Dr. Tamar Marvin (Twitter)I went looking for work on tradents in Bavli, found this!
— Dr. Tamar Marvin (@tamar_marvin) December 8, 2021
"Anyone who has read...Tibetan literature will be familiar with...the ubiquitous verbatim repetition of phrases, sections, literary structures, and even entire chapters, across many different texts"https://t.co/eeN4qoTqss
@tamar_marvin This seems incredibly similar to the traditions of oral cultures as explored by Milman Parry & Albert Lord in their work on orality & followed up by Walter Ong et al. Examples include Homer in the Greek tradition and the guslars of Yugoslavia.
Thanks for highlighting it!
Yes – a lost intellectual world to us textualists! Just spotted a new book about Parry and put it on my reading list.
The Nicola Scaldaferri, the Robert Kanigel, or something else? I just finished Kanigel which was an interesting bio, particularly with respect to his work. I wish I’d read it before starting in on other denser orality texts as an introduction.
I was thinking of Kanigel. Is there a denser text that you’d recommend particularly? I’ve read Ong but not the others.
Kanigel, a science writer, is well a researched & academic bio (JHU Press), but is marketed at a broader audience. Unless it’s your area, maybe better as an audio book read? I’ve not looked closely at Scaldaferri. Parry & Lord’s primary work is probably the most dense/technical.
Thanks, that’s very helpful.