Craft and StructureVery hardTwo scholars on oral epic transmission
Craft and Structure practice question
Text 1
Recordings of the same singer performing 'the same' epic a decade apart differ by thousands of lines. Without writing to anchor them, the poems decayed with every retelling — each generation inheriting a more corrupted text.
Text 2
The singers never possessed a text to corrupt. Each night they rebuilt the poem from a stock of formulas and scenes, fitted to the audience and hour; the decade-apart recordings differ because recomposition in performance is the tradition. Measuring such art against a fixed original mistakes its nature.
Which choice best describes the relationship between the texts?
- A. Text 2 argues that what Text 1 counts as corruption of a fixed original is better understood as the tradition working as designed.Correct
- B. Text 2 agrees that singers should be trained to memorize more exactly.
- C. Both texts hold that the epics were composed in writing.
- D. Text 2 claims the recordings described in Text 1 were fabricated.
Answer: A. Text 2 argues that what Text 1 counts as corruption of a fixed original is better understood as the tradition working as designed.
Text 1 frames variation as degradation of an original; Text 2 reframes it — each performance recomposes the poem from formulas, so variation is the system, not its failure.
Why the other answers are wrong
- B. Text 2 agrees that singers should be trained to memorize more exactly.
- Text 2 treats exact memorization as foreign to how the tradition works.
- C. Both texts hold that the epics were composed in writing.
- Both texts concern oral performance; neither claims written composition.
- D. Text 2 claims the recordings described in Text 1 were fabricated.
- Text 2 reinterprets the recordings' meaning and never disputes their authenticity.
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