Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Ernest L. Abel. "The Psychology of Memory and Rumor Transmission and Their Bearing on Theories of Oral Transmission in Early Christianity." Journal of Religion, 51:270-81.

Since the earliest Christian traditions existed in oral forms, the principles of oral transmission must be considered in any determination of authenticity of New Testament materials. Notes that oral transmission tends to eliminate original details but preserves general outlines, a fact undermining many of the conclusions of Bultmann (e.g. 1957) and the Form Critics. Contends that repetition and mnemonic devices are indications of authenticity.
Area: BI

Roger D. Abrahams. "Creativity, Individuality, and the Traditional Singer." Studies in the Literary Imagination, 3:5-34.

Warns against ethnocentricity in the study of the aesthetics of folk art. In an effort to recover the real meaning of "individual creativity within a tradition-oriented community" (7-8), he examines the performance attitudes and aesthetic philosophy of Almeda Riddle, a traditional ballad singer from White-Cleburn County, Arkansas. Compares her repertoire with that of Marybird MacAllister from Albemarle County, Virginia. Includes texts of 19 songs.
Area: US, FB

Roger D. Abrahams. A Singer and Her Songs: Almeda Riddle's Book of Ballads. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970.

The autobiographical reminiscences of Almeda Riddle, renowned Arkansas ballad-singer, interspersed frequently with ballad texts and melodies. Many of her comments bear on her own practice of the oral art of balladry. Includes editorial afterword, notes on musical transcriptions, and three appendices.
Area: US, FB

Roger D. Abrahams. "The Training of the Man of Words in Talking Sweet." Language in Society, 1:15-29.

In the course of describing a diglossia situation and the teaching of a "high" variety of speaking in the British West Indies, he mentions the role of Parry-Lord formulas and the learned ability to improvise (espec. 22-23).
Area: WI

Roger D. Abrahams. "License to Repeat and Be Predictable." Folklore Preprint Series (Indiana University Press), 6, iii:1-13.

Accuses Parry-Lord theorists of employing a naive notion of memory and of not adequately providing for the many kinds of oral literature to be found in various parts of the world. The emphasis on generic variety is salutary, but the pseudo-scientific analysis according to Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is reductive and distracting.
Area: TH

Kamal Abu-Deeb. "Towards a Structural Analysis of Pre-Islamic Poetry." International Journal of Middle East Studies, 6:148-84.

Primarily a formalist investigation of poetic structure, with frequent reference to Lévi-Strauss, but the hypothesis of oral composition and tradition is considered throughout. Feels the poet is an individual craftsman not bound by tradition. Concluded in Abu-Deeb 1976.
Area: AR

Kamal Abu-Deeb. "Towards a Structural Analysis of Pre-Islamic Poetry (II): The Eros Vision." Edebiyât: A Journal of Middle Eastern Literature, 1:3-69.

Using the tools developed in his 1975 article, he probes the structure of the mu'allaqa of `Umru' al-Qays.
Area: AR

Robert J. Adams. "Folktale Telling and Storytellers in Japan." Asian Folklore Studies, 26, i:99-118.

A short review of relevant background studies is followed by a report on his fieldwork in Japan, particularly on the circumstances of collecting, the current state of the oral tradition, and the transmutation of oral stories to literary versions.
Area: JP

Kenneth Adams. "The Metrical Irregularity of the Cantar de Mio Cid: A Restatement Based on the Evidence of Names, Epithets, and Some Other Aspects of Formulaic Diction." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies,49:109-19.

Sees the Cid's metrical character as a condition of the "original" work rather than as a latter-day phenomenon of scribal transmission. Finds the origin of such irregularity in the formulaic structure of the diction.
Area: HI

Kenneth Adams. "The Yugoslav Model and the Text of the Poema de Mio Cid'," in Medieval Hispanic Studies Presented to Rita Hamilton. Ed. Alan D. Deyermond. London: Tamesis. pp. 1-10.

After a brief history of early research on the Yugoslav material, he compares the SCHS oral epic texts with the Poema de Mio Cid and looks for traces of oral performance in the latter. Concentrating on slips of the tongue, scribal errors, "flaws" in line construction, repetition, "stalling," and the prosodic properties of assonance, rhyme, and caesura, he finds parallel features and considers them evidence of an original oral text behind our manuscript of the Cid.
Area: HI, SC, CP

Arthur W. H. Adkins. "Orality and Philosophy." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. Ed. by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy/The Hegeler Institute. pp. 91-109.

Disputes Havelock's claims that in a non-literate society solely metrical or rhythmic action sequences can be memorized and that an oral culture cannot think systematically or make statements with abstract subjects. Citing the equivalency of such passages as Phaedo 100e7-101b2 and Iliad 3.168-94, attempts to show that members of an oral culture were capable of raising philosophical questions. Concludes that there is not a necessary link between literacy and abstract thought, since non-literates could be concerned with abstract language, as in Odyssey 9.406ff.
Area: AG

F. N'sougan Agblemagnon. Sociologie des sociétés orales d'Afrique noire: Les Eve du Sud-Togo, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Le Monde d'Outre-Mer Passé et Présent, 10 ser., 35. Paris: Mouton.

An ethnographic and sociological survey of oral forms (charms, riddles, proverbs, music, and folktales) collected by the author among the Eve.
Area: AF, MU

J.M. Aguirre. "Epica oral y épica castellana: Tradición creadora y tradición repetitiva." Romanische Forschungen, 80:13-43.

A consideration of Castilian epic tradition, especially the Cid, in light of the Parry-Lord oral theory. Following a review of the theory, he demonstrates the existence of traditional elements in the Cid and argues that viewing the poem as oral traditional resolves the major textual difficulties, such as metrical irregularity, the questions of dating and authorship, and related problems. Suggests that there were two distinct stages in the evolution of the Castilian epic: (1) the oral and creative tradition of the troubadour and (2) a later stage that was popular, conservative, and unartistic. Selective bibliography appended.
Area: HI

G.W. Ahlström. "Oral and Written Transmission: Some Considerations." Harvard Theological Review, 59:69-81.

Discusses various possibilities for transmission, including fixed (memorized) and flexible (recomposed) oral forms. Cautions against regarding repetition as a certain sign of oral composition, preferring to see it as a stylistic feature.
Area: BI

A.J. Aitken. "Oral Narrative Style in Middle Scots." In Actes du 20 colloque de langue et de littérature écossaises (Moyen age et renaissance), Universite de Strasbourg 5-ll juillet 1978. Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg. pp. 98-112.

Basing his analysis on three Middle Scots texts (John Campbell's Complaint [c. 1613], a sermon by James Ross [1638], and the sixteenth-century comic poem The Wyf of Awchtirmnchty), he locates a group of syntactic and rhetorical features he considers oral in origin, characteristic of "impromptu memorial story-telling" (p. 108). Postulates that these and other texts were written in the available and familiar idiom of oral narrative, with implications for Blind Hary and the Scottish Chaucerians.
Area: ST

Ebiegberi J. Alagoa. "Oral Tradition among the Ijo of the Niger Delta." Journal of African History, 7:405-19.

A modest but exacting study of the authenticity and the authority of oral tradition as a historical source, as well as a discussion of collection procedures, within a self-contained community.
Area: AF

Ebiegberi J. Alagoa. "The Use of Oral Literary Data for History: Examples from the Niger Delta Proverbs." Journal of American Folklore, 81:235-42.

One of the five oral literary genres among the Ijo, Nembe proverbs can furnish valuable historical information on figures, events, institutions, and rules of conduct. The possibilities of their use are illustrated by an analysis of 17 proverbs.
Area: AF

W.F. Albright. "Some Oriental Glosses on the Homeric Problem." American Journal of Archeology, 54:162-76.

Brings to bear literary and archaeological evidence concerning the Hittite, Phoenician, Mycenaean, Canaanite, Assyrian, and Babylonian civilizations on a complex of Homeric questions, including the mixed epic dialect, oral composition, and a continuous tradition of writing, as these matters affect the date of composition and the events recounted in Homer.
Area: AG, HT, BY, CP

Maureen Alden. "When Did Achilles Come Back?" In Mélanges Edouard Delebecque. Aix-en-Provence: Publications of the Université de Provence. pp. 3-9.

Addresses the problem of Achilles' return to battle in the Iliad, concluding that the epic contains three versions of the story, one in which the return is precipitated by the embassy of Book IX, one in which he returns upon the firing of a ship and the entreaty of Patroclus, and one in which he returns to avenge the death of Patroclus.
Area: AG

Maureen Alden. "The Role of Calypso in the Odyssey." Antike und Abendland, 31:97-107.

Argues that the Odyssey-poet did not invent Calypso but that analogs with the Taín Bó Buailnge suggest that he drew upon traditional sources of Indo-European origin.
Area: IE, AG, OI, CP

Bengt Alexanderson. "Homeric Formulae for Ships." Eranos, 68:1-46.

Examines phrases expressing the idea of "the ships" or "the Achaean ships" as a test of Parry's notions of formulaic economy and extension. Reviews the textual material systematically by case and by metrical position, commenting on relations between phrase boundaries and "cuts" (caesuras or diaereses). Finds a considerable amount of extension but less clear results concerning economy.
Area: AG

Margaret Alexiou. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reviews the development of the lament from Homer to the present. Part I examines the lament for the dead in relation to the funeral rite; Part II defines a common ground among different kinds of laments (for gods, cities, and men); Part III explores the interaction of poetic originality with a "common tradition" of poetic conventions and structures, themes, formulas, images, and symbols. Includes occasional references throughout to possible relations between the lament material and oral tradition.
Area: AG, BG, MG, CP

Margaret Alexiou. "The Lament of the Virgin in Byzantine Literature and Modern Greek Folk-Song." Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1:111-40.

The modern ballads and the Byzantine examples share enough elements to establish them as stemming from a common oral tradition. Changes occur through "the principles and techniques of oral poetry, the three essential ingredients of which are variation, selection, and continuity" (140).
Area: BG, MG, CP

Louise H. Allen. "A Structural Analysis of the Epic Style of the Cid." In Structural Studies on Spanish Themes. Ed.H. R. Kahane and Angelina Pietrangeli. Urbana and Salamanca: University of Illinois Press and University of Salamanca. pp. 341-414.

A structural investigation at the levels of narrative (literary taxeme), phraseology (morpheme), and sound (phoneme). Does not directly engage oral theory, but would be useful as an index of traditional structure.
Area: HI

Richard Allen. Fire and Iron: Critical Approaches to Njáls Saga. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Argues that the sagas (including Njáls Saga) were literary imitations of primary oral narratives (pp. 11-28). This resemblance appears in the paratactic saga style as well as in the encyclopedic memorial function. Scholes and Kellogg's (1966) discussion of topoi is central to Allen's analysis of the "elements" of the saga. Other scattered references to oral tradition throughout.
Area: ON

John R. Allen. "The 1976 Annual Meeting of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, Proceedings." Olifant: A Publication of the Sociéte Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 4:162-85.

Contains a good deal of discussion of oral-formulaic theory and its application to the chanson de geste, with initial reference to Spraycar 1976.
Area: OF

Rosamund Allen. King Horn: An Edition Based on Cambridge University Library MS Gg. 4.27 (2). Garland Medieval Texts, A.S.G. Edwards, General Editor. New York and London: Garland Publishing.

This edition contains an extensive analysis of the textual transmission of King Horn, including discussion on the textual tradition, analyses of variation (conscious and unconscious variation are treated separately), and unresolvable residual variants of the manuscripts.
Area: ME

Barry Alpert. "Post-Modern Oral Poetry: Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, and David Antin." In The Oral Impulse in Contemporary American Poetry. Ed. William V. Spanos and Robert Kroetsch. A special number of Boundary 2, 3, iii:665-81.

An oral (tape-recorded) discussion of the oral and improvisational nature of artistic creation as practiced by these three modern composers. Makes frequent reference to the work of Lord among the Yugoslav singers.
Area: CN, CP

Richard d'Alquen and Hans-Georg Trevers. "The Lay of Hildebrand: A Case for a Low German Written Original." Amsterdamer Beiträge zur altern Germanistik, 22:12-72.

Area: OHG, OLF, CP

José Alsina. "En Torno a las repeticiones homéricas." Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 31:27-34.

Discusses and illustrates formulaic technique in Homer, with comparisons to Beowulf and the Cid. Finds the "ornamental epithet" described by Parry to be unique to Homer. Insists that the formulaic content of the Iliad and Odyssey is a stylistic phenomenon, and that the oral poet was free to cultivate his personal sense of artistry within the traditional idiom. Inveighs against the mechanistic model of phrase generation.
Area: AG, HI, OE, CP

Alster, Bendt. Dumuzi's Dream: Aspects of Oral Poetry in a Sumerian Myth. Copenhagen Studies in Assyriology, vol. 1. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.

A reconstruction of the Sumerian poem from fragments, with particular attention to oral traditional structure. He includes a formulaic analysis of the first 18 lines with commentary (pp. 15-27) as well as a description of thematic patterns (pp. 33-44), the latter in connection with the narrative inconsistencies characteristic of orally composed poetry.
Area: SU

Manuel Alvar López. Cantares de gesta medievales. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua.

Edition of five cantares with an introduction that discusses traditionalism, the origins of Spanish epic, French influence, and the romancero as a traditional poetry. His critical perspective reaches back to the nineteenth century, well before the work of Menéndez Pidal.
Area: HI

Manuel Alvar López. El Romancero: tradicionalidad y pervivencia. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta.

Using the ideas of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, he attempts to establish the Spanish intellectual roots of the study of the romancero. Also seeks the historical sources of the poetic tradition prior to the Middle Ages. Among other subjects, he looks at Moorish elements in the Iberian romance and the Sephardic tradition, from which he traces the work of García Lorca.
Area: HI

Manuel Alvar López. El Romancero viejo y tradicional. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua.

Largely a collection of medieval and modern poems in the Iberian languages, with an introduction which treats the genre, its history and criticism, its continuity with gestes, the oral troubadours, and geographical distribution. Emphasizes writing over orality in composition and transmission.
Area: HI

Semha Alwaya. "Formulas and Themes in Contemporary Bedouin Oral Poetry." Journal of Arabic Literature, 8:48-76.

Through a comparative analysis of the theme of hospitality, and more specifically the offering of coffee, in five versions of a poem, he finds a common structure within the multiformity. Identifies associated systems of formulas as further evidence of orality.
Area: AR

Anne Amory [Parry]. "The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope." In Essays on the Odyssey: Selected Modern Criticism. Ed. Charles H. Taylor, Jr. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 100-21, 130-36.

An exercise in literary criticism concerned with explaining Penelope's motivation in setting the contest of the bow and with interpreting the theme of revenge in general. Assumes a poet fully in control of his verse medium and able to exploit formulaic diction for artistic purposes.
Area: AG

Anne Amory [Parry]. "The Gates of Horn and Ivory." Yale Classical Studies. 20:3-57.

Imagines an oral traditional poet able to manipulate the smallest elements of formulaic diction to accord with anaesthetic design. Argues that the associations of horn with Odysseus and ivory with Penelope characterize the two types of dreams, the former powerful in its reality and the latter incorporeal and dangerous to believe. Homer develops the horn and ivory duality purposefully as a thematic line. An important revisionist paper which sees too much mechanism in Parry-Lord orthodoxy and attempts to define and illustrate a Homeric poetics.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Anne Amory [Parry]. "Homer as Artist." Classical Quarterly, 65:1-15.

Detailed rejoinder to Lord 1968 that calls for the interpretation of the Homeric poems first and foremost as art. Judges the Serbo-Croatian analog inferior in quality to Homer and thus an unsatisfactory and misleading comparand.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Anne Amory [Parry]. Blameless Aegisthus: A Study of AMUMON. and Other Homeric Epithets. Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava, Supplementum 26. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Challenges the usual etymology of amumon as "blameless" and, arguing for an interpretation primarily concerned with physical beauty and strength, examines all of the passages in which the word is employed. Sees Parry's contention that Homer sometimes used stock epithets and adjectives clumsily (more for the sake of metrical value than semantic appropriateness) as shortchanging Homer's specificity of connotation. Suggests of Homeric phraseology that "the fact that it was an oral diction, filled with repetitions and formulae, had a great deal to do with restricting the connotations of words" (p. 165). Views the occurrence of adjectives in an unsuitable context as very rare: ornamental epithets are true to character, "but they do not have the flatness,the lack of force, and the irrelevance that our words `brave' and `handsome' and `strong' would have if we used them as he uses his, because their more distinctive connotations endow them, at every occurrence, however casual, however traditional, however subject to the metrical exigencies of oral composition, with a flash of individual light" (p. 167).
Area: AG

Wolfhart H. Anders. Balladensänger und mündliche Komposition: Untersuchungen zur englischen Traditionsballade. Bochumer Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.

Applies Parry-Lord methodology to folk ballads in the British-American tradition. Examines various kinds of formulaic patterning in a single singer's repertoire, that of a district, and in the tradition as a whole. Notes that "für die Traditionsballaden hat die formelhafte Diktion eine doppelte Bedeutung: sie gibt den Sängern die Möglichkeit, ihre Versionen mündlich zu komponieren und trägt als wesentlicher Faktor dazu bei, dass die einzelne Ballade für den Sänger ein unfestes Gebilde ist" (p. 61). On the question of orality, he concludes that "die Traditionsballade wurde definiert als eine mündlich erlernte, mündlich komponierte und mündlich weitergegebene Liedform" (p. 230).
Area: BR, US, FB, CP

Flemming G. Andersen. Commonplance and Creativity. Odense University Studies from the Medieval Centre, vol. 1. Odense: Odense University Press.

