contribution titled New Orality to
the State of the Discipline Report 2014-2015 of the American Comparative
Literature Association.


2
                                          Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)



     representativeness, while orality gives us representativeness
     without portability. (Ibid.: 228)

       From what Levine argues, it seems that oral literature expresses
belonging to a specific cultural setting much better than written
literature, but that it finds it much harder to travel out of the cultural
setting in which it was produced. Written literature, on the other hand,
expresses belonging to a particular cultural setting to a lesser degree,
but travels across the world much more easily. In view of this, Nigel
Nicholson’s (2013) research of Pindar’s tenth ode and its relation to the
earlier oral tradition provides some interesting findings. He specifically
contrasts the local Locri mythology and oral tradition about Euthymus
with the panhellenic notes in Pindar’s ode connecting them to the
different visions of Locri’s role in the world. From his comparison, it
seems that local oral tradition has perceived its sense of belonging in a
different way than Pindar – and this is something that Nicholson
connects with the mobility of the traveling poet «who could provide
the authority», while «Euthymus’ narrative, by contrast, lacked both
melodic form and an author-figure, and instead located its authority
within the general knowledge and acceptance of the local community»
(17).
       In this article, I argue that in ancient Greek literature, belonging is
closely connected with orality and oral performance. I will first
demonstrate that oral language promotes connection with the
lifeworld, that it is closely connected with the surrounding world, and
I will discuss how orality promotes the notion of belonging to a
community and its locus. Next, I will, by discussing Homeric Hymn 9 to
Artemis, demonstrate how the oral performance and oral character of
ancient Greek poetry promote belonging to a particular locus and
connect the audience with the lifeworld. Finally, I will further argue
that oral character is as an ontological condition of literature present in
all literary manifestations, even written ones. I will also suggest that all
literatures belong to a particular place and time, but that they all
possess the possibility to travel and thus become world literatures.



                                                                                  3
Blaž Zabel, Belonging in Ancient Greek Oral Tradition




            Belonging in oral language and literature
      Let us start our discussion of orality with Walter J. Ong’s critique
of structuralism. In the rarely referenced final chapter of his Orality and
Literacy, Ong critically analyses what he calls a “textualist school”,
nowadays more commonly known as structuralism. He criticises
structuralism for being «one of the most text-bound of all ideologies»
and further, for perceiving texts as a «closed system». Oral cultures on
the other hand, «hardly had this kind of illusion» of a closed system
and «had no sense of language as ‘structure’» (162–166). Ong’s
objection is thus clearly directed against structuralist conception of a
language as a non-referential system of signs, first proposed by
Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics. Saussure
defined language as a system of signs (each consisting of a signifier
and a signified) where the meaning of each sign develops in relation to
all other signs. As such, structuralists perceive language as an
essentially closed, non-referential system that does not refer to any
reality outside of the language itself (see Culler 1975; Culler 1986).
      Ong’s own understanding of language and orality, however,
could not be further from the structuralist perspective. As far as
grammar and structure of language are concerned, he explicitly states
that «rules of grammar in natural human languages are used first and
can be abstracted from usage and stated in words only with difficulty
and never completely» (1982: 7). Ong’s opposition to structuralist
conception of language can be observed also in his nine characteristics
of orality (36–56). For the present discussion, the most important
characteristics of oral culture are that orality is much closer to the
human lifeworld and that orality is empathetic and participatory.
While written language analyses, estranges and objectifies the
phenomena it describes, orality assimilates the alien and objective
world to the immediate interaction of human beings (42–43).
Furthermore, oral culture is empathetically connecting the human
being with the world, while written language separates them by
forming a subject-object polarity. A spoken language is also a moment



4
                                        Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)



of connection between different speakers, while written texts
individualize and isolate (72–73).
      Ong’s argument that orality connects the individual with the
lifeworld closely resembles Heidegger’s understanding of language as
a discourse. In his text What is Philosophy? he states that pre-
metaphysical Greek thought perceived the λόγος (word) as the actual
being of entities (i.e. that the language discloses being). If we try to
describe this argument (or rather force it into) terms of structuralism,
we could say that for a pre-metaphysical Greek person, there was no
difference between the signifier, the signified and the referenced thing
itself. Similarly, we can compare “oral culture” with Heidegger’s
concept of dwelling that is lost with the metaphysics, that is, failure of
modern people to dwell in the unfolding of the world (see Carman
2003.
      As we can see, oral language and literature are much closer to the
human lifeworld and promote assimilation of alien and objective
worlds in the immediate interaction of human beings. Oral language
assimilates the objective world to present it as part of the familiar
lifeworld, it empathetically binds human beings with the world and
with other members of their community. It connects members of a
particular society and culture together and, at the same time, links
them to their locus and their past. Orality thus directly promotes
belonging to a specific community, culture, tradition and locus. Since
oral language and literature break down barriers between subject and
object, a human being becomes directly integrated with the
surrounding world and its culture. Through orality, a person directly
belongs to their immediate lifeworld, to their culture and community.
      Furthermore, as the investigation of oral language and
structuralism has demonstrated, oral and written language have
different characteristics. While written language objectifies and
alienates a person from their lifeworld, oral language empathetically
connects him/her with the world, community and culture. In this
regard, we can also understand Levine’s connection of orality with
representativeness and written literature with portability. Oral
literature promotes belonging to a specific locus, community and


