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| omnipoetics:lord [2025/02/18 03:21] – [Works Cited] heather | omnipoetics:lord [2025/02/19 01:02] (current) – [Connection to Nahuatl Authorship] adriana |
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| Gregory Nagy published Lord's posthumous sequel, [[https://chs.harvard.edu/read/lord-albert-b-the-singer-resumes-the-tale/|//The Singer Resumes the Tale//]] in 1996(?) (Powell). While Nagy's work draws on both works from both Lord and Parry, Nagy's work most resembles Parry's in centering on Greek oral tradition ("Gregory Nagy"). | **Gregory Nagy** published Lord's posthumous sequel, [[https://chs.harvard.edu/read/lord-albert-b-the-singer-resumes-the-tale/|//The Singer Resumes the Tale//]] in 1996(?) (Powell). While Nagy's work draws on both works from both Lord and Parry, Nagy's work most resembles Parry's in centering on Greek oral tradition ("Gregory Nagy"). |
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| John Miles Foley was one of Albert Lord's students who also studied oral poetry (FOLEY, John Miles). | **John Miles Foley** was one of Albert Lord's students who also studied oral poetry (Briggs). Foley published work on theory and history of oral poetry (Briggs). Additionally, Foley wrote Lord's obituary for //Old English Newsletter// (Foley). |
| ===== Central Ideas ===== | ===== Central Ideas ===== |
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| "O Holy Night" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dym9mzlasSc|Emmett O'Hanlon, 2015]] | "O Holy Night" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dym9mzlasSc|Emmett O'Hanlon, 2015]] |
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| | ==== Connection to Nahuatl Authorship ==== |
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| | In the introduction to //The Singer of Tales//, Lord highlights the exploration and realization of Homer's oral tradition, which is a good starting point for exploring the way we think about poetry and authorship, |
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| | <blockquote> |
| | "It is a strange phenomena in intellectual history as well as in scholarship that the great minds herein represented, minds which could formulate the most ingenious speculation, failed to realize that there might be some other way of composing a poem than that known to their experience....They always thought in terms of a fixed text or a fixed group of texts to which a poet did something for a reason within his own artistic or intellectual self. They could not conceive of a poet composing a line in a certain way because of necessity or because of the demands of his traditional art..." (11). |
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| | "...for he will find singers who have memorized songs from these collections. In spite of authentic manner of presentation, in spite of the fact that the songs themselves are often oral poems, we cannot consider such singers as oral poets. They are mere performers. Such experiences has deceived us and have robbed the real oral poet of credit as a creative composer; indeed to some extent they have taken from epic performance an element of vital interest... When we realize that the performance is a moment of creation for the singer, we cannot but be amazed at the circumstances under which he creates" (14). |
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| | </blockquote> |
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| | There are two ways to explore Nahuatl poetry through this lens. The poet was the singer and the composer, so if the //Cantares Mexicanos// uses a specific performance by a specific singer, than that is what is meant by authorship, as the quote above with Lord. The poet is creating the song and is authoring it anew with each performance. From León-Portilla's perspective in //Fifteen poets of the Aztec World//, there is enough information historically, in the text, and the glossary notes to say that the specific words captured were ones said during a specific performance, i.e. making that specific person the 'author'. The idea of authorship does not fit with the concept of oral tradition. Lord tries to bridge that gap by saying, "From that point of view a song has no 'author,' but a multiplicity of authors, each singing being a creation, each singing having its own single 'author'" (102). |
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| | //The following is opinion//: |
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| | This is further complicated by the fact that performances often had multiple singers. The idea of authorship seems to have implanted itself in a tradition that is far removed from the preoccupations of ownership. The singers were receiving the flowers and songs from heaven during collaborative ceremonies, and yet, the modern critic still attempts to introduce the individual into the mix. The individualistic perspective does not align with the circular view and the collectively made works. While Lord argues that each performance is an author, I would go further and say that there is no author and there does not need to be one. The beauty of the poetry, even as removed as it is, does not come from knowing which specific poet we are attributing the song to. In fact, I believe that placing the idea of authorship into the reader's head, sets them up from the beginning to misunderstand the culture, purpose, and tradition of oral poetry. To put authorship on Nahuatl poetry is like trying to explain the way we think of time to someone in Hopi. Just like there are no words for past, present, and future in Hopi, a square peg does not fit into a round hole. |
| ===== Works Cited ===== | ===== Works Cited ===== |
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