The first comprehensive study of oral-formulaic narrative technique in the traditional ballads of England and Scotland, this work offers a new definition of the ballad formula in which "formulas combine narrative and supra-narrative functions, and are characterized by variation on the narrative level, and stability on the supra-narrative level. Ideally, formulas can thus be seen to operate on three levels in all" (pp. 33-34): the supra-narrative or associative level, the level of formulaic lines and stanzas (the surface structure level), and the deep structure level, or that of the basic narrative idea. Part I of the book is dedicated to the development of this definition. Part II describes the narrative function of ballad formulas, including discussion of the linear and stanzaic formulas and the "formulaic situation" (pp. 59-67), with special emphasis placed upon the role of the formula in ballad transmission. Part III deals with the supra-narrative function of the ballad formula and analyzes separately the introductory, situational, transitional, and conclusion types, noting that, while the specifics of the ballad formula cannot be transferred from one tradition to another due to significant differences in subject matter, "this particular stylistic function of formulaic diction may be a characteristic feature of traditional balladry in general" (p. 285). Part IV is an application of the author's ideas to ballad texts from Falkland, Gloucestershire, and Aberdeen.
Area: FB, ST, FA, BR, TH

Flemming G. Andersen and Thomas Pettitt. "Mrs. Brown of Falkland: A Singer of Tales?" Journal of American Folklore, 92:1-24.

Reviews the history of the oral-formulaic theory in ballad studies and concludes that the ballads of the eighteenth-century compiler/composer Mrs. Brown represent memorial transmission and not oral improvisation and re-creation, although she may have changed or improvised "individual phrases, lines, or stanzas" (23).
Area: BR, FB

Flemming G. Andersen, Otto Holzapfel, and Thomas Pettitt. The Ballad as Narrative: Studies in the Ballad Traditions of England, Scotland, Germany, and Denmark. Odense: Odense University Press.

A two-part series of ten essays on the ballad traditions of England, Scotland, Germany and Denmark. Part One is a chronological sample of narrative techniques in English and Scottish ballads; Part Two a stylistic sample of Danish and German ballads. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that places the subsequent findings within the perspective of contemporary ballad research. Emphasis is placed upon the study of narrative technique, especially with respect to oral-formulaic phraseology and structure, but considerable attention is paid to the socio-cultural role of the ballad as well. The text of each ballad, with English translations when appropriate, is provided at the beginning of each essay. An annotated bibliography is also appended.
Area: FB, CP

L.F. Anderson. The Anglo-Saxon Scop. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

An early review of evidence from OE poetry and some comparative sources on the singer's métier in Anglo-Saxon England.
Area: OE, CP

Earl R. Anderson. "Flyting in The Battle of Maldon." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 71:197-202.

Discusses the density of ironic verbal echo and formulaic diction in the flyting between Byrhtnoth and the Viking messenger in Maldon, arguing by reference to the OHG Hildebrandslied that such irony is a conventional feature of heroic verbal engagement.
Area: OE, OHG, CP

Earl R. Anderson. "Saemearh and Like Compounds: A Theme in Old English Poetry." Comitatus, 3:3-10.

Contends that "compounds like saemearh had conventional associations in Old English poetry, and were commonly used to suggest either the danger of sea travel, or the speed of a voyage at sea" (10).
Area: OE

Earl R. Anderson. "Passing the Harp in Bede's Story of Caedmon: A Twelfth Century Analogue." English Language Notes, 15: 1-4.

Brings to light the twelfth-century Latin Prose De Gestis Herwardi Saxonis, in which the custom of passing the harp at a feast is mentioned. Unlike Caedmon, Hereweard seizes the harp to prove that he is a skillful singer.
Area: OE, LT, CP

Earl R. Anderson. "Formulaic Typescene Survival: Finn, Ingeld, and the Nibelungenlied." English Studies, 61:293-301.

Posits the type-scene "tragic court flyting," composed of (1) a tense situation created by arrival of strangers in a hall, (2) verbal surfacing of hostilities, (3) appearance of special weapons, and (4) battle and destruction of the hall. Appears twice in Beowulf (in the Finn and Ingeld episodes) and once in the Nibelungenlied (Aventiuren 28,29, 33, and 36). Anderson terms this element a traditional survival on the model of Renoir 1964.
Area: OE, MHG, CP

Theodore M. Andersson. "The Doctrine of Oral Tradition in the Chanson de Geste and Saga." Scandinavian Studies, 34:219-36.

Pointing out the origin of oral theory in classical studies (HÇdelin 1715, Wolf 1795, etc.) and its common application in an early form by 1830 to medieval European literatures, he sketches the history of the study of Old French and Old Norse literature as oral tradition from Fauriel's initial steps and Herder's doctrine of Naturpoesie through Bédier, Lachmann, and Nordal. Feels that the concept of oral tradition should not be blindly accepted but scrutinized more closely, especially by scholars working with the sagas.
Area: OF, ON, CP

Theodore M. Andersson. The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins. Yale Germanic Studies, 1. New Haven: Yale University Press.

After a review of the history of relevant scholarship, he reconstrues the evidence, adding a substantial appendix on variants (pp. 129-82) to illustrate the multiformity typical of oral tradition. Rejects the idea of a completely fixed, memorized oral version, maintaining that the narrative framework rather than its details is fixed: "The writer undoubtedly could and did use written sources, supplementary oral sources, his own imagination, and above all his own words, but his art and presumably the framework of his story were given him by tradition. The inspiration of the sagas is ultimately oral" (p. 119).
Area: ON

Theodore M. Andersson. "The Textual Evidence for an Oral Family Saga." Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 81:1-23.

Collects and analyzes 231 references to oral tradition in the sagas, finding about 75% spurious (mannerisms, rhetorical flourishes, or formulas) and about 25% genuine. Of those judged genuine, there are two significant groups, one having to do with death, old age, or progeny and the other with conflicts. Does not claim that his findings decide the traditionalist-individualist debate, but notes that the genuine references must be taken into account by anyone considering the origins of the saga because they indicate precursive oral traditions about two important and recurrent ideas.
Area: ON

Otto Andersson. "Homeriskt eko." In his Studier i Musik och Folklore, vol 2. Abo: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland. pp. 277-94.

A comparative look at oral theory from a historical point of view, emphasizing the work of Parry and Lord, Magoun (1953a), Herzog (1951), and Einarsson.
Area: AG, SC, OE, CP

Theodore M. Andersson. "The Icelandic Sagas." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 144-71.

Includes consideration of oral origins and manuscript transmission of sagas, and of the effect of these developments on their interpretation.
Area: ON

Theodore M. Andersson. The Legend of Brynhild. Islandica, vol. 43. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

In Chapters 5 and 6 (pp. 151-228), he agrees with and explicates Heusler's position on Part I of the Nibelungenlied--that there was an "independent transmission of the two legends, the tale of Brynhild and Siegfried in an oral lay and the fall of the Burgundians in a written epic" (p. 205).
Area: MHG

B.W. Andrzejewski. "Sheikh Hussen of Bali in Galla Oral Tradition." In IV Congresso Internazionale di Studi Etiopici. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. [= Problemi Attuali de Scienza e di Cultura, quaderno 191]. Vol. l: Sezione Storica. pp. 463-80.

Examines the oral traditions concerning Hussen, a Muslim saint venerated in Ethiopia. A study of the oral legend and the Muslim prayer-poem reveals the quasi-historical image of the benevolent man who inspired those around him and the legend that survives.
Area: AF

B.W. Andrzejewski and I. M. Lewis. Somali Poetry: An Introduction. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Part I (pp. 3-60) provides basic information on the social and cultural setting, the Somali language, and Somali verse characteristics. Refers briefly to oral transmission, which according to the authors stems from feats of memorization (pp. 44-46). Part II (pp. 61-167) contains 31 poems in translation.
Area: AF

Cora Angier. "Verbal Patterns in Hesiod's Theogony." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 68:329-44.

Studies various kinds of repetition as characteristic of orally composed poetry: key words, syntactic patterns, assonantal patterns, repeated or formulaic lines, etymologies, and type-scenes. Providing numerous examples within the Theogony and discussing their role, she concludes that "the repetition which is a feature of this [oral traditional] technique can also serve as an organizing device, to mark divisions of the narrative and remind the audience of the point of departure for an episode, and also to emphasize certain key ideas, and in this way also impart unity to the composition" (343).
Area: AG

David Antin. "what am i doing here?" In The Oral Impulse in Contemporary American Poetry. Ed. William V. Spanos and Robert Kroetsch. Special number of Boundary 2, 3, iii:575-93.

A spontaneous, improvised "poem-talk" delivered at the San Francisco Poetry Center in April 1973. Intended to explain and illustrate this avant-garde poet's method of composing "oral poetry."
Area: CN

M.J. Apthorp. The Manuscript Evidence for Interpolation in Homer. Bibliothek der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaften, Neue Folge, 2. Reihe, Band 71. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Agrees (pp. 56-74) with Parry that many manuscript variations are of the sort that would arise within an oral tradition. Adopts Kirk's hypothesis of accurate memorization by reciters without the aid of writing, assuming that the recoverable written tradition goes back to a unique sixth-century B.C. manuscript and that a form of oral transmission was concurrently available. Also discusses (pp. 195-200) the importance of manuscript history for formulaic analysis, literary criticism, and the Homeric Question.
Area: AG

Patricia Arant. "Formulaic Style and the Russian Bylina." Indiana Slavic Studies, 4:7-51.

Application of Parry-Lord theory to the bylina and a review of collections and singers. Finds a formula distinctive to the Russian tradition, with a syllabically irregular line, moveable caesura, much variation in the verbal component, an interplay between melody and meter, syntactic patterns, and syllable or word-groups around primary accents. Argues that "we can expect less possibility for exact repetition because of the loose verse structure" (18). From sample analyses she concludes that the half-line unit is more useful to the composing singer than the whole line. Studies the formulaic system and the "terrace" (after Austerlitz 1958), and offers revised concepts for formulaic structure sensitive to the bylina prosody: characteristics include fixed position of phrases, grammatical declension of phrases, key word substitution, syntactic parallelism,and acoustic patterns. The inaugural article on oral theory in Russian.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Excursus on the Theme in Russian Oral Epic Song." In Studies presented to Professor Roman Jakobson by His Students. Ed. Charles E. Gribble. Cambridge, MA: Slavic Publishers. pp. 9-16.

Study of two themes (or "thematic systems"), each of which can take two forms, in the byliny of the oral singer Rjabinin. Notes the basic structure and adaptability of each in various situations. Emphasizes the conservative nature of a singer's theme and the role of the traditional unit in oral composition.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Concurrence of Patterns in the Russian Bylina." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 7:80-88.

Illustrates the traditional solution to the problem of moving from one story-pattern to another in three of Rjabinin's texts: he interposes between stories the theme of the hero stopping to spend the night on his journey home(a "point of thematic concurrence"). Stresses the innate conservatism of oral tradition.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Repetition of Prepositions in the Russian Oral Traditional Lament." Slavic and East European Journal, 16:65-73.

Examines the role of this sort of repetition in the composition of lines of oral lament verse from the Fedosova repertoire. Comments on meter, colon structure, alliteration, line types, syntactic patterns, formulas, and line clusters.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Alliteration and Repeated Prepositions in Russian Traditional Lament." In Slavic Poetics: Essays in Honor of Kiril Taranovsky. Ed. by Roman Jakobson, C.H. van Schooneveld, and Dean S. Worth. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 1-3.

Brief discussion of the tectonic function of alliterating prepositions in the laments of Fedosova. Cp. Arant 1972.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "The Persistence of Narrative Patterns: Variants of `Dobrynja and Vasilij Kazimirov' and Homer's Odyssey." In American Contributions to the Seventh International Congress of Slavists (Warsaw, August 21-27, 1973), vol. 2: Literature and Folklore. Ed. Victor Terras. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 9-21, with summary in Russian.

Sees both the Odyssey and the Russian heroic poem (sung by Rjabinin and collected by Hilferding) as narratives produced by the combination of two patterns, that of the novice hero and that of the "Return Song." Notes that at the point of convergence the thematic content is the same for novice and mature hero, and understands this mode of story composition as oral traditional.
Area: RU, AG, CP

Patricia Arant. "Figurative and Literal Coupling in Russian Oral Traditional Genres." Slavic and East European Journal, 19:411-20.

Examines the coupling of a figurative image and its literal interpretation in a variety of non-narrative oral genres:lyric songs (whether connected with rituals or not), short lyrics of recent origin (astuski), incantations, riddles, and proverbs. Demonstrates how this coupling is affected by genre requirements. Notes spread of this oral traditional device across genres and suggests that it is a general feature of oral style.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "The Intricate Web: Thematic Cohesion in Russian Oral Traditional Verse Narrative." In Oral Tradition Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers, rpt. 1983. pp. 123-41.

Studies the binding forces within themes drawn from more than 5000 lines of Rjabinin's byliny: repeated prepositions, alliterating cola, syntactic parallelism, repetition of a single word over a sequence of lines. Emphasizes the fluidity and yet the conservativism of traditional compositional devices, accounting for movement forward as well as a characteristic "retarding" tendency.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Aspects of Oral Style: Russian Traditional Oral Lament." In Oral Tradition. Ed by John Miles Foley. Special issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 15, i:42-51.

Analyzes 11 oral lament texts by Irina Andreevna Fedosova to illustrate formulaic and line-to-line patterns typical of oral tradition.
Area: RU

A.J. Arberry. The Seven Odes. London and New York: Allen & Unwin and Macmillan.

Includes a brief section on oral composition and transmission (pp. 13-24).
Area: AR

Walter Arend. Die typischen Scenen bei Homer. Problemata: Forschungen zur Klassischen Philologie, Heft 7. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.

Opens with a history of the problem of repetition and parallel scenes in Homer, including analysis of typical modes of question and answer, some of it at the level of phraseology. Greater part of the volume is devoted to individual descriptions of typical scenes and their variants, such as Arrival, Sacrifice and Feast, Departure (of ships and other vehicles), Armor and Dressing, Sleep, Pondering (usually with internal monologue), Oath, and Bath. A conclusion makes comparisons with Apollonios and Virgil. This monograph prompted Parry 1936a.
Area: AG

Samuel G. Armistead. "The Structure of the Refundición de las Mocedades de Rodrigo." Romance Philology, 17:338-45.

As an alternative to Menéndez Pidal's scheme of episodic division, he proposes a single-cantar structure, observing that "the Refundición is a profoundly anti-traditional work" and that "its author seems to have delighted in wilfully altering the epic heritage on which his narrative rests" (345).
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead. "Para el texto de la Refundición de las Mocedades de Rodrigo." Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 3:529-40.

Uses repeated syntactic patterns and formula preferences to emend the text of the Mocedades.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead. [Supplement to Haymes 1973]. Modern Language Notes, 90:296-99.

A listing of books and articles, mostly having to do with the Romance language traditions, not included in Haymes 1973. No annotations.
Area: BB, CP

Samuel G. Armistead. "Two Further Citations of the Libro de Buen Amor in Lope García de Salazar's Bienandanzas e Fortunas." La Corónica, 5, ii:75-77.

Describes two additional citations of Juan Ruiz's masterpiece Libro de Buen Amor in the works of Salazar, one a free rendering of quatrain 71, the other a closer rendering of quatrain 105b-c attributed to Solomon, that suggest a considerable literate transmission of the material from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead. "The Mocedades de Rodrigo and Neo-Individualist Theory." Hispanic Review, 46:313-27.

Authoritatively enters the traditionalist-individualist fray, acknowledging the role of learned clerics in the transmission of Hispanic epic but maintaining that "what such learned, clerical intervention has to do with the origins and the essential nature of the epic poems in the multi-secular trajectory of their traditional existence remains to be demonstrated" (324). Understands the prior stage of epic as oral traditional.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead. "Existió un romancero de tradición oral entre los moriscos?" In Actas del Coloquio Internacional sobre Literatura Aljamiada y Morisca (Departamento de Filología Románica de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Oviedo 10 al 16 Julio de 1972). Colección de Literatura Española Aljamiado-Morisca, 3. Ed. Alvaro Galmés de Fuentes. Madrid: Gredos. pp. 211-32; "Discusión," pp. 232-36.

Makes the case for the existence of the romancero in the Moriscan oral tradition. Affirms the traditionalist argument, demonstrating the wide dispersion of the genre elsewhere and gathering external evidence of oral tradition.
Area: HI, AR, CP

Samuel G. Armistead. "Romancero Studies: 1977-79." La Corónica, 8:57-66.

Contains a number of studies that bear on the application of the oral theory to the Romancero.
Area: HI, BB

Samuel G. Armistead. "Review Article: Neo-Individualism and the Romancero." Romance Philology, 33:172-81.

Treats five essays from N. D. Shergold's Studies of the Spanish and Portuguese Ballad (1972). Commends their scholarship but warns against their exclusively Neo-Individualist orientation. Notes that by viewing the ballad as principally a vehicle for learned authors, "numerous other developments, such as the Romancero's origins, the complexity of its early tradition, its 17th-19th-c. `estado latente,' its rediscovery in a rich, geographically diverse oral repertoire in the late 1800's, and the splendid fruits of 20th-c. fieldwork have, in general, been disregarded" and "an intermediate trajectory, that of the pliegos sueltos vulgares--between learned poetry and oral tradition--has been almost completely neglected" (181). Calls for recognition of the oral traditional provenance of the ballad.
Area: HI, FB

Samuel G. Armistead. "Epic and Ballad: A Traditionalist Perspective." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 8:376-88.

Counters the individualist view of separate, learned traditions of epic and ballad with a traditionalist exposition: "In the Hispanic world, epic and ballad constitute a single system of oral, traditional poetry, extending from the epic's remote and unknown origins, in an uninterrupted continuum, down to the twentieth-century tradition of the Romancero" (384). Sees the epic as essentially an oral genre with a complex variety of influences: learned, hagiographic; French, Germanic, Arabic, and Latin. Feels that an understanding of the oral-written interaction should be substituted for polemics.
Area: HI, FB, CP

Samuel G. Armistead. "Hispanic Folk Literature Among the Isleños." In Perspectives on Ethnicity in New Orleans. Ed. John Cooke and Mackie J-V. Blantan. New Orleans: The Committee on Ethnicity in New Orleans. pp. 21-31.