                                                                                5
Blaž Zabel, Belonging in Ancient Greek Oral Tradition



culture and thus expresses representativeness, while written literature
detaches itself from the lifeworld and thus travels much more easily.

    Belonging and Orality in Homeric Hymn 9 to Artemis
     Let me now demonstrate how orality and oral language promote
belonging to a particular community and locus with an example. To
this end, I will discuss Homeric Hymn 9 to Artemis, a nine verses long
hymn, dating probably to the archaic period (around 600BC). Below is
the hymn and its translation:

           Ἄρτεμιν ὕμνει, Μοῦσα, κασιγνήτην Ἑκάτοιο.
           παρθένον ἰοχέαιραν, ὁμότροφον Ἀπόλλωνος,
           ἥθ᾽ ἵππους ἄρσασα βαθυσχοίνοιο Μέλητος
           ῥίμφα διὰ Σμύρνης παγχρύσεον ἅρμα διώκει
           ἐς Κλάρον ἀμπελόεσσαν, ὅθ᾽ ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπόλλων
           ἧσται μιμνάζων ἑκατηβόλον ἰοχέαιραν.
           καὶ σὺ μὲν οὕτω χαῖρε θεαί θ᾽ ἅμα πᾶσαι ἀοιδῇ:
           αὐτὰρ ἐγώ σε πρῶτα καὶ ἐκ σέθεν ἄρχομ᾽ ἀείδειν,
           σεῦ δ᾽ ἐγὼ ἀρξάμενος μεταβήσομαι ἄλλον ἐς ὕμνον.

         Sing, Muse, of Artemis, the sister of the Archer, the virgin who
      shoots arrows, who was nourished together with Apollo. After she
      has watered the horses by the river Meles with its deep reeds, she
      drives the golden chariot quickly through Smyrna to Claros,
      where vines grow, and where Apollo sits with his silver bow and
      waits for her, the Far-shooter, the Arrow-shooter. And now I bid
      farewell to you with my song, to you and all the goddesses. I sing
      you first, with you I begin my song, and having started with you, I
      move on to another hymn2.

     Characteristics of oral composition are evident: hymn is
composed in hexameters, it uses common epithets (e.g. ἑκατηβόλος;
Far-Shooting), it uses characteristic formulas for expressing certain


      2
          As translated in Graziosi 2002: 72.


6
                                         Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)



ideas (e.g. Ἄρτεμιν ὕμνει, Μοῦσα; Sing, Muse, of Artemis), and even
longer formulaic expressions, such as the last two verses which are
characteristic of Greek hymnic poetry (αὐτὰρ ἐγώ σε πρῶτα καὶ ἐκ
σέθεν ἄρχομ᾽ ἀείδειν, / σεῦ δ᾽ ἐγὼ ἀρξάμενος μεταβήσομαι ἄλλον
ἐς ὕμνον; I sing you first, with you I begin my song, and having
started with you, I move on to another hymn). There are also other
deictic exclamations suggesting that the hymn was performed orally,
such as καὶ σὺ μὲν οὕτω χαῖρε (And now I bid farewell to you), αὐτὰρ
ἐγώ σε πρῶτα καὶ ἐκ σέθεν ἄρχομ᾽ ἀείδειν (I sing you first, with you
I begin my song) and even Ἄρτεμιν ὕμνει, Μοῦσα (Sing, Muse, of
Artemis), when we acknowledge that a bard appealed to the Muse
before he began his song. The poem was thus most probably composed
orally and was clearly intended for oral performance.
     As we can observe, the hymn stresses the connection of Artemis
with a particular geographical locus, i.e. Smyrna and the Smyrnean
river Meles. In the hymn, Artemis waters the horses near Meles and
then travels with her chariot across Smyrna to Claros (where Apollo is
waiting). Smyrna and the river Meles are clearly represented as a place
where Artemis spends her time to rest and water the horses or possibly
even resides3. The hymn thus directly links her with the polis Smyrna
and, subsequently, with a community of people residing there (just as
other hymns often expresses belonging to some other polis or place,
e.g. Homeric Hymn to Apollo expresses belonging to Chios and Delphi).
Furthermore, since the hymn is paying homage to Artemis, the polis is
conceptualised as a place dear to her. It is Smyrna where Artemis is
present and it is across Smyrna that Artemis travels to Apollo, thus the
hymn consequently praises the polis and its community as well. In this
regard, the content of the poem clearly expresses belonging to a
particular locus, i.e. Smyrna and river Meles, and to a particular
community, i.e. a polis.



