The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Aoidos

ancient Greek performer of epic songs. During the period when there were still no fixed texts the aoidos improvised to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. In the Homeric epic poems the aoidos are described as singers in the service of communities or kings. There were also wandering aoidos, and their art played an essential role in the development of the Greek epic poem.

REFERENCES

Tronskii, I. M. Istoriia antichnoi literatury,3rd ed. Leningrad, 1957.
Radtsig, S. I. Istoriia drevnegrecheskoi literatury,2nd ed. [Moscow,] 1959.

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References in periodicals archive

"Cognition and Type-Scenes: The Aoidos at Work." In F.

Recognition and the forgotten senses in the Odyssey

Michael Caesar well grasps some of these tensions in his essay "Voice, Vision and Orality." Focusing his analysis on the interaction of singer (aoidos) and listener in the Odyssey, Caesar stresses the visible and physical social context in which the oral performance is embedded, a context shaped by contingency and interaction with the audience.

Michael Caesar and Marina Spunta, eds. Orality and Literacy in Modern Italian Culture

aoidos, who were experts able to identify knights in full armour from

Trace and forgetting: between the threat of erasure and the persistence of the unerasable

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