Describes examples of forms of oral literature, including the décima, coplas, cumulative song, counting rhyme, riddles, folktales, and memorates from the Isleño people of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Discusses social and geographic influences on the transmission of the traditionally Hispanic forms to the present day Isleño population.
Area: HI, US

Samuel G. Armistead. "Greek Elements in Judeo-Spanish Traditional Poetry," Laographia, 32:134-64.

Includes illustration of the origin of the Judeo-Spanish ballad El pozo airon in a Greek counterpart, The Haunted Wall. Reveals that "the Greek poem has been translated formula-by-formula and topos-by-topos, by someone who obviously knew both languages and both poetic traditions very well indeed, but who undoubtedly never set pen to paper in fulfilling his poetic task" (142). Sees this pair of ballads as furnishing "a splendid example of how ballads migrate across linguistic boundaries in oral tradition and, at the same time, it allows us to see the process of oral formulaic composition--as analyzed by Parry and Lord--at work, at least in the initial creation of Hispanic ballads, if not in their subsequent performance" (142-43).
Area: HI, MG, FB, CP

Samuel G. Armistead. "Spanish Riddles from St. Bernard Parish." Louisiana Folklore Miscellany, 5, iii:1-8.

Describes the author's new collection of nine riddles from the Isleño oral tradition first collected in the St. Bernard Parish of Louisiana and published by Raymand R. MacCurdy in 1948.
Area: HI, US, FK

Samuel G. Armistead. "The Ballad of Celinos at Uña de Quintana (In the Footsteps of Americo Castro)." In Essays on Hispanic Literature in Honor of Edmund L. King. Ed. Sylvia Molloy and Luis Fernandez Cifuentes. London: Tamesis. pp. 13-21.

An account of the author's fieldwork in collecting three repetitions of Celinos, a modern peninsular romance that is derived from an unquestionably epic source, from performances by the folk poet Dona Martina of Uña, Spain on July 22, 1980. He compares these repetitions with a text collected by Don Americo Castro in 1912.
Area: HI, FB

Samuel G. Armistead. "The Initial Verses of the Cantar de Mio Cid." La Corónica, 12, ii:178-86.

Studies the Crónica de Veinte Reyes (Chronicle of Twenty Kings) in the beginning of the Cantar de Mio Cid and provides transcriptions of the passages from the Cantar discussed, concluding that "...in the late fifteenth or early sicteenth century, the famous initial verses of the Cantar were still circulating in the oral tradition" (182).
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Israel J. Katz. "Tres cuentos tradiciónales de la Provincia de Soria." Celtiberia, 47:7-20.

Descriptions of three traditional "cuentos" representative of the popular oral tradition of the province of Soria, Spain, collected in 1973. The first and second are variants of the "Love Like Salt"/"Cinderella" narrative type, and the third is representative of the "Three Golden Sons" type.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Israel J. Katz. "El Romancero tradiciónal en la Provincia de Soria." Celtiberia, 58:163-72.

Descriptions of five traditional romances from the oral tradition of Soria collected in 1972, with background information on collection procedures and methodologies.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and James T. Monroe. "A New Version of La Morica De Antequera." La Corónica, 12, ii:228-40.

A description of a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century manuscript found in a convent wall in Albacete, Spain during construction in 1982 that contains the longest known variant of La Morica Garrida de Antequera. They address the problem of oral and literate textual transmission, concluding that "not to take into account the possibility, indeed the probability, of such lost texts and intermediate versions is to remain limited to a distorted, chronologically and culturally subjective view of the problems of textual transmission in early Hispanic literature" (236).
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "Sobre los romances y canciones judeoespañoles recogidos por Cynthia M. Crews." Estudios Sefardes, 2:21-38.

Surveys a total of 37 Sephardic songs and romances collected by Crews and provides annotations, commentary, and complete bibliographical information as well as thematic, title, and first-line indexes.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "Sobre las Coplas sefardes de Alberto Hemsi." Sefarad, 40:423-47.

Surveys a total of 60 Sephardic coplas identified by Alberto Hemsi from the years 1932-38 and 1969-73, providing annotations, commentary, and complete bibliographical information, as well as thematic and title/first line indexes.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "El Romancero etre los Sefardies de Holanda." In Etudes de philologie romane et d'histoire littéraire offertes à Jules Horrent. Ed. Jean Marie d'Heur and Nocoletta Cherubini. Liège: Gedit. pp. 535-41.

Describes three variants of the Sephardic romance Jardin de amadores found in a Brussels manuscript of the seventeenth century and suggests the significance of their coincidental lines and structure.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "El Antiguo Romancero Sefard: Citas de romances en himnarios Hebreos (Siglos xvi-xix)." Nueva revista de filología hispánica, 30:453-512.

Surveys 76 old Sephardic romances, providing annotations and commentary, and concluding "...en cuanto a) nos proporcionan citas de romances hoy desconocidos, b) nos suplementan en varios casos los testimonios quinientistas impresos y c) nos caracterizan una tradición oriental más conservadora y temáticamente más rica que la de hoy, los incipits aqudeg. esudiados nos permiten vislumbrar una etapa temprana y sensiblemente divergente de las tradiciones actuales y se nos ofrecen como un complemento precioso e indispensable de lo que hasta ahora se ha recogido de la tradición oral moderna" (497).
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "Adivinanzas Judeo-Españolas de Turquía: Los `Enigmas' del Rabino Ménahém 'Azôz." In Philologica Hispaniensia: In Honorem Manuel Alvar. Madrid: Editorial Gredos. pp. 81-92.

Reviews nine Sephardic enigmas published as Hîdôth (Enigmas--Enigmas) in the Israeli review Hêd ha-Mizrâh, (3, xxxvi(1945):7 and 3,xl/xli(1945):12) by Rabbi Menachem 'Azoz with excerpts from the original introduction and commentary of Rabbi 'Azôz. Provides further annotations and commentary for each enigma.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "Two Judeo-Spanish Riddles of Greek Origin." Laographia, 33:169-75.

Describes variants of two Judeo-Spanish riddles, one regarding a radish, the other a rooster, and provides analogs from the Greek tradition, arguing that "the Judeo-Spanish repertoire clearly reflects the diverse cultural contacts experienced by the Sephardim during the half millennium since they were forced to leave their Spanish homeland" (173).
Area: HI, MC

Samuel G. Armistead, Israel J. Katz and Joseph H. Silverman. "Judeo-Spanish Folk Poetry from Morocco." 1979 Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 11:59-75.

Describes eighteen versions of various Sephardic romances collected from the Moroccan oral tradition by Franz Boas and Zarita Nahon in 1930, providing transcriptions and edited text where appropriate. Musical annotations as well as information regarding the collection of the material, bibliographic and discographic data on recorded variants, and full annotations of recorded variants of lines are also provided.
Area: HI

J.I. Armstrong. "The Arming Motif in the Iliad." American Journal of Philology, 79:337-54.

From an analysis of several "arming the hero" passages, he argues that Homer molds the tradition to suit the specific narrative context.
Area: AG

J.I. Armstrong. "The Marriage Song, Od. 23." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 89:38-43.

Contends that the section of the Odyssey occurring after what is commonly termed the telos (23.296-end) is in fact an integral, organic part of the whole. Mentions during his exposition that "... as is the manner of Homeric oral locution, there is repetition of Odysseus' words in formulaic lines, repetition with variation of the substance of his commands" (42).
Area: AG

Herbert A. Arnold. "Oral Tradition and Critical Song in Contemporary Germany." Journal of Popular Culture, 15, iii:144-54.

Describes an oral tradition of popular ballads, mountebank songs, and street songs that stems from (1) a continuing but transformed tradition originating in the Middle Ages and (2) the Cabaret tradition of nineteenth-century France. The Liedermacher compose either for entertainment or for cultural criticism.
Area: CN, GM

Claudeen Arthur et al. Between Sacred Mountains: Navajo Stories and Lessons from the Land. Chinle, AZ: Rock Point Community School. Rpt. as Sun Tracks, 11. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984.

A compilation of history and stories about the Navajo land and culture in Arizona; much of the material was transcribed from oral sources.
Area: AI

O.A. Asagba. "The Folk-Tale Structure in Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drunkard." Lore and Language, 4, i:31-39.

A discussion of the "folktale structure and content" of the contemporary Nigerian author Amos Tutuola's short novel The Palm-Wine Drunkard which illustrates the infusion of themes and mifs such as the quest, the "quarrel between heaven and earth," the trickster, and magical transformations into the literate compositions of authors who are the product of traditional cultures. Also provides a brief Proppian analysis of the structure of the novel and demonstrates Tutuola's "episodic linkage" of episodes, which approximates the aesthetics of oral tale-telling.
Area: AF

Genette Ashby. "A Generative Model of the Formula in the Chanson de Roland." Olifant: A Publication of the Société rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 7, i:39-65.

Consisting of "a generative component (deep structure), a transformational component (shallow structure), and a paraphrastic component (surface structure)," Ashby's model demonstrates "the generation of formulaic variants... from the underlying semantic string or preformula" (42). Contends that context affects the final shape of the formula and that formulaic production is highly regulated. Compare Nagler 1967, 1974 on a similar model in ancient Greek.
Area: OF

Pauléne Aspel. "`I Do Thank Allah' and Other Formulas in the Fulani Poetry of Adamawa." In Oral Literature and the Formula. Ed. Benjamin A. Stolz and Richard S. Shannon. Ann Arbor: Center for the Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies, University of Michigan. pp. 177-202.

Understands Fulani epic formulas as tools available to the oral composer; they are among the elements which render discourse poetic but in no way imprison the bard. As stylistic devices with a traditional history, they are rich in poetic associations. See further the response by L. Johnson (1976).
Area: AR, FU, CP

Clifford W. Aspland. A Syntactical Study of Epic Formulas and Formulaic Expressions Containing the -ant Forms in Twelfth Century French Verse. St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland Press.

After reviewing the critical contributions of Parry and Rychner (1955), as well as the controversy surrounding oral formulaic diction in medieval poetry in the Romance languages, he studies -ant forms in a variety of syntactic constructions. Finds that the metrical form of the hemistich, with four or six syllables, to a large extent determines syntactic structure, particularly in decasyllable and alexandrine meters.
Area: OF

Kenneth J. Atchity. Homer's Iliad: The Shield of Memory, Literary Structures. Carbondale/ Edwardsville and London/Amsterdam: Southern Illinois University Press and Feffer & Simons.

By examining the great symbols of Helen's loom and Hephaistos' shield made for Achilles, he seeks to illustrate the method of Homer's own artistry as (re-)creator of the "encyclopedia" of behavior patterns similar to that described by Havelock (e.g., 1963). In arguing that the Iliad is essentially a poem of love (Achilles' love first of Patroklos and Briseis, then of Priam) that heals disorder by the reestablishment of order after the funeral games, he assumes a writing poet who recites before an audience familiar with the major themes and motifs of the epic. A critically annotated, highly selective bibliography is appended.
Area: AG

Erich Auerbach. Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Trans. Ralph Manheim. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Includes a brief allusion to the probable oral transmission of vernacular poetry (pp. 287-88).
Area: CP

Robert Austerlitz. Ob-Ugric Metrics: The Metrical Structure of Ostyak and Vogul Folk-Poetry, FFC vol. 174. N Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.

Linguistic analysis of sung and recited oral texts (mostly cosmogonical works, epics, totemic songs, and idylls) to establish syntactic boundaries, lineation, and metrics. Discusses parallelism, terracing (repetition of the concluding portion of one line at the head of the next), and various kinds of repetition.
Area: OS, VG, CP

Norman Austin. "The Function of Digressions in the Iliad." Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 7:295-312.

Fears that oral theory may dismiss aesthetic questions by allowing apparent infelicities of structure and meaning as part of the bardic style. Argues that the digressions are not simply paratactic and ornamental additions but rhetorically and dramatically forceful passages of relevance both to the moment and to the poem as a whole.
Area: AG

Norman Austin. Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer's Odyssey. Berkeley: University of California Press.

In Chapter 1 ("The Homeric Formula," pp. 11-80), he attempts to free Homer from what he sees as Parry's imprisonment of the poet in a mechanical formulaic diction. Seeks to demonstrate Homer's lack of dependence on formulas and the creativity evident in the phraseology. Comparative remarks on Yugoslav epic are ill-informed.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Norman Austin. "Odysseus and the Cyclops: Who is Who." In Approachers to Homer. Ed. by Carl A. Rubino and Cynthia Shelmerdine. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 4-37.

A psychoanalytical reading of the Cyclops episode which rejects the view that the structural anomalies in the passage are to be attributed to the multiple authorship of an oral poem.
Area: AG

Robert Auty. "Serbo-Croat." In Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Volume One: The Traditions. Ed. by A.T. Hatto. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 9. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, pp. 196-210.

A general overview of Serbo-Croatian oral epic tradition, with attention to history, philology, genre, heroism, oral performance, language, and narrative structure. Relatively little on the Moslem SC epic; concentrates largely on the Christian tradition of shorter songs.
Area: SC

Juan B. Avalle-Arce. "El Poema de Fernán González: Clerecía y juglaría." Philological Quarterly, 51:60-73.

Studies the relationship between the Poema, written in the thirteenth century by a monk at the Benedictine monastery at San Pedro de Arlanza, and a hypothetical earlier oral version. Uses the Crónica General de 1344 and the Primera Crónica General together with earlier scholarship by Menéndez Pidal to establish the existence of the lost oral work and to reconstruct some of its characteristics.
Area: HI

Paul Bénichou. Creación poética en el romancero tradicional, Biblioteca Románica Hispánica. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.

Assumes Menéndez Pidal's theory of traditionalism and argues for parallels between the relationships of literate and oral poets to their respective traditions. Feels that the oral tradition of the "autor-legión" is in its way as creative as the method employed by the literate craftsman. Pictures the activity of the modern oral poet as rhapsodic, an elaboration of the received tradition and a function as important as that of any age.
Area: HI

Franz H. Bäuml. "Der Übergang mündlicher zur artesbestimmten Literatur des Mittelalters: Gedanken und Bedenken." In Fachliteratur des Mittelalters: Festschrift für Gerhard Eis. Stuttgart: Metzler. pp. 1-10.

Discusses the transition from oral tradition to the written word and the difficulties that ensue, e.g. the loss of rhythm associated with the use of formulas as the oral poet dictates his work to a scribe. The transition period really amounts to a mixture of audiences, some nonliterate (who were dependent on the oral tradition) and some literate (who could deal with works in a written format). Feels that this situation explains the blend of oral-formulaic diction with written style.
Area: MHG, CP

Franz H. Bäuml. "Transformations of the Heroine: From Epic Heard to Epic Read." In The Role of Woman in the Middle Ages, Papers of the Sixth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 6-7 May, 1972. Ed. Rosemarie T. Morewedge. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 23-40.

After a brief review of oral theory, he traces the reception of female characters in MHG epic through three stages in the social development of the works, poets, and audiences: (1) functional nonliteracy, or preliteracy; (2) the nonliterate subgroup within medieval literate society; and (3) the literate poet and his public.
Area: MHG

Franz H. Bäuml. "Lesefaehigkeit und Analphabetismus als Rezeptionsbestimmende Elemente: Zur Problematik mittelalterlicher Epik." In Akten des V. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Cambridge 1975. Ed. Leonard Forster and Hans-Gert Roloff, Heft 4. Bern and Frankfurt: Herbert Lang. [= Jahrbuch für internationale Germanistik, Reihe A, Band 2/4]. pp. 10-16.

Argues that the formulaic aspect of the oral tradition serves as a mnemonic to help the oral poet reduce the "distance" between himself and his audience in order to accomplish his purpose: the passing on of myths, laws, morals, genealogies, and so forth through the spoken word. Homeostasis of the audience is characteristic of the oral tradition and of an illiterate audience within a culture also capable of written transmission. This phenomenon cannot occur in the written medium because of the stability of a written text, wherein the narrator is further distanced from his audience, enabling authorial commentary and even irony.
Area: MHG, CP

Franz H. Bäuml. "The Unmaking of the Hero: Some Critical Implications of the Transition from Oral to Written Epic." In The Epic in Medieval Society: Aesthetic and Moral Values. Ed. Harald Schol. Tübingen: Max Niemayer. pp. 86-99.

Concerned with the effect on textual meaning when a work modulates from oral to written and/or its audience changes from oral to written. Sees the Nibelungenlied as shifting media about 1200, Orendel as an oral text reworked by a literate poet. Advises considering the mode of existence of a text, especially on the part of the critic who perceives it through a model or set of models.
Area: MHG

Franz H. Bäuml. "Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy: An Essay toward the Construction of a Model." In Germanic Studies in Honor of Otto Springer. Ed. S. Kaplowitt. Pittsburgh: K&S Enterprises. pp. 41-54.

Receptionalist analysis of written versus oral texts, stressing oral tradition's identification of audience, poet, and narrative. Understands the written transmission of a text as a process which must demonstrate "norms" within the text, whereas in the oral text tradition predetermines expectations and perceptual cues. The model also prescribes two kinds of audiences, one created by each form. Notes that oral versions of MHG epics such as the Nibelungenlied and Kudrun have never been in dispute, that the real problem is to recover the social context of literacy and nonliteracy that prevailed as these oral works passed into print.
Area: MHG

Franz H. Bäuml. "Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy." Speculum, 55:237-65.

Probes the complex social history of literacy in the medieval period, illustrating its class-dependent nature and various uses in different contexts. Employing Receptionalist theory, he describes the kinds of audiences created by oral and written narrative. Distinguishes (1) three socially conditioned approaches to the transmission of knowledge (fully literate, dependent on another's literacy, and pre- or illiterate), (2) written versus oral transmission, and (3) functional differences between the oral and the written word. Concerned with the creation of traditional expectations and compares oral epic and Romanesque pictorial art for their recognizable narrative structures. Argues that "with the evolution of vernacular literacy, textual as well as pictorial narrative changes its communicative function from commenting on `reality' to constituting a `reality'" (265).
Area: CP

Franz H. Bäuml. "Zum Verständnis mittelalterlicher Mitteilungen." In Hohenemser Studien zum Nibelungenlied. Ed. A. Masser. Dornbirn: Vorarlberger Verlagsanstalt. pp. 114-24 [= "Montfort" Vierteljahresschrift für Gerschichte und Gegenwart Vorarlbergs, Heft 3/4:288-98].