    3
         There are indications Artemis might have had a temple near river
Meles.



                                                                                 7
Blaž Zabel, Belonging in Ancient Greek Oral Tradition



      Moreover, Barbara Graziosi (2002) demonstrates convincingly
how the river Meles was in the oral tradition represented also as
Homer’s birthplace (72–77). She argues that the description of Homer’s
birth in Vita Herodotea (27-31), where we can read a story of how a
woman Cretheis went to a festival on the banks of Meles, bore Homer
and named him Melesigenes after the river, can in fact be traced back
to the archaic period and to Smyrna, approximately around the time in
which the hymn to Artemis was composed. Knowing that traditionally,
Artemis was perceived as a patron of women’s festivals and a goddess
of childbirth, the connection between the Artemis, festival in her
honour on the banks of Meles, and the legend about Homer becomes
clear. The above said, moreover, has specific significance for the
hymn’s performance. In the Greek oral tradition, Homer was seen as
the mythical bard from whom all other bards are either descended or
was seen as a mythical predecessor, the inventor of oral poetry. Such a
figure is characteristic of many traditions of oral poetry (Foley 1999).
What is important here, however, is that the bard (or any person)
performing this hymn would perceive himself as directly connected
with Homer, the mythological founder of oral poetry, who was born
on the banks of river Meles. The hymn then expresses belonging to
Smyrna not only through the presence of Artemis near river Meles, but
also through the birthplace of the founder of oral poetry.
      This has further consequences for the nature of the hymn and its
performance. If we imagine the Homeric Hymn 9 to Artemis being
performed, then performance itself, i.e. the act of singing the song
(ἀείδειν), must have alone expressed belonging to Meles and Smyrna.
Oral tradition had it that Homer was born near Meles and that it was
Homer who invented the oral poetry. As such, the whole performance
must have evoked belonging to this particular place, to Smyrna. The
act of the oral performance itself is thus expressing belonging to
Homer and, with it, to Homer’s birthplace. Furthermore, this also
promotes the connection of the performer and the audience with the
lifeworld, since they are directly experiencing belonging to this
particular locus. As the bard sings and as the audience listens to him,
they are recreating the art which has its roots on the banks of river


8
                                          Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)



Meles. The performance is thus in a way expressing immediate
belonging to Homer’s birthplace. The content of the hymn, i.e.
worshipping Artemis and her presence in Smyrna, further emphasises
this belonging.
      As we can, Homeric Hymn 9 to Artemis expresses belonging to a
particular locus, community and culture in two ways. First, through
worshipping Artemis and her presence near river Meles. Second,
through the act of performance, since the mythical inventor of poetry
Homer was born in Smyrna. Moreover, hymn must have connected the
bard and the audience with their lifeworld: the community in Smyrna
is worshiping Artemis, a goddess present in their polis and in their
lifeworld. Furthermore, the audience is experiencing the performance
of the hymn (as the bard is singing it) as part of their lifeworld. But the
act of singing a hymn is possible only because Homer, the inventor of
oral poetry or the bard’s predecessor was born on the banks of Meles.
A phenomenon of performing a hymn thus directly expresses
belonging to the immediate lifeworld of the polis and its community.
Homeric Hymn 9 to Artemis is thus a good example of how oral poetry
empathetically connects the people with their lifeworld, community
and culture.

Conclusions: Belonging from Oral to Written Literature
      I have argued that belonging and representativeness are
connected with orality, oral language and oral literature. I have also
argued, following Ong’s Orality and Literacy, that written language
(especially when conceived as a non-referential system) promotes
alienation of the lifeworld, objectifies it, and establishes a subject-object
dichotomy. But the question as to what extent written literature differs
from oral literature remains to be discussed.
      I would argue that all literatures are to some extent oral in their
nature. There are, of course, different ways in which literature can be
oral, either composed and performed orally (as in South Slavic oral
poetry), written and subsequently performed orally (as in some forms
of slam poetry), composed orally and subsequently written (as was the


