Oral Theory, or Oralism, is a loosely used term for the study of the mechanisms of how the Homeric epics were orally transmitted, in terms of linguistics, cultural conditions, and literary genre. It therefore embraces philological analysis and literary criticism simultaneously. It has its origins in linguistics, but it was foreshadowed in some respects by Vico in the 18th century, and more immediately by Gilbert Murray. Murray was an Analyst, but his 1907 book "The Rise of the Greek Epic" contained some of the core ideas of Oralism: particularly the idea that the epics were the end result of a protracted process of evolution, and the idea that an individual poet named Homer had relatively little importance in their history.