Song 44 of Sappho revisited: what is ‘oral’ about the text of this song?
2016.08.31 rewritten 2024.02.13 | By Gregory Nagy The phraseology that we see in Song 44 of Sappho reveals the same kind of formulaic structure that we see at work in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. Such a structure, in the case of Homeric poetry, indicates that this poetry originated from traditions of oral performance. So also in the case of the songmaking exemplified by Song 44 of Sappho, there is… Read more