A vry worthwhile article—except for the part where he starts in about the epic works can’t be a real picture of the times they portray because they were transmitted by oral troubadors for hundreds of years.
The whole point of the transmission of stgories that comprise the ethos of a culture is that they are ‘sacred’ in a sense and the ritual of repeating them exactly as handed down is an important part of the ‘power’ of the tale.
Anthropologists have found that many cultures still hand down the history of their culture through this method when written history is not available and they use mnemetics to keep the ‘sacred’ story unchanged.
:’) That’s an old debate — anthropologists can’t show that tales passed down strictly orally with no resort to old written versions are preserved intact, unless there’s a sudden discovery of just such an old written version. I don’t think that’s ever happened as such.
The closest may be the unearthing of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that’s hardly the same thing, because the Bible has existed in various written forms for as long as 3000 years — there’s just nothing older than the DSS, and there are slight differences here and there, even though the copyists have kept multiple written versions alive (and in a great many languages beginning about 600 years ago).
In his 1980s docu, Michael Wood tracks down a couple of keepers of an oral tradition, one in Turkey, the other in Ireland, in order to make a case for centuries-long survivals of long epics by illiterate groups. I don’t think there’s anyone in the field who now thinks (or perhaps, ever thought) that the Iliad (at least!) was all one tale throughout the centuries, supposedly before it was written down. The oldest complete Iliad dates (it sez here) to the 10th century; the oldest surviving fragment (I think 1st c BC) can actually be seen (in photo) in Bettany Hughes’ docu, “Helen of Troy”. Couldn’t find a copy online.
http://www.bettanyhughes.co.uk/b_articles_sex_lies.htm
http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/detail.aspx?id=14630
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/records/4r.html
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/06/iliad_scan
http://chs.harvard.edu/chs/chs_home