                                                                                  9
Blaž Zabel, Belonging in Ancient Greek Oral Tradition



case with Homeric poetry in the classical period), written and read on a
physical or digital media, etc. But regardless of the way in which
literature is produced, distributed and received, it always to some
extent remains oral. This, I would argue, applies to literature produced
and received in a written form as well.
      The reason is largely because literature is in its nature referential
and connects the receiver (or reader) with his lifeworld, a feature
inherited from the oral nature of language. Yves Bonnefoy (1990), for
example, writes that «poetry is what aims at an object – at this being
right before us, in its absolute, or at being itself» (798). He implies that
poetry in the process of reading evokes the being itself and connects
the reader with his/her immediate lifeworld. Heidegger argues for a
similar point in his interpretation of Hölderlin’s poetry. All literatures,
including written literatures, are thus a type of an oral performance. As
far as written texts are concerned, they are neither public nor vocal
performances, but it is as if the writing and reading are themselves acts
of oral performance. There is no literature without language and there
is no language without orality. Oral language is a basis for every
literary manifestation, it is a condition for the existence of any
literature.
      When we thus take orality as a condition for the existence of
literature into consideration, the described gap between belonging and
written literature seems much less severe. When literature is produced,
it is necessarily produced through an oral language. As such,
connections with the lifeworld, culture and locus are directly inscribed
into orality, so that all literatures express certain representativeness
and belonging. The concept of world literature understood by, for
example, David Damrosch (2003) as «works that circulate beyond their
culture of origin» (4) and act as a «form of detached engagement with
worlds beyond our own place and time» (281), is a clear example of
how written literature travels, but at the same time expresses
belonging to a particular culture, time and locus. If all literatures are, as
I have proposed above, defined by the oral character of the language, it
is necessary that they also belong to a particular culture and
community and that they represent their own time and space.


10
                                         Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)




                             Works cited
Bonnefoy, Yves. “Lifting Our Eyes from the Page”, Critical Inquiry 16.4
    (1990): 794–806.
Carman, T. Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art, Cambridge, Cambridge Uni-
    versity Press, 2003.
Culler, Jonathan. Ferdinand de Saussure, Ithaca, Cornell University
    Press, 1986.
Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the
    Study of Literature, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1975.
Damrosch, David. What Is World Literature?, Princeton, Princeton Uni-
    versity Press, 2003.
Dougherty, Carol, and Leslie Kurke. The Cultures within Ancient Greek
    Culture: Contact, Conflict, Collaboration, Cambridge, Cambridge
    University Press, 2003.
Eubanks, Charlotte. “Next: New Orality”, The 2014–2015 Report on the
    State of the Discipline of Comparative Literature, ACLA, 2014.
Finnegan, Ruth H. Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts: A Guide to Re-
    search Practices, London, Routledge, 1992.
Foley, John M. Homer’s Traditional Art, University Park, Pennsylvania
    State University Press, 1999.
Ford, Andrew. “From letters to literature: reading the ‘song culture’ of
    classical Greece”, Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture in An-
    cient Greece, Ed. Harvey Yunis, Cambridge, Cambridge University
    Press, 2007: 15-37.
Goody, Jack. Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge, Cambridge
    University Press, 1968.
Goody, Jack, and Ian Watt. The Consequences of Literacy, Indianapolis,
    Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.
Graziosi, Barbara. Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of the Epic, Cam-
    bridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.




                                                                                11
Blaž Zabel, Belonging in Ancient Greek Oral Tradition



Havelock, Eric. The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Liter-
    acy from Antiquity to the Present, New Haven, Yale University Press,
    1986.
Heidegger, Martin. What is Philosophy?, New York, Twayne Publishers,
    1958.
Heidegger, Martin. Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio
    Klostermann, 1976.
Levine, Caroline. “The Great Unwritten: World Literature and the Ef-
    facement of Orality”, Modern Language Quarterly, 74.2 (2013): 217–
    237.
Lord, Albert Bates. The Singer of Tales, Cambridge, Harvard University
    Press, 1962.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic
    Man, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1962.
Nicholson, Nigel. “Cultural Studies, Oral Tradition, and the Promise of
    Intertextuality”, American Journal of Philology, 134.1 (2013): 9–21.
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World, Lon-
    don, New York, Methuen, 1982.
Parry, Milman. The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Mil-
    man Parry, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971.
Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics, New York, Philo-
    sophical Library, 1959.
Thomas, Rosalind. Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece, Cambridge,
    Cambridge.

                                      The author
     Blaž Zabel

Blaž Zabel is a PhD student in Classics at Durham University. His
research interests include: relations between classical literature and
world literature, orality in classical and world literature, and
philosophy of education.

     Email: blaz.zabel@durham.ac.uk


12
                                       Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)




                             The paper
Date sent: 31/01/2017
Date accepted: 15/04/2017
Date published: 31/05/2017



                    How to quote this paper
Zabel, Blaž, “Belonging in Ancient Greek Oral Tradition”, Longing and
Belonging/ Désir et Appartenance, Eds. Massimo Fusillo, Brigitte Le Juez,
Beatrice         Seligardi,        Between,       VII.13          (2017),
http://www.betweenjournal.it/




                                                                              13
