The essays in this volume present new insights into the far-reaching influence of an early oral culture on subsequent development after the spread of literacy. At the outset, revisionist essays on the Homeric epics examine such questions as historical memory, Homer's audience(s), descriptive strategies, ring-composition, and the status of orality as a constitutive feature of the epics.

These are followed by virtually unprecedented studies of the orality of later (written) literature, including Greek oratory, Virgilian epic, Pliny's Panegyricus and story-telling in late Greek writers.