An argument for the fact and function of oral tradition by contending that, in a culture where writing is not yet wide-spread, the oral epic serves to transmit and preserve necessary knowledge in the vernacular, whereas writing is initially carried on in Latin. About 1200 the commission of oral tradition to writing begins to be done with greater frequency (thus the MHG Nibelungenlied, for example). Discusses the change of authorial perspective that attends the shift of poetry from oral recitation before an audience to an independent written text: the work is no longer itself culturally didactic but now takes on an aesthetic function.
Area: MHG, CP

Franz Bäuml. "Medieval Texts and the Two Theories of Oral-Formulaic Composition: A Proposal for a Third Theory." New Literary History, 16:31-49.

Studies the structure of the theory of oral-formulaic composition with regard to primary and secondary oral cultures, critiques the theory with a view toward its application to medieval texts such as the Rolandslied and Orendel, and proposes a tertiary theory, with the written texts as its basis, to place such texts "which never were part of the oral tradition in the sense of the Theory" (42) within their literary and sociohistorical contexts.
Area: OF, MHG, OE, TH

Franz H. Bäuml and Agnes M. Bruno. "Weiteres zur mündlichen Überlieferung des Nibelungenliedes." Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 46:479-93.

Discusses oral-formulaic theory, with special reference to the question of the "transitional text." Focuses on the oral traditional aspects of the Nibelungenlied and on a computer program for stylistic analysis designed to quantify formulaic study (espec. 486-93).
Area: MHG, CP

Franz H. Bäuml and Eva-Maria Fallone, eds. A Concordance to the Nibelungenlied, with a Structural Pattern Index, Frequency Ranking List, and Reverse Index. Leeds: W.S. Maney and Son.

Key-word-in-context listing with enumeration, line context, and line reference. Also includes syntactic pattern grouping (pp. 769-854), single word listing (pp. 857-77), and reverse index (pp. 881-901).
Area: MHG, CC

Franz H. Bäuml and Edda Spielmann. "From Illiteracy to Literacy: Prolegomena to a Study of the Nibelungenlied." In Oral Literature: Seven Essays. Ed. Joseph J. Duggan. Edinburgh and New York: Scottish Academic Press and Barnes and Noble, 1975. [= Forum for Modern Language Studies, 10, iii (1974)], pp. 62-73.

Emphasis on the cultural context of the Nibelungenlied. Questions of literacy and illiteracy, written and oral transmission, formulaic structure, the traditional audience, and the meaning of traditional diction are examined within historical, sociological, and psycholinguistic contexts. Concerned with the shift from oral to literate modes of perception and with the implications of the shift.
Area: MHG

Franz H. Bäuml and Donald J. Ward. "Zur mündlichen Überlieferung des Nibelungenliedes." Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 41:351-90.

Using Parry-Lord theory, they argue that the poem is a product of oral tradition, as opposed to a work stemming from a long literary tradition. Analyze a number of strophes for oral-formulaic structure.
Area: MHG

S.A. Babalolá. The Content and Form of Yoruba Ijálá. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Part I (pp. 3-84) provides a critical introduction to ìjálá, one of several genres of oral poetry among the Oyp Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria. Examines the association of ìjálá-chant with the mythic character Ogun, festival and ritual occasions of oral performance, subject matter, the poets, and the poetic language. Part II consists of representative examples in translation (pp. 85-343).
Area: AF

Pierre-Yves Badel. Le Sauvage et le sot: Le Fabliau de Trubert et la tradition orale. Collection Essais sur le Moyen Age.' Paris: Honoré Champion.

A contextual study of French fabliaux using primarily the tale-type methodology of the historico-geographical school.
Area: OF

H. W. Bailey. "Ossetic (Nartä)." In Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Volume One: The Traditions. Ed. by A.T. Hatto. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 9. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association. pp. 236-67.

A five-part introduction to the Nartä tales of the Caucasus which discusses the retention in the Modern Ossetic tales of certain archaic linguistic features. Part I provides background information on the tales and the genealogies of the five families upon which the tales are centered. Part II discusses the transmission of the tales (oral and written) and the mode of performance. Part III relates the tales to the social and religious aspects of Ossetic culture. Part IV is a discussion and explanation of the mythical world of the Nartä. Part V treats the aesthetic aspects of Nartä performance, including folklore elements, formulism, and the preservation of archaic elements of diction.
Area: NR

Joseph L. Baird. "Grendel the Exile." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 67:375-81.

With reference to Greenfield 1955, he argues for Grendel as a traditional exile-type, "a condition which would have entered into the deepest feelings of the Germanic audience" (380).
Area: OE

Manuel Balasch. "El Bardo épico." Convivium (Universidad de Barcelona), 15-16:193-202.

This portrait of the ancient Greek bard includes discussion of the possible origin of the Homeric poems in the Mycenaean era and of the nature of oral poetry, which he takes as a likely explanation of Homeric epic.
Area: AG

Nikola Banasevic. "Le Cycle de Kosovo et les chansons de geste." Revue des études slaves, 6:224-44.

Posits an influence on the Serbian Kosovo tales by the OF chansons de geste, in particular the cycle of Guillaume d'Orange, on the basis of shared motifs. Uses the Chancun de Willame as a primary example. Claims that the oral tradition of Serbian song was affected by the OF tales from the early sixteenth through the late eighteenth centuries.
Area: SC, OF, CP

Nikola Banasevi. "Les Chansons de geste et la poésie épique yougoslave." Le Moyen âge, 56:121-41.

Contends that SC oral tradition was influenced early in the medieval period by the OF chansons de geste, and that the most obvious traces of that influence, such as the names of heroes and of places, were eliminated over time because of separate development. Cites the Albanian-Yugoslav contact and shared epic cycles as an analogous phenomenon, the traces in this latter case still evident because of the relative proximity of and interaction between oral traditions.
Area: SC, OF, CP

Stjepan Banovi. "Motivi iz Odiseje u hrvatskoj narodnoj pjesmi iz Makarskog Primorja." Zbornik za narodni zivot i obiaje juznih slavena (Zagreb), 35:139-244.

A tabulation of similarities in plot structure between the Homeric Odyssey and a selection of SC oral heroic songs.
Area: SC, AG, CP

Nellie Barnes. American Indian Verse: Characteristics of Style, Bulletin of the University of Kansas, Humanistic Studies, 2.

Discusses the shaping forces and characteristics of style of AI verse preceding the influence of white men and the Christian religion. Within consideration of stylistic aspects are included comments on the relationship of each characteristic to the function of the poetry within the culture.
Area: AI

Daniel R. Barnes. "Folktale Morphology and the Structure of Beowulf." Speculum, 45:416-34.

Conducts a Proppian analysis of the poem in an effort to extrapolate its basic folktale structure.
Area: OE, FK

Daniel R. Barnes. "Toward the Establishment of Principles for the Study of Folklore and Literature." Southern Folklore Quarterly, 43:5-16.

General call for straightforward discriminations between oral and written narrative, arguing that if we accept Frye's distinction between oral epic and written fiction, "then we must accordingly rule out the possibility of any such thing as a transitional text'" (10). Also notes the authorial distance typical of written narrative but necessarily (and functionally) absent from oral narrative.
Area: FK, TH

Harry R. Barnes. "Enjambement and Oral Composition." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 109:1-10.

Finds statistical and methodological flaws in a recent attack (Clayman and van Nortwick 1977) on Parry's studies of enjambement. On the basis of his own measurements in Homer and later Greek hexameter verse, he concludes that "Parry was correct in positing a correlation between enjambement characteristics and method of composition" (9).
Area: AG

Jonathan Barnes. "Aphorism and Argument." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. Ed. by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy/The Hegeler Institute, pp. 91-109.

Chiefly an examination of the imitations of Heraclitus, the ancient judgments on Heraclitus the writer, and the fragments themselves in order to determine whether the prose style of Heraclitus is argumentative or aphoristic/ oral because of the infrequent use of connectives. Concludes that, despite his use of asyndeton, his proclivity for connecting and inferential particles supports a placement of Heraclitus squarely within the "newly established canon of philosophical science" (105).
Area: AG

John Barnie. "Oral Formulas in the Country Blues." Southern Folklore Quarterly, 42:39-52.

While he feels it is correct to say that country blues singers are working within a tradition similar to that described by Parry and Lord in their accounts of AG and SC oral tradition, he notes that further scholarship must take more careful account of peculiarities of meter, line and stanza structure, and thematics in the blues genre.
Area: BL, MU

Adeline C. Bartlett. The Larger Rhetorical Patterns in Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1966.

This study of envelope structure starts a critical trend that runs parallel to oral-formulaic theory in OE (e.g., Hieatt 1975), much as ring-composition and formula do in Homeric scholarship. Construes the envelope as the repetition of words or thought or both at either end of a passage, thus producing an enclosure. Appeals to Latin influence.
Area: OE, LT

William Bascom. Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

A detailed description and explanation of the Ifa divination rite, along with transcription and translation of the numerous recurrent verses that are employed in the process.
Area: AF

Ilhan Basgöz. "Turkish Hikaye-Telling Tradition in Azerbaijan, Iran." Journal of American Folklore, 83:391-405.

Comprised of prose narrative with folk songs interspersed, the hikaye is a distinctive Turkish genre similar though not identical to epic. Examines the hikaye through narrative distribution, background of the ashiks (professional wandering minstrel-performers), performance sites, manner of recitation and accompaniment, format and story selection, story content, singer-audience interactions, audience constitution and background, and repertoire. Fieldwork furnishes direct observation and interviews with ashiks.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "The Tale Singer and His Audience: An Experiment to Determine the Effect of Different Audiences on a hikaye Performance." In Folklore: Performance and Communication. Ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 153-92.

Compares the same hikaye performed on two consecutive nights in extremely different contexts by a gifted Turkish singer, Mudami. Discovers a consistency in plot, motives, and structure but a wide variation in "extra constructional elements." Investigates the contextual factors influencing inclusion and exclusion of materials, the traditional formulas, and the social background. Includes the text of one performance in translation.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "The Structure of the Turkish Romance." In Folklore Today: A Festschrift for Richard M. Dorson. Ed. Linda Degh, Henry Glassie, and Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 11-23.

Basing his analysis on nine romances and their variants, he explores the structural meaning of the tales for the teller (or ashik). Finds a basic compositional pattern underlying the repetition typical of oral transmission and offers a psychoanalytic explanation which distinguishes the romance from the epic.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "Formula in Prose Narrative Hikaye." Folklore Preprint Series (Indiana University), 6, i:1-25.

Substantiates that "the formula is... an essential element of the prose performance" (2) despite the absence of musical and metrical patterning. Examines the formulas from various perspectives-- frequency, organization, association with character and theme, modification during performance, phonological constitution and formal patterning, diffusion over national and linguistic boundaries, and use in "literary" narrative.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "Epithet in a Prose Epic: The Book of My Grandfather Korkut." Folklore Preprint Series (Indiana University), 6, i, a:1-23.

Epithets, whether "immediate" or "extended," refer to specific traits of character and episode and so relate to the context in which they appear. These epithets are imbedded in and help to support the heroic code of the tribal society represented in this fifteenth-century Turkish epic.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "The Epic Tradition among Turkish Peoples." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 310-35.

A survey of the complex spectrum of epics composed by the Chinese Uigurs, the Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Turkmen, Azeri, Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Tatars, and other ethnic groups in Soviet Central Asia. Focus throughout is on oral tradition and its characteristic style.
Area: TK, KZ, KR, UZ, CP

Henri Basset. Essai sur la littérature des Berbères. Algiers: Jules Carbonel.

Parry read this primarily ethnographic and historical study early in his career. In the section on oral literature (pp. 101-428), Basset discusses formulas as a typical feature of oral style (pp. 105-11), musical accompaniment (pp. 315-18), and the singers (pp. 327-31).
Area: BA, MU

Samuel E. Bassett. The Poetry of Homer. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Attempts to refute two of Parry's major assertions about Homeric poetry: contends that (1) he underestimated the power of the poet's memory, his ability to originate phrases and ideas, and (2) he wrongly assumed an infinitely long, slow, and uniform development preceding Homer's poetry. Also discusses the epic illusion of objectivity, the poet's interpositions (chiefly in descriptions of persons, places, and objects), the poet's concern for his audience, the poet as singer, and the poet as both realist and idealist.
Area: AG

Mary C. Bateson. Structural Continuity in Poetry: A Linguistic Study of Five Pre-Islamic Arabic Odes. The Hague: Mouton.

Finds that composition is separated from oral recitation and the poet from the transmitter in the tradition of Arabic odes, but that there are frequent references to a "singer of tales" who could compose extemporaneously. Also cites field evidence of contemporary Bedouins who can compose orally on the spot. Although she does not exclude writing from participation in the ode tradition, she feels that the observed regularity at various levels of structure argues for an oral-formulaic type of composition. For the analytical data on which these conclusions are based, see Chapter 2, "A Survey of the Form and Background of the Mu'allaqat" (pp. 23-39).
Area: AR

Albert C. Baugh. "The Authorship of the Middle English Romances." Bulletin of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 22:13-28.

In his 1950 presidential address, he illustrates how subjective and equivocal our sharpest inferences prove in determining whether the author of an ME romance is a scholar, cleric, or minstrel. Concludes that the minstrels reciting romances were not necessarily their authors, and that in many cases literary (and even scholarly) poets are more likely candidates.
Area: ME

Albert C. Baugh. "Improvisation in the Middle English Romance." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103:418-54.

A study of oral traditional patterns and their importance in six ME romances: King Horn, Havelok, Beves of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Richard the Lion-Hearted, and Athelston. After a brief review of relevant contemporary criticism (Rychner 1955, Magoun 1953a; also Jousse 1924 and works by Parry and Lord), he cites numerous examples of formulas, explaining their syntactic and semantic functions as well as their flexibility, and of themes (e.g., arming a knight, asking a person's name or origin, and fighting between two or more knights). Also describes another improvisational feature that he takes to be of equal importance, the predictable complement, by virtue of which "certain statements seem to call up automatically in the mind of the poet or reciter a conventional way of completing the thought" (428). This element is customarily a couplet in length, the basic unit of ME romance. The importance of the complement lies in the fact that, through traditional rhyme-pairs, the narrator can complete his thought with a ready-made phrase. Since the ME romances are known in many cases to be close translations of French originals, he argues that they cannot have been orally composed. Suggests instead that many of the variations among manuscripts reflect improvisation during oral transmission and commission to writing, perhaps by minstrels who were able to consult the French sources. An important, carefully argued piece; extensive appendices with supporting evidence.
Area: ME, CP

Albert C. Baugh. "The Middle English Romance: Some Questions of Creation, Presentation, and Preservation." Speculum, 42:1-31.

Basing his remarks on a rereading of the entire ME romance canon, he concerns himself with "showing that the English romances were composed in writing" (5), that notwithstanding the frequent internal references to oral composition and the textual evidence of formulas and themes, these poems were originally written productions. Suggests that the structure and internal references stemmed from the oral medium of publication: "Since poets and versifiers were aware of [the lack of a reading public], they wrote with oral presentation in mind, adopting a style, so far as they were capable of it, natural to live presentation" (9). Examines numerous relevant passages in the light of this hypothesis. Ascribes many of the manuscript variants (as in Baugh 1959) to changes induced by oral reproduction from memory rather than to scribal error or modification. Contends that some manuscripts record a tale as one particular storyteller was accustomed to presenting it.
Area: ME, CP

Albert C. Baugh. "Convention and Individuality in the Middle English Romance." In Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley. Ed. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 123-46.

Argues that although ME romances consist largely of incidents and descriptions drawn from a storehouse of commonplaces, authorial originality of style is often evident in divergences from French sources. Reviews many examples in Bevis of Hamptoun and Octavian.
Area: ME

Richard Bauman. "Verbal Art as Performance." American Anthropologist, 77:290-311.

Advocates turning the focus of folklore studies from "residual" to "emergent" culture and recognizing performance, "the nexus of tradition, practice, and emergence in verbal art" (306), as a point of departure for such a shift of emphasis. Notes a variety of types of patterning in oral performance and takes account of Lord's contributions on the Yugoslav guslar.
Area: CP

Richard Bauman. Verbal Art as Performance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

In Part I he develops a conception of performance as a mode of speaking, drawing on anthropology, linguistics, and literary criticism. Part II contains supplementary essays intended to clarify, illustrate, and amplify the idea of verbal art as performance. Included are detailed treatments of metanarration, genre, and ritual speaking events.
Area: TH

Richard Bauman. Let Your Words be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers. Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, 8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A brief monograph (168 pp.) discussing in detail the Quaker symbolism of speech and silence, the role of the preacher, the preacher's rhetoric, and the speech and silence of the Quaker meeting, with emphasis upon the movement's development of institutionalism from its charismatic origins.
Area: FP, US

C.R. Bawden. "Mongol: The Contemporary Tradition." In Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Volume One: The Traditions. Ed. by A.T. Hatto. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 9. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, pp. 268-99.

An introduction to the contemporary epic traditions of the Oirat, Buriat, and Kalmuck peoples of Mongolia providing fairly extensive information on the languages and cultures of these peoples and numerous examples from their respective epics. Discusses in detail the use of parallelism, hyperbole, and formulism in performance and composition, and delineates particular variations in delivery.
Area: MN

Samuel P. Bayard. "Prolegomena to a Study of the Principal Melodic Families of British-American Folk Song." Journal of American Folklore, 63:1-44.

