Rhapsode
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A rhapsode (
Etymology and usage
The term rhapsode is derived from rhapsōidein (ῥαψῳδεῖν), meaning "to sew songs [together]".[3] This word illustrates how the oral epic poet, or rhapsode, would build a repertoire of diverse myths, tales and jokes to include in the content of the epic poem. Thus it was possible, through experience and improvisatory skills, for him to shift the content of the epos according to the preferred taste of a specific location's audience. However, the outer framework of the epic would remain virtually the same in every "singing", thus securing the projection of underlying themes such as of morality or honour. The performance of epic poetry was called in classical Greek rhapsōidia (ῥαψῳδία), and its performer rhapsōidos. The word does not occur in the early epics, which use the word aoidos (ἀοιδός "singer") for performers in all genres, including this one. It has been argued by Walter Burkert that rhapsōidos was by definition a performer of a fixed, written text.[4]
The word rhapsōidos was in use as early as
Performance
It is certain that rhapsodes performed competitively, contending for prizes at religious festivals, and that this practice was already well-established by the fifth century BC. The Iliad alludes to the myth of Thamyris, the Thracian singer, who boasted that he could defeat even the Muses in song. He competed with them, was defeated, and was punished for his presumption with the loss of his ability to sing.[7] Historically, the practice is first evident in Hesiod's claim that he performed a song at the funeral games for Amphidamas in Euboea and won a prize.[8] Competitive singing is depicted vividly in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and mentioned in the two Hymns to Aphrodite.[9] The latter of these may evidently be taken to belong to Salamis in Cyprus and the festival of the Cyprian Aphrodite, in the same way that the Hymn to Apollo belongs to Delos and the Delian gathering.
An early historical mention of rhapsodes occurs in the still better, since Argos was named in the first line of that poem. The incident seems to show that poems performed by rhapsodes had political and propagandistic importance in the Peloponnese in the early sixth century BC.
At
Complementary evidence on oral performance of poetry in classical Greece comes in the form of references to a family, clan, or professional association of Homeridae (literally "children of Homer"). These certainly had an existence in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and certainly performed poems attributed to Homer. Pindar seems to count the Homeridae as rhapsodes;[13] other sources do not specifically confirm this categorisation.
See also
Notes
- ^ a b Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 231.
- ^ Bahn, E. & Bahn, M.L. (1970). A History of Oral Interpretation. Minneapolis, MN: Burgess. p. 7.
- ^ Ridderstrøm, H. (2006). Tekstsamling I: litteraturhistorie: Litteraturhistoriske tekstpraksiser. Oslo: Høgskolen i Oslo
- ^ E.g. Burkert, Walter (1987), "The making of Homer in the 6th century BC: rhapsodes versus Stesichorus", Papers on the Amasis Painter and his world, Malibu: Getty Museum, pp. 43–62; Graziosi, Barbara (2002), Inventing Homer: the early reception of epic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Bahn, Eugene, and Margaret L. Bahn. A History of Oral Interpretation. Minneapolis, MN: Burgess, 1979, p.7
- ISBN 0-393-05788-7, pp. 157–168.
- ^ Iliad 2.594-600; see scholia on this passage and Apollodorus, Library 1.3.3.
- M. L. West(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966) pp. 43-46.
- ^ Homeric Hymn to Apollo 165-173; Homeric Hymns 5 and 9.
- ^ Herodotus 5.67.
- ^ Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 102. The Iliad was also recited at the festival of the Brauronia, at Brauron in Attica (Hesychius s.v. Brauronia).
- ^ Hipparchus 228b8. This, however, may be merely part of the historical romance of the Pisistratids: it is telling that Herodotus (7.6), who knew about Hipparchus' literary activities, knows nothing about this. The author of the Hipparchus makes (perhaps wilfully) all the mistakes about the family of Pisistratus which Thucydides notices in a well-known passage (6.54-59).
- ^ Pindar, Nemean Odes 2.1-5.
External links
- Media related to Rhapsode at Wikimedia Commons