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Comment by soco | Hacker News Reader

I guess they were not writing stuff for "readers"? This might be a well-known theory of which I'm just unaware, but could it be that writing fulfilled a different role/need in those epochs?

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Oh, that's absolutely a big part of it. There was no "reading public". Very few people could read and write. I assume all the repetition has to do with making the stories better-suited to memorization and oral retelling. I don't mean any of that as some kind of put-down of the ancients, it's just a fact that a modern reader is going to find the material difficult, and, even once acclimated to the difficulty, of limited appeal, with few exceptions (and I'd call out Gilgamesh as the #1 exception)

I would imagine the repetition benefits the listening audience since there is a chance they may not hear something or may miss the significance of something the first time it is spoken.

It maybe also benefits a setup where the story is told/sung in small chunks over several days, so you don't forget what happened in the previous episode?

In a world in which most "literature" was memorized and then performed orally, repetition had a few key functions: 1) making it easier to tell a part of the story (an audience probably wouldn't listen to the whole thing in one go); 2) making it easier to memorize (while also allowing the performer/bard some time to "autopilot" and remember what comes next); 3) making the meter fit (this is why you'll see the same epithets over and over).

This seems analogous to some documentaries and TV shows that restart the story pretty much from the beginning at 15 minute intervals, after each commercial break. Basically allow people latch on that just joined or were not paying attention. It must have been equally tormenting to the ancients.

I think the main issue is simply that most modern readers have a relatively small vocabulary and are markedly acclimatized to shorter, simpler sentences. 21st century readers often struggle with works written for the reading publics of a mere one or two centuries ago. And even 100 years ago, the KJV (for example) was not regarded as a difficult read.

Indeed, it's been my observation that the written register has almost entirely disappeared - there's only the spoken register in text form. But even that has declined in complexity: consider what Presidential addresses use to look like. Go compare Lincoln's Second Inaugural address with Obama's, for example.

The public changed a lot as well. You aren't writing for a small(ish) gathering of literate noblemen anymore, but aiming for an entire nation with so-and-so levels of understanding.

What gets me is letters written by normal people, from the 19th and early 20th century US. Not authors, not statesmen, not business tycoons, not military officers—workers, minor bureaucrats, enlisted soldiers. They tend to read as very "high" language, to modern eyes. Working vocabulary, as you note, seems to be larger as well, even though it's easier than ever to remind oneself of the correct word, with modern tools.

> Indeed, it's been my observation that the written register has almost entirely disappeared

I think that's a lot of it. Then again, maybe people in the 19th century US spoke like that, too? I haven't looked into it. Surely there's a book about this....

I would think that is a good guess. Repetition is irritating to read but works well when something is performed since the audience does not have a readers ability to simply go back and reread a difficult or important passage.

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