Adumbrates the rich and complex store of tune families on which performers draw, describing the role of musical formulas and the lack of "authorship" of melodies in the common traditional domain. Also argues that the number of distinctly different folk melodies is smaller than supposed, that groups of closely related airs are correspondingly more inclusive, and that derivative forms are by and large current wherever folk songs in English are sung.
Area: MU, BR, US, FB

John G. Bayer. "Narrative Techniques and the Oral Tradition in The Scarlet Letter." American Literature, 52:250-63.

Claims that "the confusion over the purpose of the Custom-House sketch in toto can be allayed once it is understood as an exordium for the romance proper, an atavistic reminder of oral modes of composition" (251). This prelude to the novel, along with the scaffold scenes involving Hester and Dimmesdale, reveals Hawthorne's roots in the oral beginnings of the American literary tradition. Feels that "these oral dimensions are altogether consistent with Hawthorne's rhetorical apprenticeship in college and confirm the judgment that The Scarlet Letter is a fictional exemplar of a residually oral age" (263).
Area: AL

Monroe C. Beardsley. "Aspects of Orality: A Short Commentary." New Literary History, 8:521-30.

Review of essays on oral literature in Cohen 1977, Oral Cultures and Oral Performance (= NLH, 8, iii).
Area: CP

Bruce A. Beatie. "Oral-Traditional Composition in the Spanish Romancero of the Sixteenth Century." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 1:92-113.

Brief summary of Parry-Lord theory and its developments to date. Finds the Spanish ballads "deriving clearly from a tradition of oral composition similar to that observed and described by Parry and Lord" (108). Also discusses the problem of genre (mentioning story-pattern) and the evidence of Webber 1951 on oral composition.
Area: HI

Bruce A. Beatie. "Patterns of Myth in Medieval Narrative." Symposium, 25:101-22.

Locates pervasive narrative patterns, such as the Returning Husband, in medieval and ancient literature from various countries and describes their relation to underlying mythic schemata. Construing the process of tradition as in origin oral and following the Parry-Lord theory, he argues that "the patterns are all-pervasive not simply because they are useful (to the poet), but because, as displaced myth, they are in a real sense (to both poet and audience) sacred" (109).
Area: MHG, ME, FB, SC, BY, AG, CP

Bruce A. Beatie. "Romances tradicionales and Spanish Traditional Ballads: Menéndez Pidal vs. Vladimir Propp." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 13:37-55.

After a short review of relevant scholarship, he offers an analysis of certain traditional patterns and motifs in a ballad corpus that begins in the sixteenth century. Following Toelken (1967), he gauges the traditional nature of motifs and goes on to describe the action of thematic patterns on material entering a tradition. Argues that the romancero lies within the general area of western traditional narrative with respect to structure.
Area: HI, FB

Bruce A. Beatie. "Saint Katherine of Alexandria: Traditional Themes and the Development of a Medieval German Hagiographic Narrative." Speculum, 52:785-800.

In studying the hagiographic tradition from about the year 1000 forward to the later Middle Ages, he applies folkloric methods (especially Propp's motif analysis) and contends that the extant texts of saints' lives constitute a "reliable reflection of concomitant oral tradition" (797). Summons external evidence of oral tradition in a contemporary iconographic handbook and the sermon practice of the day. Feels some of the hagiographic texts are very close to the elusive "transitional text" which some believe spans the evolutionary gap between oral and written.
Area: MHG, CP

Bruce A. Beatie. "Traditional Structures and the Structure of Tradition: A Functional System of Ballad Classification." In Ballads and Ballad Research (Selected Papers of the International Conference on Nordic and Anglo-American Ballad Research, University of Washington, Seattle, May 2-6, 1977). Ed. Patricia Conroy. Seattle: University of Washington Press. pp. 210-20.

His descriptive and taxonomic analysis of the first 25 Child ballads, based on Propp's morphological scheme, is a tentative experiment in finding a functional system of ballad classification. Using such a systematic approach, he suggests, scholars could perceive verbal folklore as an "ordered continuum" (210) and discover whether the quest-narrative is as central to the western folk narrative tradition as it is to the literary tradition.
Area: BR, FB

Bruce A. Beatie. "Measurement and the Study of Literature." Computers and the Humanities, 13:185-94.

In reviewing the application of computer-based methods to various kinds of literary analysis, he discusses the role of data-processing in determining formulaic density and laments the lack of precision in the numerous definitions of that unit and in the even less exacting concept of the formulaic system.
Area: CP

Roderick Beaton. Folk Poetry of Modern Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Based in part on the author's own fieldwork and in part on consultation of archival and published materials, this study considers the structure and history of the demotic tradition, with special attention to formula, oral transmission, myth, the emergence of professional singers, the role of writing, and the modern avatar of the tradition in the twentieth century.
Area: MG, CP

Roderick Beaton. "Was Digenes Akrites an Oral Poem?" Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 7:7-27.

Examines the extant manuscripts of DA in the context of comparative oral theory. Argues that quantitative measures of formulaic density cannot alone determine the provenance of a text, and that a study of schematization must accompany raw measurement. Looks at the formulaic analysis figures, mode (stylization) of formulaic usage, thematic structure, and intratextual evidence, concluding that "composition by theme and a varying degree of formulaic stylisation in all three versions [studied] suggest oral composition at an earlier stage," but "no version of Digenes shows convincing signs that it is the product of composition in performance" (16). Also contends that DA, a mixed text, reflects the merging of two different traditions: the learned, literate Byzantine and the oral heroic tradition of the eastern frontier. Feels that "oral poetry" must be redefined to take account of texts like DA that reveal oral roots but which were not composed in performance.
Area: BG

John O. Beaty. "The Echo-Word in Beowulf with a Note on the Finnsburh Fragment." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 49:365-73.

Establishes the repetition of root morphemes as an aesthetic principle of poetic composition. This article begins a history of echo-word scholarship (see, e.g., Rosier 1963, 1977; Kintgen 1974, etc.) that runs parallel to oral-formulaic studies.
Area: OE

Roger Beck. "A Principle of Composition in Homeric Verse." Phoenix, 26: 213-31.

Moves from a metrical desideratum to a compositional structure which affects the syntax of the Homeric line as a whole and notes the dovetailing of the syntactic principle with the dynamics of oral tradition.
Area: AG

Becker, Alton. "The Poetics and Noetics of a Javanese Poem." In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. 9. Norwood: Ablex. pp. 217-38.

An explanation of the sinom, a type within the Javanese poetic genre called macapat, with notes on poetic formalisms and an effort to translate the grammar of the work with sensitivity to distinctions not customarily or easily made in English. Claims that the traditional language evolved out of "autochthonous oral forms" (p. 220).
Area: JV, CP

G. Becking. "Der musikalische Bau des montenegrinischen Volksepos." Archives néerlandaises de phonétique expérimentale, 8-9:144-53.

Brief description and analysis of the musical component of sung oral epic, recommending and illustrating a verse model of rhythmical and musical dimensions.
Area: SC, MU

R.S.P. Beekes. "Etos and eniautos in Homeric Formulae." Glotta, 47:138-43.

A case-study application of the formulaic method in an attempt to recover the original meaning of these two words as employed traditionally in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Area: AG

T.O. Beidelman. "Approaches to the Study of African Oral Literature" [with a reply by Ruth Finnegan]. Africa, 42:140-47.

Criticizes Finnegan 1970a on various grounds, most generally for a "false dichotomy" between literary criticism and the cultural anthropological approach to literature. Finnegan defends her study as a precise and limited approach to the sociology of literature and one which avoids the perils of overemphasis of either of the aspects mentioned by Beidelman.
Area: AF

Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Peter Foote, Andreas Haarder, and Hans Frede Nielsen, eds. Oral Tradition, Literary Tradition: A Symposium (Proceedings, Symposia at the Center for the Study of Vernacular Literature in the Middle Ages, Odense University). Odense: Odense University Press.

A collection of articles on various aspects of oral tradition. Separately annotated in this volume are: Buchan, Foote, and Shippey.
Area: BR, FB, ON, NW, OE, CP

Mohamed Belhalfaoui. La Poésie arabe Maghrébine d'expression populaire. Paris: Francois Maspero, 1973.

Examples of oral lyrics in an Arabic dialect from various parts of Africa, with an introduction covering some of the traditional "clichés."
Area: AR

Nicole Belmont. "Myth and Folklore in Connections with AT 403 and 713." Journal of Folklore Research, 20:185-196.

Studies occurrences of the narrative theme of the substituted bride and its analogs in versions of the French folktales AT 403 (The Black and the White Bride) and AT 713 (The Mother Who Did Not Bear Me But Nourished Me), comparing them to the Vedic hymns of Usas and the Roman Matralia rituals. She finds that all establish a link "between three orders of things: The regular altnernation between night and day and between the seasons, vegetal and animal fertility, and the proper rearing of children" (194). Examines the analogical relationship of false brides to false mothers as cultural symbols.
Area: FK, FR, LT, HN, CP

Dan Ben-Amos. "Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context." Journal of American Folklore, 84:3-15.

Criticizes past and current definitions of folklore, insisting on a definition and conceptualization of folklore as a communicative process. Has considerable importance for the study of oral tradition.
Area: FK, TH

Dan Ben-Amos. "Folklore in African Society." Review of African Literature, 6:165-98.

Argues that an apprehension of the principles of folklore, as illustrated in African society, depends upon identification and analysis of cognitive, expressive, and social distinctive features of various oral forms.
Area: AF

Dan Ben-Amos. "Afterword." Journal of Folklore Research, 20:243-246.

Reviews the contributions to this volume by Dégh, Belmont, Calame-Griaule and Görög Karady, Calame-Griaule et al., Duvernay-Bolens, Labrie, and Tenèze and explicates the interpretive and research methodologies of each.
Area: FK, CP

Rina Benmayor. "Current Work in the Romancero viejo tradicional: Modern Oral Tradition." La Corónica, 4:49-53.

A brief overview of current research and scholarship in the Hispanic romancero, broken down into three categories: (1) field collecting (Portuguese, Judeo-Spanish, Latin American, and North American), (2) cataloguing and publication of archival holdings, and (3) critical and theoretical studies (including comments on oral tradition).
Area: HI

Rina Benmayor. "Oral Narrative and the Comparative Method: The Judeo-Spanish Chapbooks of `Yacob Abraham Yona'." Romance Philology, 31:501-21.

Notes the possibility for evolution within an oral tradition. Surveys various schools' approaches to ballad morphology. Proposes a semiotic perspective in order to recombine the synchronic and diachronic viewpoints and to reconcile structure and meaning in the study of oral narrative. Champions the consideration of a text within its context and over time.
Area: HI, CP

Rina Benmayor. "A Greek Tragoúdi in the Repertoire of a Judeo-Spanish Ballad Singer." Hispanic Review, 46:475-79.

Offers contemporary proof of Armistead and Silverman's hypothesis of a substantial Greek influence on the Judeo-Spanish romancero. Describes the process of oral folklore migration and exchange as one involving multi-cultural peoples.
Area: HI, BG, CP

Rina Benmayor. "New Directions in the Study of Oral Literature." La Corónica, 7:39-42.

Argues that oral composition is not a single, unique process and that therefore no single model should be imposed on all situations. Consideration of nonverbal, phonic, and visual elements should be integrated into any discussion.
Area: HI, CP

Rina Benmayor. "Social Determinants in Poetic Transmission or a Wide-Angle Lens for Romancero Scholarship." In El Romancero hoy: Historia, Comparatismo, Bibliografía crítica (The Hispanic Ballad Today: History, Comparativism, Critical Bibliography). Madrid: Cátedra Seminario Menéndez Pidal. pp. 153-65.

Contends that "oral popular traditions ought to be reconsidered as artistic processes in social context" (154), with particular reference to the Judeo-Spanish romancero and its role in a changing society.
Area: HI, CP

Larry D. Benson. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

In the third chapter ("The Style," pp. 110-66), he illustrates how the diction of the Gawain-poet reflects both an original oral-formulaic tradition and a working knowledge of medieval rhetoric. Envisions a fourteenth-century literate poet who could manipulate the inherited oral style.
Area: ME

Larry D. Benson. "The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 81:334-41.

A classic contribution to the study of oral theory in OE poetry. Analyzes the probably written metrical preface to Alfred's Pastoral Care, Riddle 35, the Phoenix, and the Meters of Boethius to show that they have about the same formulaic density as Beowulf and the Cynewulf poems. He then argues for OE poetry as both formulaic and literary, thus dismissing formula-count as an unambiguous gauge of orality in OE.
Area: OE

Larry D. Benson. "The Originality of Beowulf." In The Interpretation of Narrative. Ed. Morton W. Bloomfield. Harvard English Studies, no. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 1-44.

Suggests that assumptions that Beowulf was composed out of pre-existing material deny the poet his true measure of originality and thereby render futile the attempt to interpret the poem in a unified manner. Reviewing the analogues in Germanic literature, he concludes that Gretissaga and not the Bothvar Bjarki stories contains the "kernel of tradition" upon which the Beowulf-poet, in the common fashion of writers of his day, expanded and developed.
Area: OE, CP

Iris Berger. "Deities, Dynasties, and Oral Tradition." In The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Ed. by Joseph C. Miller. Hamden, CN: Archon, pp. 61-81.

Explores the role of the orally transmitted legend of Abacwezi in determining historical fact.
Area: AF

Ann L.T Bergren. The Etymology and Usage of PEIRAR in Early Greek Poetry. American Classical Studies, no. 2. State College: American Philological Association and Commercial Printing.

Attempts to describe the aesthetic merits of Homeric poetry without ignoring or denying the formulaic method. Studies the usage of a single word--peirar--in the context of formulaic technique and shows Homeric influence on Hesiod, Archilochos, Alkaios, Pindar, and others. Argues for the interdependence of formulaic artistry, the meanings of individual words in Homer, and the connection between ancient Greek epic and lyric.
Area: AG

Ann L. T. Bergren. "Odyssean Temporality: Many (Re)Turns." In Approachers to Homer. Ed. by Carl A. Rubino and Cynthia Shelmerdine. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 38-73.

An analysis of Odysseus' poetic craft in Books 9-12 from the point of view of the theories of Gérard Gennette. Identifying Odysseus' polytropia as analeptic and proleptic, she suggests that such temporal reversal ought to be connected with epic circumstructure. Contends that, in individual episodes such as those involving Polyphemus, Teiresias, and the Cattle of the Sun, narrative anachrony as defined by Gennette proves "the tropic character of [Odysseus'] challengers and his corresponding capacity to turn, return, change, and exchange" (42).
Area: AG

Leif Bergson. L'Epithète ornementale dans Eschyle, Sophocle, et Euripide. Uppsala: Lundequist.

A significant development and extension of Parry that concentrates on the traditional ornamental epithet as variously employed by the great Greek tragedians. In Chapter 1 he defines the ornamental epithet as "un adjectif qui n'ajoute au contenu d'une proposition aucune détermination intellectuelle" (p. 18) and whose semantic value has disappeared to the point where it no longer renders the principal word more comprehensible in context. In Chapter 2, after adopting Parry's notion of economy with slight modifications, he finds that the tragedians exercise more freedom in their choice of epithets, as well as more particularization of epithet to context, than does Homer. After a review of some possible extensions in method (Chapter 3), he turns in the fourth chapter to a systematic study of ornamental epithets in tragedy. Chapter 5 correlates epithet frequency and chronology of composition, and the final chapter treats the aesthetic intention behind the use of epithets.
Area: AG

Adele Berlin. "Ethnopoetry and the Enmerkar Epics." Journal of the American Oriental Society, 103:17-24.

Provides an overview of the epic and its subtypes and discusses the narrative structure and anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and spatio-temporal contexts of the performance of the Sumerian Enmerkar epics, concluding that the Sumerian epics "share the mode, narrative structure, and contentual aspects of other epics" and that "epics are not poeticized history. They use history-like elements for a purpose which is essentially nationalistic" (24).
Area: SU

Jack Berry. Spoken Art in West Africa. London: University of London.

Outlines the major genres so far studied. Notes the limitations of existing collections and analyses, owing to the intellectual biases of former collectors and scholars who emphasized provenance and content to the neglect of style and the raconteur.
Area: AF

L. Bertelli. "Note critiche ad Hom. Il. xvi 384-393 e ad Hes. Erga 221, 224, 264." Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, 101:371-93.

Against the customary view that the Hesiodic echo of the simile in Book 16 of the Iliad is merely an example of his enslavement to Homer, and in favor of viewing the correspondence as Hesiod's creative adaptation of a formulaic system in the poetic tradition. Bases his remarks on a thorough examination of the language and phraseology of the simile and of the internal structure of the Works and Days passage, both from the point of view of formulaic composition.
Area: AG

Jess B. Bessinger. "Oral to Written: Some Implications of the Anglo-Saxon Transition." Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication (University of Toronto), 8:11-15. Also Verbi-Voco-Visual Explorations, 8. Ed. Marshall McLuhan. New York, pp. 11-15.

Discusses the denaturing of OE oral poetry brought about by its abstraction from the musical context, transcription, and the new prestige of book-learning.
Area: OE, MU

Jess B. Bessinger. "Beowulf and the Harp at Sutton Hoo." University of Toronto Quarterly, 27:148-68.

The musical accompaniment of OE poetry constituted a significant aesthetic dimension upon which the Sutton Hoo archaeological find and the reconstructed harp can shed some light: "In a word, the culture represented at Sutton Hoo seems a possible centre about which we can imagine a poem like Beowulf taking shape as oral narrative in a period of uneven transition to literary forms" (165).
Area: OE, MU

Jess B. Bessinger. "The Sutton Hoo Harp Replica and Old English Musical Verse." In Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays. Ed. Robert P. Creed. Providence: Brown University Press. pp. 3-26.

Reviews archaeological and textual evidence on harp-playing from a comparative perspective, applying oral-formulaic theory and detailing the physical characteristics and instrumental possibilities of the harp whose remains were discovered at Sutton Hoo.
Area: OE, OI, SC, AG, CP, MU

Jess B. Bessinger. "Homage to Caedmon and Others: A Beowulfian Praise Song." In Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope. Ed. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 91-106.

