Writing as a Metaphor for Oral Performance: A Lecture by Prof. Gregory Nagy
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on the Relationship Between Oral and Written Culture invites you to the next event in the series “What I Would Like to Tell You About Oral Tradition.”
Ancient sources refer in various ways to the so-called Peisistratean recension of the Homeric poems. These accounts share the idea that The Iliad and The Odyssey, allegedly already committed to writing, were later fragmented and dispersed, until Peisistratus, the tyrant of Athens in the 6th century BCE, initiated an effort to collect the scattered fragments and commissioned the Athenians to produce a new edition of the text.
Can these narratives be interpreted metaphorically?
Could writing have served as a metaphor for oral poetry in the reception history of Homer?
What did the coexistence of oral tradition and the increasingly widespread written culture look like at the dawn of the classical era?
These and other questions will be explored by our special guest: Professor Gregory Nagy, Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, during his lecture entitled Writing as a Metaphor for Oral Performance on 11 June 2025 at 5:00 p.m., in Room 115 (Prof. Jerzy Woronczak Hall) at the Chair of Jewish Studies, ul. św. Jadwigi 3/4.
Biography
Gregory Nagy has been a professor at Harvard University since 1966. He served for many years as Director of Classical and Comparative Literature Studies at Harvard in Cambridge, MA. From 2000 to 2021, he was Director of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS) in Washington, D.C. He is the author of a vast number of highly regarded publications on Homeric epic and archaic Greek literature, including numerous books – among them: The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (1979, 1999), Homer the Preclassic (2010, 2017), and The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours (2013; 2020). Together with Stephen A. Mitchell, he co-edited the revised edition (2000) of the seminal The Singer of Tales by Albert Lord (1960). In recent years, he has published extensively on the CHS open-access platform, including three books on the oral poetics of Sappho.
Everyone interested is warmly invited to attend the lecture and take part in the discussion.
The event will also be available online.
The lecture will be delivered in English.
Date of publication: 2.06.2025
Added by: M.K.
