The sound of epic …

… Hearing Homer's Song: Undying Melody. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Milman Parry argued that we don’t really need to know who Homer was, since the epics could be the oral compositions of a tribe, “not the work of any one individual.” He flung aside our most precious notions of individual genius, concentrating instead on the patterns and inconsistencies of Homeric epics, the way some vocabulary, particularly epithets like “wine-dark sea” and “gray-eyed Athena,” existed only to suit the demands of the dactylic verse, a vibration of sound and a vehicle for narrative propulsion.

Hearing Homer’s Song: Undying Melody