Outlines a pattern of thematic and formulaic correspondences between "Caedmon's Hymn" and the Creation sequence in Beowulf (lines 67b-188). Shows that both exhibit characteristics of panegyric. Argues for the distinction between creation and decoration in these traditionally cognate passages.
Area: OE

Jess B. Bessinger, ed. and Philip H. Smith, progr. A Concordance to Beowulf. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

A computer-generated concordance using a key-word display.
Area: OE, CC

Jess B. Bessinger and Philip H. Smith. A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Same format as Bessinger and Smith 1969, with coverage of the entire six-volume edition of Krapp and Dobbie. Supersedes C.W.M. Grein, Sprachschatz der angelsächsischen Dichter, rev. F. Holthausen and J. Köhler (Heidelberg, 1912).
Area: OE, CC

Charles R. Beye. "Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 68:345-73.

Locates a tripartite structure in the Iliadic Catalogue of Ships and the "battle item," also noting the systematic variation in the androktasiai.
Area: AG

Charles R. Beye. The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Epic Tradition. London and Garden City: Macmillan and Doubleday.

In Chapters 1 ("Oral Poetry," pp. 1-37) and 3 ("Epic Technique," pp. 75-110), he offers an account of Homeric formulaic and thematic technique for the nonspecialist.
Area: AG

Charles R. Beye. Ancient Greek Literature and Society. Garden City: Doubleday.

In Chapter 2 ("Winged Words," pp. 30-53), he discusses the characteristics and implications of oral poetry, including formulaic structure and its relationship to meter, the multidialectal language of Homeric epic, the emphasis on the typical or generic in narrative and characterization (various forms of parallelism and repetition), narrative inconsistencies, parataxis, the audience's prior familiarity with the story, and the similes. See also pp. 22-23 on the nature of oral epic diction and pp. 429-33 for bibliography on Homer, Hesiod, and the lyric poets.
Area: AG

Daniel P. Biebuyck, ed. Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rpt. 1972.

A collection of eight essays and commentary on the problems associated with the traditional/creative dichotomy in so-called "primitive" plastic arts. Edmund Carpenter includes in his remarks some comments on "Preliterate, Literate, and Postliterate Art" (espec. pp. 206-7).
Area: AF, CP

Daniel P. Biebuyck. "The Epic as a Genre in Congo Oral Literature." In African Folklore. Ed. Richard M. Dorson. Garden City: Doubleday. pp. 257-73.

Documents the distribution of oral epic in the Congo. Distinguishes between heroic and historical works, the latter dealing with genealogies, migrations, and rulers. Describes singers and mode of oral performance as well as form, style, and content. Notes encyclopedic function of the epic.
Area: AF

Daniel P. Biebuyck. "The African Heroic Epic." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 13:5-36.

Brief review of the state of collection and edition, also of the geographical distribution of epic, with short summaries of examples from various regions.
Area: AF

Daniel P. Biebuyck. Hero and Chief: Epic Literature from the Banyanga Zaire Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Along with translated texts of oral narrative, he includes chapters on "The Bards" (pp. 10-25) and "Formulas and Style Features" (pp. 75-92), in the latter of which he describes noun-epithet combinations, phrases for time and space, introductions, and other elements. At the same time he reports that "the conscious search for originality and nuance, for expansion or reduction, for descriptive detail or concise sonority, for repetition or ellipsis, for insertion of new motifs or reorganization and recombination of old ones, is found throughout the texts" (p. 91).
Area: AF

Daniel P. Biebuyck. "The African Heroic Epic." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 336-67.

A slightly edited version of Biebuyck 1976, with a bibliography of primary and secondary sources added (pp. 363-67).
Area: AF

Daniel P. Biebuyck and Kahombo C. Mateene, ed. and trans. The Mwindo Epic from the Banyanga. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Presentation in both the original Bantu and an English translation of a text of the Nyanga oral epic taken down in writing from oral performance. Introduction includes ethnographic background, information on other forms of oral literature among the Nyanga, a description of the narrator, a synopsis of the epic action, and notes on the transcription and translation.
Area: AF

Daniel P. Biebuyck and Kahombo C. Mateene, ed. and trans. Anthologie de la littérature orale nyanga. Classe des sciences morales et politiques, n.s. XXXVI-1. Brussels: Académie Royale des Sciences d'OutreMer.

Brief introduction to the cultural context followed by a selection of texts (with French translations) from Biebuyck's fieldwork among the Nyanga. Genres include epic, tale or fable, historical tale, miraculous or supernatural story, didactic tale, eulogy, prayer, riddle, proverb and aphorism, and various sorts of ritual songs.
Area: AF

Charles Bird. "Heroic Songs of the Mande Hunters." In African Folklore. Ed. Richard M. Dorson. Garden City: Doubleday. pp. 275-93.

Contains description of Parry-Lord formulas used by the Mande bards in composing their epics and a thorough account of the learning process through which singers pass.
Area: AF

Phyllis Bixler. "The Oral-Formulaic Training of a Popular Fiction Writer: Frances Hodgson Burnett." Journal of Popular Culture, 15, iv:42-52.

Argues that Burnett's memoir reveals a self-training in formulaic storytelling that resembles the early stages of the Yugoslav guslar's apprenticeship as described by Lord (1960). Notes the presence of formula, paratactic structure, and story-pattern in her works.
Area: CN

N.F. Blake. "Caedmon's Hymn." Notes & Queries, 207:243-46.

Contends that Caedmon's greatest debt was not to heroic tradition, oral or post-oral, but to the psalms of the Vulgate Psalter. Finds correspondences between the Latin psalms and the OE Caedmon's Hymn in terms of vocabulary, form, and theme.
Area: OE, LT, CP

J. Blenkinsopp. "Structure and Style in Judges 13-16." Journal of Biblical Literature, 82:65-76.

Combines structural and source analysis in reviewing the makeup, meaning, and comparative (including extra-Biblical) context of Judges. Mentions repeated incidents and themes as well as repetitive phraseology, assigning the Samson story to a "heroic age."
Area: BI

Elizabeth Block. "The Narrator Speaks: Apostrophe in Homer and Vergil." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 112:7-22.

Locates the variance between Homeric and Virgilian modes of apostrophe in the distance between oral tradition and the written word. Notes nonetheless that the Aeneid reveals traces of orality. Claims that the written medium and its permanence generate a distance between poet and audience that Homer lacks (or is free of), a situation "possible only when the word is permanent and the act of reading an opportunity for reassessing, questioning, and judging" (22).
Area: AG, LT, CP

Russell J. Blong. "Time of Darkness Legends and Volcanic Eruptions in Papua New Guinea." In Oral Tradition in Melanesia. Ed. by Donald Denoon. Port Moresby, New Guinea: University of Papua, New Guinea and Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies. pp. 141-50.

Cites evidence from various scientific methods of geological dating employed in determining the "Time of Darkness" resulting from volcanic eruptions in New Guinea and finds that variance of data in such studies is at least as significant as that acquired from sources in the oral traditions of the area. See Mai 1981.
Area: ML

Morton W. Bloomfield. "Understanding Old English Poetry." Annuale Mediaevale, 9:5-25. Rpt. in his Essays and Explorations: Studies in Ideas, Language, and Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 59-83.

In a discussion of the social function of OE poetry, he contends that Beowulf was not itself orally composed, but that an oral tradition lies behind the received text. Sees traces of that oral tradition in formulas, plot organization, and characterization. Stresses the nature of Beowulf as traditional legend known to a largely nonliterate audience.
Area: OE, AF, CP

Franz Boas. "Stylistic Aspects of Primitive Literature." Journal of American Folklore, 38:329-39.

An early appreciation of the fundamental tectonic role of repetition and rhythmic structure in oral narrative.
Area: AI, CP

Deborah D. Boedeker. Aphrodite's Entry into Greek Epic. Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava, Supplementum 32. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Argues from the evidence of epic diction that Aphrodite "originated as a hypostasis on the Indo-European Dawn-goddess" (p. 15). Her method proceeds through analysis of formulaic systems and word-theme associations, yet with a view to origination rather than (as in Parry's writings) usefulness to a composing poet. Traces solar connections in the names and epithets of Aphrodite (Chapter 1), the goddess' association with dance (Chapter 2), and her relation with a mortal lover (Chapter 3).
Area: AG

Whitney F. Bolton. Alcuin and Beowulf: An Eighth-Century View. London and New Brunswick: Edward Arnold and Rutgers University Press.

In pursuing the question of how Alcuin would have read Beowulf, he claims that he accomplishes "a refutation of the oral-formulaic theory of Old English poetic composition" (p. 10; apparently referring to pp. 62-65 and passim).
Area: OE

Thorlief Boman. Die Jesus-Überlieferung im Lichte der neueren Volkskunde. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

Conceives of oral transmission of fixed texts as the medium for promulgation of prose tales on the life of Jesus, with brief comparative references to OI, ON, and SC oral traditions.
Area: BI, CP

Adrien Bonjour. "Beowulf and the Beasts of Battle." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 72:563-73. Rpt. in his Twelve Beowulf Papers, 1940-1960, with Additional Comments. Neuchatel and Geneva: Faculté des Lettres and Librairie E. Droz. pp. 135-46.

Attempts a compromise between the Magoun school and literary critics by arguing that the Beowulf-poet, unlike his contemporaries, shows artistic originality in his handling of the "Beasts of Battle" passage. Suspects he was both lettered and formulaic (cp. Benson 1966).
Area: OE

Adrien Bonjour. "Poésie Héro|que du moyen âge et critique littéraire." Romania, 78:243-55. Rpt. in his Twelve Beowulf Papers, 1940-1960, with Additional Comments. Neuchatel and Geneva: Faculte des Lettres and Librairie E. Droz. pp. 165-72.

Reviews Rychner 1955 and Magoun 1953a. Doubts that Beowulf was composed orally and hypothesizes intermediate stages between oral and literate poetic expression.
Area: OE, OF, CP

Adrien Bonjour. "Beowulf et l'épopée anglo-saxonne." In L'Epopé vivante, a special issue of La Table Ronde 132:140-51.

Discusses several aspects of the oral heroic tradition out of which Beowulf grew. Feels the artistic excellence of the poem indicates that it belongs to a transition stage during which literary poets were beginning to adapt the forms of an oral improvisational poetry to the written medium.
Area: OE

Adrien Bonjour. "A Postscript on Beowulf and the Singer Theory." In his Twelve Beowulf Papers, 1940-1960, with Additional Comments. Neuchatel and Geneva: Faculté des Lettres and Librairie E. Droz. pp. 147-49.

Notes his own reservations over oral-formulaic theory, as presented in his study of the Beasts of Battle theme (1957a), and those expressed by Malone (1960) and by Brodeur (1959).
Area: OE

Adrien Bonjour. "Quelques considérations sur Beowulf et le théorie formulaire." In his Twelve Beowulf Papers, 1940-1960, with Additional Comments. Neuchatel and Geneva: Faculté des Lettres and Librairie E. Droz. pp. 165-72.

Acknowledging that orality lies historically at the origin of the OE formulaic style, he reiterates earlier reservations (1957a, 1962a) and disputes Magoun's (1953a) claim that the quantitatively established presence of this style in a given text proves oral composition. Points to recent studies supporting the theory of an intermediate stage between oral and literate composition.
Area: OE

Adrien Bonjour. "Jottings on Beowulf and the Aesthetic Approach." In Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays. Ed. Robert P. Creed. Providence: Brown University Press. pp. 179-92.

Argues against Magoun's attack (1963) on unity of authorship in Beowulf, crediting the insights of oral-formulaic theorists but demanding an approach that gives the poem its aesthetic due.
Area: OE

Joshua H. Bonner. "Toward a Unified Critical Approach to Old English Poetic Composition." Modern Philology, 73:219-28.

Attempts to reconcile oral-formulaic theory with the rhetorical practices common to and typical of contemporary Latin sources.
Area: OE, LT, CP

K.H.R. Borghart. Das Nibelungenlied: Die Spuren mündlichen Ursprungs in schriftlicher Überlieferung. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

A study of the Nibelungenlied and Hartman's Iwein based on oral-formulaic theory, with chapters covering the history of relevant scholarship, formulaic analysis, and enjambement.
Area: MHG

Marie Borroff. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study. Yale Studies in English, 152. New Haven: Yale University Press.

In the section on "Style and Alliterative Tradition" (espec. pp. 61-65), she illustrates and discusses formulaic repetition in SGGK and cognate examples in other ME alliterative poems. Maintains that "the repetitive and set' character of the phraseology of Gawain is more than a matter of its relation to the alliterative tradition," that "the poet also tended to repeat patterns of his own invention" (p. 63). Also notes the convergence of certain words and metrical positions (pp. 188-89).
Area: ME

Maja Boskovi-Stulli. "Postojanost epskog modela u dvije pjesme iz dubrovakoga kraja." Narodna umjetnost (Zagreb), 4:15-28, with summary in German. Rev. as "... dubrovake okolice." In her Usmena knjizevnost lao umjetnost rijei. Zagreb: Mladost, 1975. pp. 77-93.

Discusses the nature of oral poetic improvisation, with specific reference to Lord 1960. Feels that the singer combines tradition and improvisation in performance, quoting Bogatyrev to the effect that "u narodnoj umjetnosti, prema tome, tradicija i improvizacija ine dijalektiko jedinstvo" (p. 81). Illustrates how the epic model of composition suits two example songs she collected in the village of Majkova.
Area: SC

Maja Boskovi-Stulli. "Usmena knjizevnost u sklopu povijesti hrvatske knjizevnosti." Umjetnost Rijei, 11:247-60. Rpt. in her Usmena knjizevnost lao umjetnost rijei. Zagreb: Mladost, 1975. pp. 31-58.

In this overview of the place of oral literature in Croatian and pan-Yugoslav literature as a whole, she gives an initial definition of puka knjizevnost: "A craft of poetry, remarkably old, written in an uncomplicated and plain style, often even from the pens of fine and recognized poets, which is sometimes sung orally and sometimes not, which today is difficult to establish" (rpt., p. 55, my trans.).
Area: SC

Maja Boskovi-Stulli, ed. Usmena knjizevnost: Izbor studija i ogleda. Zagreb:

An anthology of reprinted (and, where necessary, translated) articles and sections of books on various genres of South Slavic oral literature. Separately annotated from this volume is Boskovi-Stulli 1967.
Area: SC

Maja Boskovi-Stulli. "O pojmovima usmena i puka knjizevnost i njihovim nazivima." Umjetnost Rijei, 17:149-84, 237-60.

Her major statement on puka knjizevnost ("popular literature"), the blend of folk and learned modes that she and others (e.g., Miletich) have offered as an analog to the medieval European traditional texts. Against a wide-ranging comparative background, with numerous references to relevant folklore studies, she describes this kind of literature as neither true oral tradition (since it is composed in writing) nor truly literary (since it depends so heavily on oral traditional style). A kind of hybrid medium, puka knjizevnost circulates orally in various genres, among them medieval romance and contemporary compositions on events of national or international importance.
Area: SC, CP

Maja Boskovi-Stulli, ed. Usmena knjizevnost kao umjetnost rijei. Biblioteka Izabranih Eseja. Zagreb: Mladost.

A collection of sixteen of her essays on various oral genres: epic, fairy tale, folktale, and legend. Separately annotated from this volume is Boskovi-Stulli 1966.
Area: SC

Maja Boskovi-Stulli. "Folktale Themes in Serbo-Croatian Epic Folk Literature." Trans. Tomislav Landikusi. In Studies in East European Folk Narrative. Ed. Linda Dégh. Publications of the American Folklore Society, 30; Indiana Monograph Series, 25. Bloomington: Folklore Institute, Indiana University. From the SC version in Narodna umjetnost (Zagreb), 1 (1962):15-35.

Documents the modulation of a story from folktale to epic form. An example of overcoming genre-dependence in oral tradition.
Area: SC

Maja Boskovi-Stulli. "Oral Literature and Preromantic Perspectives." Trans. Catherine Taylor-

A history of developing attitudes toward, important publications of, and influences stemming from South Slavic oral literature in the late eighteenth century.
Area: SC

Roberta B. Bosse. "Aural Aesthetic and the Unity of The Seafarer." Papers on Language and Literature, 9:3-14.

In recognition of the oral/aural performance medium, an auditory aesthetics is required. The cornerstone for such a poetics is the controlling structure of variation and repetition that governs theme, syntax, diction, and rhythm in The Seafarer.
Area: OE

J.S. Boston. "Oral Tradition and the History of Igala." Journal of African History, 10:29-43.

Describes the telescoping effect or "structural amnesia" of oral tradition in segmenting history structurally. In a certain genealogy, the names of only nine rulers are listed (an early king plus the eight most recent) even though more are known. Suggests that oral traditions may serve political as well as historical functions.
Area: AF

Cecil M. Bowra. Tradition and Design in the Iliad. Oxford: Clarendon Press; rpt. 1968.

His working assumption is that "the Iliad was composed at a stage when the traditional or primitive epic was passing into real art, and to this peculiar state of affairs it owes its peculiar character" (pp. vii-viii). Also deals with the origins of the epic from a comparative point of view (pp. 27-52) and with textual repetitions and contradictions (pp. 87-113).
Area: AG, CP

Cecil M. Bowra. From Virgil to Milton. London and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, rpt. 1967.

In Chapter 1 ("Some Characteristics of Literary Epic," pp. 1-32), he distinguishes between oral and written epic on the bases of origin, character, mode of composition, language, audience, the nature of heroism, and political significance.
Area: AG, LT, CP

Cecil M. Bowra. "The Comparative Study of Homer." American Journal of Archeology, 54:184-92.

Advocates studying Homer in the context of other heroic literatures. Parry's work, an example of such an approach, casts new light on the problems of formulaic structure, narrative inconsistency, anachronistic elements, historicity, genesis, length, unity, and transmission in the Homeric epics.
Area: AG, CP

Cecil M. Bowra. Heroic Poetry. Rpt. London: St. Martin's Press, 1966.

