Poetics of Oral Poetry

Video Clip

Albert Lord's The Singer of Tales demonstrates the process by which a poet in a traditional song culture can compose poetry in performance using techniques, plots, characters, and language that he has inherited from many previous generations of singers. The material and techniques are traditional, but each performance is a new composition - a re-composition, in and for performance.

The traditionality of Homeric poetry allows the phrases, in the words of Lord, to "resound with overtones from the dim past whence they came." In other words, the traditional themes and phraseology carry with them powerful associations for a traditional audience, the "echoes" of many past performances. Words can resonate within their context, recalling by association countless other song traditions.

The poetics of an oral poetic tradition therefore have a very different dynamic than the poetry of our culture. Complex correlations and long-distance interconnections across epic tradition are a cornerstone of a long and rich tradition of oral epic poetry composed in and for performance. This long and rich tradition includes the conventions and allusive power of a number of other song traditions, including the traditional lament for the dead, love song, prayer, praise, and blame.

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In this clip, Professor Nagy shows how a monumental composition like the Iliad introduces itself.

The precise language of this medium can compress the title, theme, and plot of the Iliad into the first two lines of the poem.

for a close reading...