SOURCE: Beaton, Roderick. “Was Digenis Akritas an Oral Poem?” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 7 (1981): 16-27.

In the following excerpt, Beaton analyzes the influence of the oral tradition on Digenes Akrites.

The first question to be asked, as we come to consider the composition of Digenes, is: Which version is the most authentic? The opinion is now generally held that G represents the oldest version of the poem as well as the oldest text, although the claims of Kyriakidis and Grégoire for the superior authenticity of the E version have recently been restated by Stylianos Alexiou. Alexiou has brought forward new evidence that elements in the E text faithfully reflect the historical period in which the poem is set, and this certainly confirms that the text derives from a tradition going back to an early period. (As much had been accepted by Trapp, who has a much lower...