A significant and wide-ranging comparative study of heroic poetry in some thirty language traditions from the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds, with the orality of these materials discussed throughout. Chapter 5 ("The Mechanics of Narrative") treats such conventional scenes as arrivals and departures, arming the hero, feasts and entertainment, sailing, and riding horses. Chapter 6 ("The Techniques of Composition: Language") concentrates on oral improvisation and recitation, formulas, and related matters. Chapter 7 ("The Techniques of Composition: Devices of Narrative") examines repetitions of various types, similes, and six common opening themes. In Chapter 8 ("Some Peculiarities of Composition"), he analyzes the relationship between oral composition and narrative inconsistencies, the treatment of character, motivation, and the traditional nature of the material. Also relevant are Chapters 10 ("Tradition and Transmission") and 11 ("The Bard").
Area: AG, OE, SC, ON, BG, OF, RU, CH, TK, KR, SU, HI, CP

Cecil M. Bowra. Homer and His Forerunners. Edinburgh: Nelson.

From a hypothetical perspective he discusses pre-Homeric oral tradition and distinguishes Homer's use of his inheritance.
Area: AG

Cecil M. Bowra. The Meaning of a Heroic Age. Earl Grey Memorial Lecture, 37. Newcastle upon Tyne: Andrew Reid. Rpt. in The Language and Background of Homer: Some Recent Studies and Controversies. Ed. Geoffrey S. Kirk. Cambridge and New York: Heffer and Barnes & Noble, 1964; rpt. 1967. pp. 22-47.

Views the belief in a heroic age crossculturally as a stage in the development of human society, an evolutionary step that shifts the focus from the group to the significant individual.
Area: AG, RU, SC, BI, SK, CP

Cecil M. Bowra. "L'Epopée orale." In L'Epopé vivante, a special issue of La Table Ronde, 132:18-41.

A survey of the general characteristics of oral tradition as it appears throughout the world. Major topics include the nature of epic subject matter, the oral-formulaic poetic mode, and the traditions within the societies.
Area: CP

Cecil M. Bowra. "EUKNEMIDES ACHAIOI." Mnemosyne, 14:97-110.

Starts by asserting that the phrase "well-greaved Achaeans" (translation of the title) is one of three formulas that fits the adonean clausula, that section of the hexameter after the bucolic diaeresis, and implicitly that the situation constitutes a violation of Parry's law of thrift. Using this particular formula as a test case for dating, he then argues that its recurrence without elaboration or even apparent understanding suggests a Mycenaean origin for the phrase: "In Homer's time this form of armour was known mainly from poetical tradition, and his references to greaves can best be explained by his acquaintance with formulaic phrases which embodied a memory of them" (109).
Area: AG

Cecil M. Bowra. "Composition." In A Companion to Homer. Ed. Alan J.B. Wace and Frank H. Stubbings. London: Macmillan. pp. 38-74.

Treats the Iliad and Odyssey as oral traditional compositions, discussing narrative inconsistencies, epic design, characterization, variant versions of themes and stories, and authorship.
Area: AG

Cecil M. Bowra. "Style." In A Companion to Homer. Ed. Alan J.B. Wace and Frank H. Stubbings. London: Macmillan. pp. 26-37.

Brief but careful exposition of the Homeric poetic language, with descriptions and examples of formulas and themes, which he believes are part of the oral tradition.
Area: AG

Cecil M. Bowra. Primitive Song. Cleveland: World Publishing Company.

In Chapters 2 ("Composition and Performance," pp. 28-56), 3 ("Technique," pp. 57-86), and 4 ("Manner and Method," pp. 87-115), he attempts a crosscultural explanation of the traditional structure of a large and various selection of ritual song (in translation), carried out in the spirit of Bowra 1952. Stresses the usefulness of formulas in oral composition (espec. pp. 40-41).
Area: AF, AND, AI, EK, CP

Cecil M. Bowra. Landmarks in Greek Literature. Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Co. Rpt. New York: Penguin, 1968.

A broad and yet specific overview of ancient Greek literature from the beginnings to the third century BC and the Alexandrians. An introductory chapter includes a discussion of oral poetry that stresses Homer's indebtedness to his tradition.
Area: AG

Cecil M. Bowra. Homer. Ed. Hugh Lloyd-Jones. London and New York: Duckworth and Scribner's.

In Chapter 2 ("Oral Composition," pp. 10-31), he gives a standard account of Parry-Lord theory, with emphasis on the richness of Homeric style as compared to that of the SC epic (asserted rather than illustrated). Brief description of relevant language parameters and history.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Erika Brady. "Folklore and Medieval Studies: A View from the Ruined Tower." Folklore Forum, 13:96-108.

Contains an allusion to the Parry-Lord theory as a contribution to folklore studies (101).
Area: FK

Bruce K. Braswell. "Mythological Innovation in the Iliad." Classical Quarterly, 21:16-26.

Argues that through the consideration of internal evidence it is possible to gain an understanding of Homer's innovative use of stories that have only incidental relevance to the main narrative.
Area: AG

Bruce K. Braswell. "Odyssey 8.166-77 and Theogony 79-93." Classical Quarterly, 31:237-39.

Assumes the textual priority of the Homeric passage, contending that in an oral tradition it is logical to suppose Hesiod's expansion of an available traditional unit.
Area: AG

Gerard J. Brault. "The French Chansons de Geste." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 193-215.

Notes the oral-formulaic composition of chansons de geste by medieval jongleurs and the various opinions on the extent to which the surviving poems preserve that tradition.
Area: OF

Maximilian Braun. "Die serbokroatische Volksepik." Euphorion, 34:340-56. Rpt. in Europäische Heldendichtung. Ed. Klaus von See. Wege der Forschung, Band 500. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliches Buchgesellschaft. pp. 355-76.

Recommends serious consideration of SC folk epic as part of the European epic tradition. Discussion centers on (1) the origin of heroic song, (2) the interpretation of such works by poet and listener, and (3) the nature of preserving the tradition.
Area: SC

Maximilian Braun. "Zur Frage des Heldenliedes bei den Serbokroaten." Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 59:261-88. Rpt. as "Heldische Lebensform: Zur Frage..." In Europäische Heldendichtung. Ed. Klaus von See. Wege der Forschung, Band 500. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliches Buchgesellschaft. pp. 377-84.

Argues that SC heroic poetry is basically a depiction of a real heroic existence that had to develop because of the extremely demanding geography of the area and the long history of the country's being a meetingplace and battleground between Rome and Byzantium.
Area: SC

Maximilian Braun. "Das Volkslied als philologisches Problem." Die Welt der Slaven, 3:1-13.

In the midst of a discussion of the necessity for taking into account all features of the "folk song," especially in South Slavic, he makes a distinction between written, literary verse and poetry from oral tradition. Emphasis on melody, phraseology, narrative patterns, variants, and the general conservatism of tradition.
Area: SC

Maximilian Braun. Das serbokroatische Heldenlied. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

A two-part study of SC heroic poetry, the first section dealing with the essential values and typical content and the second with the thematic structure of the Heldenlied.
Area: SC

Hermann Bredtmann. Der sprachliche Ausdruck einiger der geläufigsten Gesten im altfranzösischen Karlsepos. Marburg: Georg Schirling.

An early comparative study of what amounts in some cases to formulaic phraseology in a number of tales of Charlemagne, with attention to morphemic and phonological aspects of the multiforms.
Area: OF

William Bright. "A Karok Myth in Measured Verse': The Translation of a Performance." Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 1:117-23.

Using Hymes 1977, he discovers the "emic" units of oral performance of this myth from the Karok tribe in California and scores it for translation.
Area: AI

William Bright. "Coyote's Journal." American Indian Culture and Research Journal (UCLA), 4:21-48.

A companion to Bright 1979.
Area: AI

William Bright. "Poetic Structure in Oral Narrative." In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. 9. Norwood: Ablex. pp. 171-84.

Again using Hymes 1977, he identifies various performance units in a myth involving Coyote's provision of food for humans, designating poetic verses and lines within an oral prose performance.
Area: AI

William Bright. "Literature: Written and Oral." In Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1981 (Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk). Ed. Deborah Tannen Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. pp. 271-83.

In a discussion of Hymes' (1977) study of poetic structure in American Indian prose narrative, he notes the variety of kinds of oral literature and the reports of verbatim versus variorum oral transmission. Proposes the concept of "nonmetrical poetry," with measured units that do not correspond to conventional notions about stichic or linear structure and calls for more serious attention to AI narratives as literature.
Area: AI, TH

C. Brillante, M. Cantilena, C.O. Pavese, eds. I poemi epici rapsodici non omerici e la tradizione orale. Padua: Antenor.

A collection of essays on non-Homeric ancient Greek poetry. Separately annotated are Burkert, Gentili, Hainsworth, Herter, Pavese, and Rossi.
Area: AG

Jovan Brki. Moral Concepts in Traditional Serbian Epic Poetry. The Hague: Mouton.

Begins with a history of the singing and collecting of SC oral epic, with short summaries of the contents of each collection (pp. 9-33).
Area: SC

Giuseppe Broccia. La Questione omerica. Florence: G.C. Sansoni.

Chiefly a history of attempted answers to the Homeric Question, from the early conjectures of Hédelin, Vico, Wood, and Wolf through the nineteenth-century German Analysts and Unitarians to the comparative oral theory of Parry and Lord, and ending with the "agonistic" theory of Pagliaro. The remainder of the volume examines two passages from the Odyssey and one from the Iliad for the light they shed on these matters.
Area: AG

Arthur G. Brodeur. The Art of Beowulf. Berkeley: University of California Press. 3rd printing 1969.

In discussing "The Diction of Beowulf" (pp. 1-38), he argues for a literate author who composed formulaically. Stresses the possibility of originality on the part of the poet, noting his apparent familiarity with Latin rhetoric and Biblical learning.
Area: OE

Arthur G. Brodeur. "A Study of Diction and Style in Three Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poems." In Nordica et Anglica. Ed. Allan H. Orrick. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 97-114.

Analyzes similarities and differences in diction between Beowulf and Andreas, Judith, and Exodus. Asserts that while the latter three poems contain a large number of traditional formulas, this feature indicates only that the poets were familiar with the ancient modes of poetic expression. Stylistically, each poem shows evidence of its author's gift of original imagery and phraseology.
Area: OE

Arthur G. Brodeur. "Beowulf: One Poem or Three?" In Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies in Honor of Francis Lee Utley. Ed. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 3-26.

Responds to Magoun 1958b and 1963 in claiming unity for Beowulf. Feels that the additions to Beowulf's recapitulation before Hygelac are artistically motivated and that most so-called discrepancies are unimportant or nonexistent. Argues against oral-formulaic theory and the singer model used by Magoun to propose a tripartite text, decrying the "folk-poem" characterization and the necessary connection between formulaic structure and orality.
Area: OE

Bertrand H. Bronson. "The Morphology of the Ballad-Tunes (Variation, Selection, and Continuity)." Journal of American Folklore, 67:1-13.

Looks at ballad tunes, chiefly from Cecil Sharp's collection, as demonstrating traditional variation, that is, a controlled variation within limits set by an oral tradition. Insists that what he terms "folk-memory" does not recall melodies by rote but "preserves a melodic idea in a state of fluid suspension, as it were, and precipitates that idea into a fresh condensation with each rendition, even with each new stanza sung. There is no correct form of the tune from which to depart, or to sustain, but only an infinite series of positive realizations of the melodic idea" (6). An early but elegant statement of traditional oral morphology.
Area: MU, FB, BR, US, CP

Pamela Brooke. "The Prevalence of Poetry in Oral Tradition." Humanities. National Endowment for the Humanities (June 1977), 6-7.

A brief description of the Foley-Halpern 1975 fieldwork on oral tradition in Serbia and its significance for comparative oral tradition. For details and results, see Foley 1977c, 1982a.
Area: SC, CP

Mary Ellen Brown. "`That Bards are Second-Sighted Is Nae Joke': The Orality of Burns's World and Work." Studies in Scottish Literature, 16:208-16.

Argues that "Burns's focus in his early work on local topics, his frequent use of traditional material, his acceptance of the fluidity of texts, his stress on audience and the oral socialization of his own works, and his articulated views on the function of composition--all suggest Burns's strong ties to the traditional and largely oral matrix of late eighteenth-century Ayrshire" (214).
Area: BR, FB

Cynthia J. Brown. "The Rise of Literary Consciousness in Late Medieval France: Jean Lemaire de Belges and the Rhétoriqueur Tradition." Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13:51-74.

Traces the "gradual appearance of artistic self-consciousness" (52) within the Rhétoriqueur tradition through an examination of works by Jean Molinet, André de la Vigne, and Jean Lemaire de Belges. Sees evidence for a direct line of development from narrator intrusion in prologues or epilogues to the Roman de la Rose to the Guillaume de Lorris narrator. Speculates that the presence of the self-conscious poet--through a concerned acteur figure--is related both to political exigencies and to the development of print technology insofar as the craft of the poet changed when communication could be used for dispensing propaganda to a mass audience.
Area: OF

Rupert Bruce-Mitford and Myrtle Bruce-Mitford. "The Sutton Hoo Lyre, Beowulf, and the Origins of the Frame Harp." Antiquity, 44:7-13.

Details a new reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo musical instrument as a Germanic round lyre rather than an asymmetrical harp (although it is called se hearpa in OE). Notes relationship to the instrument mentioned in Beowulf. This reconstruction supersedes the original in 1948.
Area: OE

Alan Bruford. "The Effects of Oral Transmission." In his Gaelic Folk-Tales and Mediaeval Romances: A Study of the Early Modern Irish `Romantic Tales' and their Oral Derivatives. Dublin: The Folklore of Ireland Society. pp. 165-249.

In this final section of his monograph he studies the versions of medieval romances in manuscript which have reached the twentieth century in oral tradition. Topics include the development of words, the nature of runs, the morphology of motifs, the mutation of stories, and the process of change.
Area: OI, MI, CP

Karl Brunner. "Why Was Beowulf Preserved?" Etudes anglaises, 7:1-5.

Suggests that the preservation of the poem was due most likely to its Christian character, and that a census of medieval manuscripts and a quantitative study of their contents would open new perspectives on the literary tastes of the Middle Ages. A counter-oral approach.
Area: OE

Agnes M. Bruno. Toward a Quantitative Methodology for Stylistic Analysis. University of California Publications in Modern Philology, 109.

Through the application of multivariate techniques of stylistic analysis "in the comparison of a total of forty-one stanzas of low and high formulaic content," this study "examines heterogeneity within ... the Nibelungenlied. The contention that stanzas of high formulaic content were part of the oral tradition, and therefore differed stylistically from stanzas of lower formulaic content belonging to the written tradition, is systematically investigated by means of firstand second-order statistics" (p. viii). More a methodological trial run than a final analysis.
Area: MHG

W.F. Bryan. "Epithetic Compound Folk-Names in Beowulf." In Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber. Ed. Kemp Malone and Martin B. Ruud. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 120-34.

Contends that compounds in OE poetry are not mechanically determined by the requirements of alliteration, but rather carefully chosen by the poet to serve a particular poetic purpose. An early framing of the mechanism versus aesthetics controversy.
Area: OE

David Buchan. The Ballad and the Folk. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Taking his methodological cue from the Parry-Lord research and especially Lord 1960, he analyzes the northeastern balladry tradition as oral poetry. Using many examples from the Brown corpus, he illustrates "the unusual balance between stability and innovation in ballad transmission" (p. 170) and the traditional formulaic nature of oral composition. Along with a description of ethnographic context and a diachronic view of the ballad tradition, he explains in considerable detail the dynamic traditional structure of the poems. Also treats the various relevant controversies in ballad scholarship.
Area: BR, FB, SC, CP

David Buchan. "Oral Tradition and Literary Tradition: The Scottish Ballads." In Oral Tradition, Literary Tradition: A Symposium. Proceedings, Symposia at the Center for the Study of Vernacular Literature in the Middle Ages, Odense University. Ed. Hans Bekker-Nielsen et al. Odense: Odense University Press. pp. 56-68.

Keeping in mind the culture-specific and genre-specific nature of oral tradition, he names and exemplifies three characteristics of oral texts in the Scottish ballads: oral formulas, structuring, and re-creation (the last after Axel Olrik's laws of folk narrative; see Olrik 1909). Observes the complexity of the compositional medium by noting the interaction between oral and written, as well as two stages that follow true oral re-creation: a transitional period and rote memorization. A fine, careful exposition that does not oversimplify complicated problems.
Area: BR, FB

David Buchan. "Ballad Formulas and Oral Tradition." In Sumlen: Årsbok för vis- och folkmusikforskning [for 1978]:122-25.

Offers a general paradigm, based on a study of Scottish ballads, for the study of texts with formulaic language: an examination of the differences inherent in composition during periods when general non-literacy can be documented and a subsequent comparison of such texts with those composed in periods of transitional and then full literacy. Maintains that the notion of the conceptual formula, in addition to that of the verbal formula, provides an important base for consideration of narrative ideas.
Area: FB, BR

David Buchan. "Ballad Tradition and Hugh Spencer." In The Ballad Image: Essays Presented to Bertrand Harris Bronson. Ed. James Porter. Foreword by Wayland D. Hand. Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology, pp. 215-40.

A consideration of the four versions of Hugh Spencer's Feats in France from the perspective of structure, function, and context in order to ascertain the presence of elements of traditional re-creation as well as of conservatism in Scottish balladry.
Area: FB, BR

Peter Buchholz. Vorzeitkunde: Mündliches Erzählen und Überliefern im mittelalterlichen Skandinavien nach dem Zeugnis von Fornaldarsaga und eddischer Dichtung. Skandinavistische Studien, Band 13. Neumünster: Karl Wachholtz.

Of greatest relevance are Chapters 2 (pp. 12-31) on oral studies and 3 (pp. 32-78), the latter of which includes a list of references to oral narrative in the legendary sagas.
Area: ON

Peter Buchholz. "Lügengeschichten? Wahrheit und Wunder in altisländischer Traditionstheorie'." Vortrag vor der IV. Internationalen Saga-Konferenz, München 1979. pp. 1-10.

