Thanks so much for this lovely post. I had no idea of this deep-rooted connection between the Homeric and the Irish strands of oral poetry, but after reading your essay it feels almost self-evident, natural, ordained.
Small reference question: do you know of any work focused on the formal aspects of oral poetry, the formulas and structures mentioned recurrently in the text, in a variety of poetic traditions (or maybe just Homeric)? I expect this might not exist, or might require a great command of the actual language (whereas I speak neither Greek nor Irish).
I always think the best and most accessible place to start is Albert Lord’s 1960 The Singer of Tales, online here: chs.harvard.edu/book/lo…. Milman Parry’s collected works (and the century of scholarship that builds on his fieldwork and publications) on the subject would be hard to read if you don’t know Greek, but Albert Lord can be read by anyone with an interest in epic poetry. Gregory Nagy’s book Homeric Questions (chs.harvard.edu/book/na…) is accessible too!
Thanks so much for this lovely post. I had no idea of this deep-rooted connection between the Homeric and the Irish strands of oral poetry, but after reading your essay it feels almost self-evident, natural, ordained.
Small reference question: do you know of any work focused on the formal aspects of oral poetry, the formulas and structures mentioned recurrently in the text, in a variety of poetic traditions (or maybe just Homeric)? I expect this might not exist, or might require a great command of the actual language (whereas I speak neither Greek nor Irish).
I always think the best and most accessible place to start is Albert Lord’s 1960 The Singer of Tales, online here: chs.harvard.edu/book/lo…. Milman Parry’s collected works (and the century of scholarship that builds on his fieldwork and publications) on the subject would be hard to read if you don’t know Greek, but Albert Lord can be read by anyone with an interest in epic poetry. Gregory Nagy’s book Homeric Questions (chs.harvard.edu/book/na…) is accessible too!