Imparting Textuality

Abstract Forward planning and rehearsal were essential to a successful oral performance of the Homeric kind. Drawing on the work of linguistic anthropologist Karin Barber, on research in cognitive psychology, and ethnographical studies, I propose that we may find in the epics good evidence for poetic preparation. I present a number of passages from the Homeric epics that, I argue, were the product of composition and rehearsal in tandem; to use Barber’s phrase, they “pre-existed the moment of utterance.”