Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Bruno Gentili and Giovanni Cerri. "Written and Oral Communication in Greek Historiographical Thought." Trans. David Murray with John Van Sickle. In Communication Arts in the Ancient World. Ed. Eric A. Havelock and Jackson P. Hershbell. Humanistic Studies in the Communication Arts. New York: Hastings House. pp. 137-55.

In surveying ancient Greek ideas on historiography, they observe that Homer and Hesiod had already acquired a "bipolar conception of the two great epochs of mankind_that of heroes or demi-gods and that of men_a division according to which the heroic past, notwithstanding the uniqueness inherent in its character of factual reality, had to constitute the archetypical model for the present, almost in a perennial return to the mythical and exemplary age of the origins" (p. 138). Explores the writings of Thucydides and others and their link to oral culture.
Area: AG