Transmission of Mental Images as a Mechanism of Composition in Performance in Oral Tradition on the Analysis of Homeric Poems

The oral theory of Milman Parry and Albert Lord opened a new chapter in the study of the Iliad and the Odyssey, allowing a partial understanding of the technique of song composition, its structure, the way in which the oral singer formulates his thoughts, and the influence of the audience on the shape of the narrative.Oral theory also freed the discussion of the quality of oral songs from the rigours of literary criticism, forcing scholars to revise their assumptions about the so-called 'mistakes' of the singer and to look at the question of typical, recurring structures in the narrative, such as the formula or the typical scene, in a different light.