An admirable achievement of JLR in this book is his demonstration, by way of a wide-ranging cross-cultural collection of examples, that the logistics of dictation actually have a skewing effect on the 'orality' of a performer... I note my appreciation of the references made to comparative studies of oral traditions in general, which the author applies most deftly to the Homeric text...A related strongpoint, to be found in the last part of the book, is the author's survey of comparative evidence relevant to theories about the scribe as performer,...I conclude by affirming that JLR has succeeded in showing that Homeric performance, to repeat what I have already quoted from the author's own wording, is capable of outliving the moment.
Jonathan L. Ready is a professor of classical studies at Indiana University. He is the author of Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives: Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia (Oxford University Press, 2018), as well as numerous articles on Homeric poetry. He is also the co-editor of Homer in Performance: Rhapsodes, Narrators, and Characters (University of Texas Press, 2018) with Christos C. Tsagalis and serves as the co-editor of the annual Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic (Brill).