The ninth meeting in the international Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World series - in the fiftieth year since the publication in 1960 of Albert Lord's The Singer of Tales - took as its theme 'Composition and Performance'. This volume contains a selection of those papers, several of which illustrate methodologically innovative approaches to the act of composition, the nature of performance, and vocalization in text. Under consideration are Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Isocrates, the orators of the Second Sophistic, and Proclus. Cross-cultural studies include, amongst others, South Slavic epic and a text from the Sanskrit archive.
Elizabeth Minchin, PhD (1990) in Classics, Australian National University, teaches Ancient Greek and Latin language and literature at the ANU. Her research field is Homer and memory. Recent publications are
Homer and the Resources of Memory and
Homeric Voices.
Contributors include: Deborah Beck, Anna Bonifazi, Mathilde Cambron-Goulet, James Collins, David Elmer, Adrian Kelly, Jeroen Lauwers, Patrizia Marzillo, Jonathan Ready, Ruth Scodel, Niall Slater and McComas Taylor.
Contents
Preface
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Elizabeth Minchin
Part I Poetry in Performance
Chapter 1 The Audience Expects: Penelope and Odysseus
Adrian Kelly
Chapter 2 The Presentation of Song in Homer's Odyssey
Deborah Beck
Chapter 3 Comparative Perspectives on the Composition of the Homeric Simile
Jonathon Ready
Chapter 4 Composing Lines, Performing Acts: Clauses, Discourse Acts, and
Melodic Units in a South Slavic Epic Song
Anna Bonifazi and David F. Elmer
Chapter 5 Works and Days as Performance
Ruth Scodel Part II Literacy and Orality
Chapter 6 Empowering the Sacred: The Function of the Sanskrit Text in a
Contemporary Exposition of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa
McComas Taylor
Chapter 7 Prompts for Participation in Early Philosophical Texts
James Henderson Collins II
Chapter 8 Performing an Academic Talk: Proclus on Hesiod's Works and Days
Patrizia Marzillo
Chapter 9 The Criticism--and the Practice--of Literacy in the Ancient
Philosophical Tradition
Mathilde Cambron-Goulet
Chapter 10 Reading Books, Talking Culture: The Performance of Paideia in
Imperial Greek Literature
Jeroen Lauwers
Chapter 11 Eumolpus Poeta at Work: Rehearsed Spontaneity in the Satyricon
Niall Slater
All who are interested in oral traditions, oral epic, ancient philosophy, audience-response, reception, literacy, as well as classical philologists in general.