HeroesX | Hour 02 Episode 05: Milman Parry, Albert Lord, and the Avdo Kino

Professor Gregory Nagy introduces the foundational scholarship behind HeroesX's approach to Homeric poetry: the empirical study of oral tradition by Milman Parry and Albert Lord at Harvard. He explains how Parry's fieldwork in 1930s Yugoslavia with Muslim South Slavic singers — comparing a living oral system with the no-longer-living but recorded system of Homer — revealed the inseparability of composition and performance, and the mechanics of expansion and compression in oral poetry. The centerpiece of the video is the master singer Avdo Međedović, whom Parry and Lord found capable of expanding performances to dimensions approaching the Iliad and Odyssey, and who was captured on early film in what Parry and Lord called the Avdo Kino. The video closes with a screening of that remarkable footage. TIMESTAMPS 00:03 The study of oral poetry: invented and perfected at Harvard 00:19 Albert Lord: Nagy's teacher and one of the giants of the field 00:27 Milman Parry: fieldwork in 1930s Yugoslavia with Muslim South Slavic singers 00:44 An empirical methodology: what makes oral poetry come alive in performance? 01:07 South Slavic oral poetry compared to Homer: not directly related but valuable as a living system beside a recorded one 01:49 The oral poet composes while performing and performs while composing: expansion and compression as the same process 02:13 Avdo Međedović: a master singer capable of expanding performances to the scale of the Iliad and Odyssey 02:41 The Avdo Kino: Avdo captured on early 1930s film, a marvel of a living oral tradition in performance 03:40 The video and audio are not perfectly aligned — tweaked by Nagy's colleagues to be as close as possible 03:50 Here is what oral tradition looks like when composition and performance are aspects of the same poetic process 04:02 [Screening of the Avdo Kino] ABOUT THIS SERIES HeroesX, also known as The Ancient Greek Hero, is an open-access learning project created by Professor Gregory Nagy and first launched in 2013. It grew out of Harvard's longest-running course, "The Ancient Greek Hero," which Nagy has taught for over fifty years. Since the project's launch, more than 172,000 participants from over 170 countries have joined. It invites everyone, with or without prior experience, to read closely from some of the most beautiful works of ancient Greek literature in English translation: the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, the dialogues of Plato, and selections from On Heroes by Philostratus. Throughout the project, Nagy and his team model techniques for reading out of these works inductively, so that learners can begin to see this literature as an exquisite system of communication. It is not a graded course. It is content, community, and conversation that many participants describe as transformative. ABOUT THE NEW ALEXANDRIA FOUNDATION For more than a decade, HeroesX has welcomed learners from around the world, and it now finds a new home at the New Alexandria Foundation, which expands access to the comparative study of civilizations, ancient and modern. Through technology and community, we foster living humanistic dialogues, open to all and enduring across generations. The full HeroesX video library lives on this YouTube channel, and NAF shares the surrounding content, including primary readings, exercises, and resources, to support your reading. 🌐 https://newalexandriafoundation.org/ RESOURCES 🏛️ HeroesX home on Classical Continuum: https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/her... 📘 Read Gregory Nagy's book, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, free online with illustrations: https://chs.harvard.edu/book/nagy-gre... 📚 Read or download the Sourcebook online (English translations of all the texts discussed in the book and in HeroesX): https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/the... ✉️ Be the first to hear about HeroesX developments and join an upcoming cohort: https://mailchi.mp/9a41aac39c45/6cnmu... #AncientGreek #HeroesX #GregoryNagy #Homer #Iliad #Odyssey #GreekMythology #ClassicalLiterature #Humanities #NewAlexandriaFoundation