Fascinating book requiring careful reading. Shows how 'authorship' and composition before blank paper are recent and relative modes of creation whereas for thousands of years ( or more?) some humans have stirred a public much the way jazz musicians may do nowadays. And how the two oral poems we "possess" in written form, named 'Illiad' and 'Odyssee' , came to be put down — no full answer to that. ( )

Orig. publ. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1960 ( )

Edition: // Descr: xv, 309 p. 24 cm. // Series: Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature Volume 24 Call No. { } Contains Appendixes, Notes, and Index. // John E. Rexine Library Donation //