Oral Texts and Entextualization in the Homeric Epics

This chapter introduces to Homeric studies the concepts of oral texts—utterances capable of spiting the power of time—and entextualization—the process of making an oral text. It delves into a range of material, from the speeches Zeus entrusts to messengers to public laments over fallen warriors, from the narrator’s catalogues to moments in which the text engages in its own exegesis. It thereby explores the ways in which the Homeric characters talk about and craft oral texts and considers how the narrator text and the poem as a whole deploy mechanisms of entextualization. It concludes that our Homeric poets fashioned an utterance capable of outlasting the moment each time they performed, and that conclusion prompts revisions to how Homerists talk about texts.