Elizabeth Minchin

Orality, literacy and performance in the ancient world

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 Homers 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 Bhagavatapurana McComas Taylor Chapter 7 Prompts for Participation in Early Philosophical Texts James Henderson Collins II Chapter 8 Performing an Academic Talk: Proclus on Hesiods 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

Poet, Audience, Time, and Text: Reflections on Medium and Mode in Homer and Virgil

This chapter compares Homers approach to storytelling as it is observed in the Iliad , a record of an oral song composed or improvised in performance for a listening audience, and Virgils approach to this same task in the Aeneid . This was a poem composed with the aid of writing, which was presented to a listening audience in the first instance and, subsequently, to an audience of readers. As we consider Homers oral traditional song and Virgils written poem, the chapter suggests that there is no doubt that the medium matters, but that the poets awareness that he is performing for an audience that listens or for an audience that reads, with special focus on the circumstances in which they listen or read, is a critical factor in determining the way in which he presents his tale and in governing the complexity of its content. Keywords: Aeneid; Homer; Iliad; Virgil

Speech-Act Theory

This essay examines J.L. Austins theory regarding speech acts, or how we do things with words. It starts by reviewing the birth and foundation of speech act theory as it appeared in the 1955 William James Lectures at Harvard before going into what Austins theory is and how it can be applied to the real world. The theory is explained and analysed both in regards to its faults and advantages. Proposals for the improvement of the theory are then developed, using the ideas of other scholars and theorists along with the ideas of the author. The taxonomy in this essay is vast and various concepts and conditions are introduced and applied to the theory in order for it to work. Those conditions range from being conditions of appropriateness through to general principles of communication. In this essay utterances are examined by their propositional content, the intention of the utterance, and its outcome. By studying how utterances are formed and issued, along with looking into utterance circumstances and sincerity, one can garner a clear glimpse into what constitutes a performative speech act and what does not. By applying the ideas of multiple thinkers in unison it becomes clear that a) any one single theory does not satisfyingly explain all the intricacies of the theory and b) most utterances which are not in the past tense can be considered to be either performative or as having some performative force.

The Expression of Sarcasm in the Odyssey

I begin with a survey of relevant literature on sarcastic talk as it occurs in the anglophone world today. Having developed a ‘view’ of sarcasm in this contemporary world, I turn to the expression of sarcasm in Homer. My examination of the spoken exchanges in the second half of the Odyssey reveals many features in common with sarcastic talk in the contemporary world. I go on to demonstrate that the poet has used sarcastic talk to shape character, to establish mood, and, above all, to give structure to the scenes which bring together Odysseus and the suitors in the palace on Ithaka.

On Declining an Invitation in Homer and in Everyday Talk: Context, Form and Function

Speech-act theory starts from the premise that the minimal unit of spoken communication is not the word or sentence but the production of words or sentences in the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as challenging, entreating, apologising, thanking, or rebuking. Some speech acts may be expressed quite economically, in a few words (for example, ‘I congratulate you’); others require a sequence of sentences or syntactic chunks to achieve their illocutionary function—that is, to fulfil the intention of the speaker. In a recent paper, drawing on two fields of study outside Classics—cognitive psychology and discourse analysis—I examined a single set of speech acts recorded in the Homeric epics: the rebukes which Homers characters address to one another in the course of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In that paper I demonstrated that all speeches in Homer which we identify as rebukes share a common structure, or format, and that this format is remarkably similar to the format to which we ourselves—in middle-class communities in the Western world—refer when, for example, we chastise a child. And I proposed that this notion of format-based speech may be extended perhaps even to the full range of speech acts observable in this everyday world and in the Homeric epics, of which apologies, challenges, words of consolation, and refusals of invitations are examples.