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ancient originality
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993
From: Steven Lowenstam
Subject: Ancient Originality

I've been asked for some citations on the ancient concept of "originality," the use of traditional material for (minor) new effects. I think of Aristotle's praise of Euripides for making one significant change in a line from Aeschylus' Philoctetes but no other ancient examples. Also, what would be the best modern works to look at?
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993
From: "David M. Schaps"
Subject: Re: Ancient originality

For a discussion of what was original in ancient originality, try G. Williams, _Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry_ (Oxford, '68), abridged as _The Nature of Roman Poetry_ (Oxford, '70).
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993
From: Don Lateiner
Subject: Re: Ancient Originality

The ancientest praise of originality I know of is: _Odyssey 12.450ff: Why tell the story again? I told it yesterday. I just hate telling a tale well told all over again.
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993
From: "Jenny S. Clay"
Subject: Re: Ancient Originality

Don, What about Od. 1. 351-52? "Men celebrate most thesong which is the latest to circulate." People who talk about Homer and oral poetry as purely (?) traditional don't talk about this passage.
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993
From: john foley
Subject: Re: Ancient Originality

In response to Jenny Clay's message, I would note that oral poetry is, in my experience, never "purely" traditional in the sense I think she means. Living "traditions" are always creating "new" songs, never out of whole cloth, but many times representing pretty stark departures from "canonical" songs. An example (actually dozens of examples) is furnished by that now-desperate part of the world formerly known as Yugoslavia, where songs about WWII resistance fighters were "created" as oral traditional poetry. They have a debt to tradition, of course, in their phraseology, narrative structure, and story-patterns, but they are -- perhaps like the type of "creation" referred to in the _Odyssey_ quotation -- also "new."
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993
From: Don Lateiner
Subject: Re: Ancient Originality

JSC has one upped my ref. to twelve, although very few days separate (although 12 books keep the reff. apart) Telemakhos at the manse from Odysseus' stay on Skheria. The oral poetry network ought to take up these astonishing praises of novelty. Rick Newton is writing a book on metarnarrative and there is an article by Wm.WYatt on Homer and Odysseus as story=tellers (poets) in Studi micenei et analolici_ (I might have that title wrong) ca. vol.27 ( write: anatolici, sorry). Someone was looking for reff. to torture and punishment. I believe there were several (two?) volumes from the French School at Rome on this subject about ten years ago.
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993
From: Steve Lowenstam
Subject: Ancient Originality

Again Thanks to all those who replied to my first inquiry, but could I ask again for modern bibliography, especially pertaining to Greece? I don't know if this group has fallen into the same aporia as I did when I was asked the question. It seems all our work on Greek (and Latin) literature is underpinned by the knowledge that the Greek concept of originality differs immensely from our modern view based on the Romantics, but no obvious bibliography came to my mind. Any first or second thoughts out there?
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From: Dougal Blyth
Subject: Re: Ancient Originality

The Homerists don't have this all to themselves; consider Aristoph. *Nubes* 546-48 (Parabasis) "oud' (umas zhtw 'xapatan dis kai tris t'aut' eisagwv all' aei kainas ideas eisferwv sofizomai oudev allhlaisiv (omoias kai pasas dexias" and context. See also the agon between the dikaios and adikos logoi, e.g. 894-99: A: alla se vikw, tov emou kreittw faskovt' eivai. D: ti/ sofov poiwv; A: gvwmas kaivas exeuriskwv. D: tauta gar av#ei dia toutousi tous avohtous. A: ouk, alla sofous. Also *Ranae*; firstly vv. 1-11 (in deference to JSC I shan't quote); but consider the contest of the tragedians. Compare the use of _exeuriskw_ above with gamous d' avosious eisferwv eis thv teXvhv (Aisch. of Eur., Ran. 850). See too 954ff., where Euripides boasts of novel dramaturgy, using _didaskw_, and 959 oikeia pragmat' eisagwv, (ois Xrwme#', (ois xuvesmev But innovation is the theme throughout (e.g., compare 973-74 logismov ev#eis thi teXvhi kai skepsiv; 1004 all' w prwtos twv (Ellhvwv purgwsas (rhmata semva [chorus of Aisch.]; etc, etc.) A couple of general remarks: (a) the agon is frequently about cultural innovations, when it pits old against new, but perhaps in *Ranae* most explicitly about poetic originality; (b) although Ar. clearly recognises the concept of novelty, it is intercepted by other terms and interpretations: (i) the moral effect, and (ii) claims of having more techne (i.e., the achievements are already in the art, to be released/discovered, not invented). This of course is the view of Aristotle also, expressed teleologically in the Poetics. The key to all this, seems to be that innovation is understood exclusively in the context of a definite techne, and not as a function of authorial personality. (c) There is a long tradition among the Greeks, all the same, of tracing previous cultural development as sequences of artistic and intellectual innovation by named individuals. See the account of rhetorical innovations in Plato's Phaedrus, and Aristotle's account of previous philosophy in Met. A. This led to the kind of doxographies and histories for which the peripatetics were famous. But note too that both Plato and Aristotle prefer a cyclical theory of artistic, cultural, and social development in the final analysis (see e.g., Plato's Critias, and the end of Aristotle's Met. Lambda ch.8, and Pol. VII.9, 1329b25-33). And don't forget Herodotus, who names innovators.
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From: David Sider
Subject: originality

