Winged Word, The : A Study in the Technique of Ancient Greek Oral Composition As Seen Principally Through Hesiod's Work and Days

'The Winged Word examines one of the most elaborate of oral compositional techniques and styles: that of the ancient Greek epos. It explains how singers like Homer and Hesiod could compose complicated verses at the speed of speech and how a singer’s words could grow into compositions of massive complexity without dependence on memorization or written texts. This study shows why a singer can be more surprised than his listeners at things that take place in his own song; it explains the nature of traditional inspiration and wisdom. The Winged Word explores not only the surface, the actual texts we still possess, it sounds the depths of the tradition that lies behind them. Much of the detail in this study presents the significant results of one of the most extensive and rigorously thorough analytic examinations ever made of a single piece of connected discourse: the 828 verses of Hesiod’s Works and Days; but the detailed features of the epos are not merely described, their form, use, and function are accounted for by traditional behavioral patterns. A valuable and important contribution of this book is the light that comparative work done with ancient Persian and Indic materials throws on the dynamics and interactions of traditional ways, which range in kind from incantation to heroic narrative epic, and whose practice stretched thousands of years behind Homer into the past and still continues in the backlands of Eastern Europe and in Asia to the present day. Oral theory and the epos. Oral theory and its tests -- Problems of oral theory for the epos -- The method of the winged word. The works and days as an exemplar text -- Comparison as a tool for diachronic analysis -- Form versus language. The classical description of the hexameter -- Problems of classical description for oral theory -- Form as language. Evolutionary metrics -- Comparative and phonological metrics -- Ancient Indo-European metrics. The relating of Iranian, Indian, and Greek meters -- Quantity and syllable count -- The repetition of utterance -- The metrical tradition -- Avestan metrics -- Indian metrics -- Vedic meters -- Classical Sanskrit meters -- The hexameter. The period of count and sense -- Primary and secondary combinations -- Caesuras -- Syllabic features -- Quantity and syllabic coalescence -- The contraction of form -- Meter as the shape of traditional utterance -- Forms in the hexameter. The system of cola -- The usages of lexical elements -- Formal accommodations. Colonic composition -- Colonic adjustment. Couplet verses -- Triplet verses -- Five-colon verses -- Colonic transfer -- Formulas in the epos. The structure of formulas -- One-colon formulas -- Longer formulas -- Final set phrases -- Function of formulas -- The syntax of formulas -- Utterance periods. The sentence -- The relationship between clause and stanza -- Enjambment. Enjambment within the verse -- Coordination -- Assimilation -- Integration -- Enjambment between verses. Assimilation -- Integration -- The enjambment test -- Stanzaic patterns. Haploid structure -- Separable verses -- Separable couplets -- Diploid structure. Generative conditions -- Features of diploid periods -- Diploid compositional motion -- Functional and semantic aspects of the haploid-diploid mix. Traditional wisdom. The location of thought -- Intention and meaning -- The substance of thought -- The organization of thought -- Varied repetition. Unessential extensions and semantic cumulation -- Signs of redundancy -- Responsions -- Rhetorical features -- The continuity of thought. Lost information -- Thematic expansion and development -- The fable -- The raft building -- Narrative as superstructure. Linguistic evidence -- Comparative evidence -- The separation of song from theme -- The nature of song. Song and memory -- The presence of song -- The confusion of discourse factors -- The transformations of song and theme -- The isolation of song -- Song features. Dominance, the catalogue, and phantasmagoria -- Accident, correction, and retrogression -- The loss and recall of song -- Song and meaning. Semantic decorum and levels of semantic specificity : W&D 11—26 -- The illusion of remembered songs : W&D 27-105 -- The analytic determination of meaning -- The stanza : W&D 106-201 -- The paragraph : W&D 202—212 -- The principal section. Song and the thematic web : W&D 213-273 -- Massive expansion and development : W&D 274-828 -- The function of principal patterns. The controlling theme : W&D 1-10 -- The primary song form. The Winged Word examines one of the most elaborate of oral compositional techniques and styles: that of the ancient Greek epos. It explains how singers like Homer and Hesiod could compose complicated verses at the speed of speech and how a singer's words could grow into compositions of massive complexity without dependence on memorization or written texts. This study shows why a singer can be more surprised than his listeners at things that take place in his own song; it explains the nature of traditional inspiration and wisdom.The Winged Word explores not only the surface, the actual texts we still possess, it sounds the depths of the tradition that lies behind them. Much of the detail in this study presents the significant results of one of the most extensive and rigorously thorough analytic examinations ever made of a single piece of connected discourse: the 828 verses of Hesiod's Works and Days; but the detailed features of the epos are not merely described, their form, use, and function are accounted for by traditional behavioral patterns. A valuable and important contribution of this book is the light that comparative work done with ancient Persian and Indic materials throws on the dynamics and interactions of traditional ways, which range in kind from incantation to heroic narrative epic, and whose practice stretched thousands of years behind Homer into the past and still continues in the backlands of Eastern Europe and in Asia to the present day.The Winged Word is a comparative study that combines the diachronic penetration of nineteenth-century comparative techniques, the descriptive power of twentieth-century analytic techniques, and an expert knowledge of the general process of actual oral traditional composition. It is not only an exhaustive and masterly description of oral traditional verse compositional technique for ancient Greece, it also lays to rest or gives controlling insight into many problems of general literary concern such as inspiration, idea, verse, theme, genre, rhetorical flowers, plot, imitation, and the like. Albert B. Lord of the Center for the Study of Oral Literature at Harvard University and Honorary Curator of the Parry Collection, whose role is to preserve and disseminate the oral literatures of the world, calls this book “a landmark not only in Hesiod scholarship, but also in Homeric research and in the study of oral traditional literature in general.”Berkley Peabody received his doctorate from Harvard University where he worked with Albert B. Lord, and he is now Professor of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Albany.