Any discussion of this should include mention of the literature on the variation of paradigms to sharpen the point. Wilcock and Gaisser come to mind (CQ and HSCP, respectively, I think). Wilcock gives as a prime example Achilles' statement to Priam, when trying to get him to eat, that even Niobe remembered to eat when mourning her children, a most unlikely scenario for one mourning to such an extent that she turned into a dripping stone. Note also Aristotle Poetics 24.1459b30-31 (talking of the variety to be found in the many episodes of epic) "Sameness (*homoion) soon satiates and causes tragedies to "be banished" (*ekpiptein* i.e. fail).
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From: John Peradotto
Subject: Re: Originality

hope it's not too fusty of me to suggest that the problem of originality is a philosophical and linquistic question. Against convention or tradition or myth it seems to me that originality realizes itself through what I would call "combinatorial skill" -- perhaps, better "combinatorial daring," the two of them best understood as a continuous operation. Merleau-Ponty (Sur la phenomeno- logie du langage) considers REARRANGEMENT a major mode of realizing new meaning, of bridging the gap, formed by the inadequacy of existing signifiers, between intention and communication. The intention to signify, he says, acquires self-awareness and embodiment, at one and the same time, in the search for an equivalent in the system of available signifiers. It is a matter of realizing a certain arrangement of these already signifying instruments, which elicits in the listener or reader the inkling of a new and different signification and inversely accomplishes for the speaker or writer what Merleau-Ponty calls the "anchorage" of a meaning unprecedented in already available meanings. It's obvious how closely the problem of originality is to the problem of metaphor.
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From: Robin Mitchell
Subject: Re: Originality

JP's account of Merleau-Ponty brings to mind the Russian Formalist concept of "defamiliarization" (or Brecht's Verfremdungaffekt), wherein the work of art impedes perception so that one's habitual sleepy experience of the world is upset: "art exists that one may recover the sensation of life....Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of the object; the object itself is not important." (Victor Shklovksy) While we're on the subject of distorting perception, American fans of Prime Suspect would be shocked to see how much was removed from the British original in order to satisfy conservative groups; in the process, they destroyed the last episode, which featured the villain Jason sodomizing his last victim and, when being arrested finally, repeatedly screaming "Black Bastard" at his captor as he's hauled off. This sanatized both the sexual violence and the really strong racial current of the series. Jason's racism, in the original, is inseparable from his misogyny. PBS left its viewers with a nice, far less disturbing ending. In the space of about 10 minutes the British original confronted its audience with a rapid fire sequence of sexual violation, racial violence and the sexsim/racism within the London p.d. as Tennison is passed over for promotion. Americans merely got a nice morality tale of a middle class woman whose knowledge that she's more capable than her peers leads her to act too rude sometimes. What a country!
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From: James O'Donnell
Subject: Originality

The notion of originality is linked to the notion of authorship and to the idea, that grows stronger over time and even gains the force of law, that it is possible to claim property rights over ideas and words on grounds of having originated them. The very fact that those grand old yarns by somebody or other come equipped with an author's name ("Homer") and an almost aboriginal sense of the importance of working out just who that author was seems to me the first indisputable evidence of this obsession.
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From: "Jenny S. Clay"
Subject: Re: Originality

I'm not so sure that originality MUST be related to proprietary authorship. For example: the proem to the Odyssey almost shouts out to you that this version is going to be different--but puts the blame or responsibility for this difference on Ms. Muse. Homer who?
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From: Don Lateiner
Subject: Re: Ancient Originality

I don't know if Lowenstam (it was you, wasn't it) only wanted information on literary originality, but if more general originality is under examination, don't forget Kleinguenther's monograph: _Protos Euretes_ Philologus Supp.26 (Leipzig 1933), a useful collection reflecting the folkloric inclination to assign all first to specific persons, living, dead, or never was.
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From: Don Lateiner
Subject: Re: originality

Since Sider brings up "paradigm shifts", perhaps better called variations on a formula by Homer", I am reminded of 1. N. Austin on the vagaries of pepnumenos in Odyss. 2. a great example: Arete instead of saying as usual, "Where do you come from and what is your name" says "Who are you and where from, and where did you get those clothes?"
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993
From: Lowell Edmunds
Subject: originality

Jack Peradotto's posting on originality ("combinatorial skills"; "rearrangement" [Merleau-Ponty]) arrived angelically just as I had finished an article in the CARDOZOLAW REVIEW about how jurors arrive atdecisions. the authors, cognitive psychologists, are proponents of "the story model," according to which jurors make sense of the mass of non- chronological, heterogeneous, contradictory material that they hear at a trial by shaping it into a story. The theory holds of course that they already have "story schemas" that they bring with them and that they use these schemas to build the new story that will lead to their verdict. An example, I thought, of rearrangement.
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993
From: john foley
Subject: Re: originality I

May I add to Lowell Edmunds' and Jack Peradotto's comments on "combina- torial skills" an entry from a different field? It is Louis O. Mink's "Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument," in _The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understanding_, ed. Robert H. Canary and Henry Kozicki (Madison: U. of Wisconsin Press), pp. 129-49. John Foley
Culled from classics.log9303
Copyright © 2001 David Meadows
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