Cites Thorgils saga ok Haflitha as evidence that the medieval storytellers and their audiences believed that the stories from the oral tradition were factual. Tradition permitted some degree of individual creativity but maintained the stability inherent to traditional forms. Also discusses pagan Scandinavian attitutes regarding the oral tradition and ideas about obtaining knowledge from the other world.
Area: ON

Marcia Bullard. "Some Objections to the Formulaic Theory of the Composition of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry." Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, 21:11-16.

Protests the imprecision, reductionism, and triviality that she sees resulting from the methods of most oralists, particularly in their various uses of the key terms "formula," "theme," and "idea."
Area: OE

Rudolf Bultmann. Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments. Neue Folge, 12. Heft. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1957. Trans. by John Marsh as The History of the Synoptic Tradition. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell and Harper.

A methodologically pre-Parry study of oral tradition in Gospel materials. Interested in recovering the synoptic tradition that preceded and gave shape to the gospels, he describes a number of laws or tendencies of oral composition and transmission (espec. pp. 307-43, trans.) reminiscent of some of Olrik's laws of folk narrative. Conceives of tradition as the inevitable complication and growth of smaller to larger units. Sees no incongruity between oral and written media, and so postulates a smooth transition from oral tradition to written text.
Area: BI, CP

Theo Bungarten. "Zur Formelhaftigkeit in Heinrich Wittenwilers `Ring': Wortwiederholungen und grammatische Versmuster." Computers and the Humanities, 13:289-304.

With computer-assisted analysis, he contends, one can determine formulaic structure and the formulas employed by a given poet. Applies this theorem to the "Ring" and discusses the presence and role of syntactic frames and oral-formulaic structure in MHG literature.
Area: MHG

Walter Burkert. "Seven Against Thebes: An Oral Tradition between Babylonian Magic and Greek Literature." In I poemi epici rapsodici non omerici e la tradizione orale. Ed. by C. Brillante, M. Cantilena, C.O. Paves. Padua: Antenor, pp. 29-52.

Attempts to reconstruct oral saga behind the fragmentary Thebais. Finds the less than seventeen extant hexameters formulaic to a high degree, with all of them paralleled in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. Sees the Thebais as "another new oimê, prompted by the plot of an Assyrian ritual, perhaps destined to celebrate the newly arising city in Boeotia" (45), and very much a part of the ancient Greek narrative tradition. Sensibly argues against absolute dating and assignment of authorship, noting "no Michelangelo without the Renaissance; no Homer without Greek oral poetry" (46).
Area: AG, CP

Walter Burkert. Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Central thesis of this series of lectures is that even structures of the mind, e.g. myth and ritual, are determined by historical evolution. Makes reference to oral transmission of tales in a chapter on myth and argues that the overall pattern of tales is known in advance by all as a sequence of functions, all of which need not be present in a given performance.
Area: AG

Robert B. Burlin. "Gnomic Indirection in Beowulf." In Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John C. McGalliard. Ed. Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores W. Frese. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 41-49.

Studies the rhetorical and conceptual function of gnomic formulas, noting their intensification of the communion of poet and audience, generalization of action to the community, evocation of ideal norms, and emphasis of heroic values in immediate context.
Area: OE

J.A. Burrow. "Bards, Minstrels, and Men of Letters." In Literature and Western Civilization: The Mediaeval World. Ed. David Daiches and Anthony Thorlby. London: Aldus Books. pp. 347-70.

A brief but finely articulated introduction to the spectrum of poets in the medieval period. Prescribes three stages of development. First using the portrait of the singer on horseback in Beowulf and corresponding descriptions in Deor and Widsith, he explains oral-formulaic composition, cautioning that the style may have been filtered through a series of written recensions. Adds to a straightforward exposition of formula the poetic treatise by Snorri Sturleson in the Prose Edda. The second stage, that of minstrels, is divided into three grades of narrative: (1) courtly verse (e.g., Chretien de Troyes), (2) older narrative forms (OF chanson de geste, the medieval Spanish cantar de gesta, ME alliterative verse), and (3) miscellaneous categories. Illustrates survivals from this second period and discusses the transformations undergone. The final stage consists of Chaucer and his contemporaries.
Area: OE, ME, CP

Kenneth D. Butler. "The Heike Monogatari and the Japanese Warrior Ethic." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 29:93-108.

Explains detailed nonhistorical components of heike, particularly sections devoted to actions of individual warriors, as the result of the process of oral composition. Discusses the influence of these fictional elements on the development of later Japanese perceptions of the ideal warrior.
Area: JP

Ellen C. Buttenwieser. Studien über die Verfasserschaft des Andreas. Heidelberg: E. Geisendörfer.

Considers the aesthetic function of repeated phraseology as a topic within her larger study of the author of Andreas. Sees the Parallelstellen as the most effective way of communicating certain ideas, since each brings with it overtones from other usages. An important early contribution to the evolution of formulaic theory in OE.
Area: OE

Djenana Buturovi. "Oral Epic Poetry of the Peoples of Yugoslavia." In The Folk Arts of Yugoslavia: Papers Presented at a Symposium (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 1976). Ed. Walter W. Kolar. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Tamburitzans Institute of Folk Arts. pp. 135-66.

Primarily a historical examination of Serbo-Croatian oral tradition by a native scholar, with much useful information on the major collections and an extensive bibliography.
Area: SC

David E. Bynum. "Kult dvaju junaka u kulturnoj istoriji Balkana." Anali Filoloskog fakulteta (Belgrade), 4:65-73.

Taking examples from Mithraism, classical and Minoan Greek mythology, and the SC songs collected and published by Vuk St. Karadzic, he identifies the motif of paired heroes as a continuous traditional element in the Balkans from ancient to recent times. Conceives of oral narrative as a reservoir of traditional material upon which various historical cults may draw in periods of religious transition.
Area: SC, AG, CP

David E. Bynum. "Themes of the Young Hero in Serbocroatian Oral Epic Tradition." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 83:1296-1303.

Uses the pattern of the novice hero, especially in Avdo Medjedovic's The Wedding of Smailagic Meho, to make some general points about thematic structure and the initiatory tale. Defining themes as "pieces of narrative or descriptions which recur in the tradition, and which are discrete because their occurrences are independent of any consistent sequential relationship with other such pieces" (1298), he notes a tendency toward clustering within a changeable order. Describes a similar multiformity in the Odyssey, in which Homer "made the transition from the story of the initiatory hero Telemachus to the story of his father's return by substituting the name of the older hero in the same string of themes he had just used to tell of the son" (1302). Sees Avdo's song as in effect a South Slavic Telemacheia.
Area: SC, AG, CP

David E. Bynum. "The Generic Nature of Oral Epic Poetry." Genre, 2:236-58.

Considers the integrity of "oral traditional epic poetry" as a distinct genre of folklore. Also emphasizes the need to distinguish carefully among poetries and genres, allowing each its individual characteristics.
Area: SC, AG, CP

David E. Bynum. "Thematic Sequences and Transformation of Character in Oral Narrative Tradition," Filoloski pregled, 8:1-21.

Focusing on a 7420-line oral epic song, no. 17 in the PerovicCollection of the Serbian Academy of Sciences in Belgrade, he studies the generic nature of characterization and role-shifting through thematic structure. Illustrates that transformation of character is not merely a practical device for oral narrative composition but also a way of generating meaning within a song. As an example, he cites one character's vacillation among sometimes inappropriate generic roles as a model of misfortune: the young hero in the same tale maintains a consistent identity or charactertype and so succeeds where his much-transformed counterpart must fail.
Area: SC

David E. Bynum. "Oral Evidence and the Historian: Problems and Methods." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 8:82-84.

Distinguishes between oral evidence and oral tradition, remarking the latter's "enfablement" as it becomes a told tale.
Area: CP

David E. Bynum, ed., with Albert B. Lord. Zenidba Smailagina sina, kazivao je Avdo Medjedovic, s popratnim razgovorima s Medjedovicem i drugim. Vol. 4 of Serbo Croatian Heroic Songs. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection, Texts and Translations Series, 2. Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of Oral Literature.

The original SC text of the 12,311-line Smailagic Meho (for the translation, see Lord and Bynum 1974) collected by Milman Parry and dictated to his scribe Nikola Vujnovic from July 5-12, 1935. Includes conversations on Avdo's life and times, his repertory, and the sources of his songs, as well as the interview of Dzafic, who read him the story. Textual notes follow the SC text.
Area: SC

David E. Bynum. "Child's Legacy Enlarged: Oral Literary Studies at Harvard Since 1856." Harvard Library Bulletin, 22:237-67. Rpt. as Documentation and Planning Series, 2. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection.

Traces the history of oral literature research and scholarship from Francis J. Child and his ballads to George Lyman Kittredge, continuator of Child's work and collector and analyst of proverbs and folktales, to Milman Parry, cooriginator of oral-formulaic studies. Some account of Lord's contributions.
Area: BB, BR, US, FB, SC, CP, TH

David E. Bynum. The Daemon in the Wood: A Study of Oral Narrative Patterns. Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of Oral Literature..

Eclectic but rationalistic approach to an extremely varied collection of oral narrative materials in terms of the recurrent pattern of "The Two Trees." Includes an excursus on the problem of oral-formulaic diction in OE poetry, illustration of the operation of motif-clusters in a number of oral tales, discussion of the universal and generic form of a motif in relation to its local or "nominal" avatar, a reinterpretation of Arthur Evans' commentary on trees in Mycenaean and Minoan graphic art, and a study of the morphology of five additional oral narrative patterns (Vertical Journey, The Four Zones, The Three Women, The Restorative Journey, and The Cosmogonic Triad). A substantial appendix offers a variety of examples of the Two Trees cluster.
Area: SC, OE, AG, AF, RU, BR, FB, CP, TH

David E. Bynum, ed. Bihaka krajina: Epics from Biha, Cazin, and Kulen Vakuf. Vol. 14 of Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection, 12. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

The original language versions of nine oral epics from the Biha region by four singers: Mujo Velic, Murat Zunic, Camil Kulenovic, and Ibrahim Nuhanovic. The prolegomena consist of sections on the genesis of the poetry, the singers, the singing (including a discussion of stanzaic/ strophic multiformity and the melodic tunes used by the guslari), and the songs.
Area: SC, MU

David E. Bynum, ed. Zenidba Vlahinjic Alije, Osmanbeg Delibegovic i Pavicevic Luka, kazivao i pjevao Avdo Medjedovic. Vol. 6 of Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection, 6. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

The original language versions of two more songs by Avdo (see SCHS 3-4: Lord and Bynum 1974, Bynum 1974a), the latter tale (Osmanbeg) constituting "the largest dictated text ever collected from an oral tradition in a Slavic language (or in any language of Europe for that matter)" (p. ix). The prolegomena consist of the arguments of each story and references to other versions.
Area: SC

David E. Bynum. "Myth and Ritual: Two Faces of Tradition." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers, rpt. 1983. pp. 142-63.

A survey of contemporary anthropological methods as applied to the study of literature and folklore. Distinguishes between myth and ritual from synchronic and diachronic viewpoints. In an examination of bridehood in two English folktales and a Tangu analog, he concludes that we need to pay more attention to anthropological realities in the study of oral narrative tradition, and especially to kinship structure.
Area: TH, FK, BR, AF, CP

David E. Bynum. "Formula, Theme, and Critical Method." In Oral Tradition. Ed. John Miles Foley. Special issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 15, i:61-77.

Looks at the proems to the Homeric epics and to SC oral epic songs to illustrate the "principle of redundancy" and the necessity for grounding one's investigations in a known and well-collected oral tradition.
Area: SC, AG, CP

David E. Bynum. "The Dialectic of Narrative in a Bulgarian Ballad." In Folklorisca: Festschrift for Felix J. Oinas. Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, 141. Ed. Denis Sinor. Bloomington, IN: Research Center for Inner Asian Studies. pp. 59-71.

Maintains that the dialectical structure of a Bulgarian ballad relating the manner in which the legendary hero Marko came by his phenomenal strength and his magic sword, when contextualized with Serbo-Croatian and British comparands, suggests that "it may well be that both modern Bulgarian balladry and the philosophical tradition that comes down to us from Plato, from the classical revival, from Hegel, Marx, and from omer modern dialecticians both owe their organizing principles of contrastive reasoning to an oral tradition that was older in Europe than either modern poetry or ancient philosophy" (pp. 690-70).
Area: BU, SC, BR, CP

Jesse L. Byock. Feud in the Icelandic Saga. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Comments briefly on the probable oral origins of saga narrative technique (pp. 8-10) and recapitulates Lord's notion of the oral "theme" (pp. 56-57).
Area: ON

Jesse L. Byock. "Saga Form, Oral Prehistory, and the Icelandic Social Context." New Literary History, 16:153-73.

Discusses the controversy regarding oral or literate origins of the Icelandic family sagas, examining in turn the social context of the sagas in the acephalous medieval Icelandic society, genre-wide studies of the saga form, and an alternative view in which Byock suggests that "saga form is built up from a series of small feuds, and these units do not follow fixed patterns" (166) and that "employing the elements of feud, the sagaman shaped his tale according to the choices and the logic of Icelandic procedure. The action unfolds within a societal setting that the sagaman shared with his audience" (167). Isolates three elements of "saga feud": conflict, resolution (both biolent and non-violent), and advocacy, concluding that in the sagas the Icelanders created "a form of narrative sufficient to tell stories about themselves" (168).
Area: ON

Thomas Cable. The Meter and Melody of Beowulf. Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 64. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

In Chapters 7 ("The Abstract Pattern of OE Meter," pp. 84-93) and 8 ("The Melody of Beowulf," pp. 94-110), he describes a systematic metrical and melodic structure underlying the verbal text of Beowulf. Sees these melodic "contours" as formulaic and posits revision of Watts' (1969) definition of the formula to read "a repeated sequence that fills one of Sievers' five basic melodic types" (p. 106).
Area: OE, MU

Thomas Cable. "Parallels to the Melodic Formulas of Beowulf." Modern Philology, 73:1-14.

Continues the remarks made on meter and melody in Cable 1974, with analogs cited in Byzantine and ancient Greek, Vedic Sanskrit, Old French, and Gregorian chant. Maintains that "in ancient and medieval times, an important principle of musical composition involved a melodic formula, or a small set of melodic formulas, that preceded and shaped the composition of the text" (11), reasoning that "since the melodic formulas preceded composition and performance, they acted as a paradigm to filter out the unacceptable linguistic patterns and admit only the acceptable patterns--the metrical patterns" (5).
Area: OE, MU, BG, AG, SK, OF, LT, CP

Geneviève Calame-Griaule and Veronika Görög-Karady. "Introductory Note." Journal of Folklore Research, 20:151-52.

Reviews the major trends emerging in Oral Literature Studies and attributes their diversity to "the complex and polyvalent nature of oral narratives" (152).
Area: FK

Geneviève Calame-Griaule, Veronika Görög-Karady, Suzanne Plaitel, Diana Rey-Hulman, and Christiane Seydou. "The Variability of Meaning and the Meaning of Variability." Journal of Folklore Research, 20:153-57.

Discusses the study of folktales as a way of understanding the Weltanschauung of a society. Emphasizes the importance of variability as both meaning and, through the use of comparative analysis, as an avenue of study to understand the meaning. Presents a methodology based on "the systematic study of variability through comparative analysis, complemented by recourse to the ethnographic data" (155).
Area: FK

Daniel G. Calder. "The Study of Style in Old English Poetry: A Historical Introduction." In his ed., Old English Poetry: Essays on Style. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 1-65.

Provides an overview and concise history of the study of Anglo-Saxon poetic style beginning with the 1655 Junius edition, describing and critiquing in turn the major studies from Hickes (1705) through contemporary scholars, with some emphasis on the contribution of stylistic studies ot oral-formulaic theory and the "debate over originality of style and cition within the framework of a conventional and formulaic poetic system" (49).
Area: OE

George M. Calhoun. "Homeric Repetitions." University of California Publications in Classical Philology, 12:1-25.

Argues that repetitions of any length, from a single line to a scene, must be considered orally rather than visually. Some discussion of the variability of longer units. Fully cognizant of Parry's work and among the first to cite it.
Area: AG

George M. Calhoun. "The Art of Formula in Homer--EPEA PTEROENTA." Classical Philology, 30:215-27.

Contends that the formula containing "winged words" is not meaningless with respect to its context, as Parry claimed when he described the utility of formulaic diction, but is employed when the speaker referred to is in some emotional state. See Parry's response (1937); these two articles spark a longlasting debate over "winged words" in particular and utility versus context-sensitivity in general.
Area: AG

George M. Calhoun. "The Poet and the Muses in Homer." Classical Philology, 33:157-66.

Takes issue with Gilbert Murray's conception of the "traditional book" supposed to have served as a prompter for Homer before he began his performance (see The Rise of the Greek Epic, pp. 96ff.). Finds Murray's assertions incorrect on the basis of internal descriptions of singers' activities in the Odyssey and rules in favor of "the Homeric conception of oral poetry and song" (166).
Area: AG

Manfred Caliebe. Dukus Horant: Studien zu seiner literarischen Tradition. Philologische Studien und Quellen, 70. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.

Demonstrates the existence of traditional narrative patterns in the Dukus Horant and argues that the fabric of typical scenes and formulaic diction indicates a recent oral provenance. Sees the manuscript of 1382 as a copy close to an originally written text that itself derived from oral tradition. Reviews related scholarship and discusses the question of orality in Chapter 5 ("Poetische Struktur und Mündliche Überlieferung im Horant-Epos," pp. 106-29).
Area: MHG

William Calin. The Epic Quest: Studies in Four Old French Chansons de Geste. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Toward the latter part of his "Conclusion" (espec. pp. 243-48), he argues against the hypotheses of Rychner (1955) and Parry and Lord on the orality of Old French chansons de geste. Specifically contends against the analogy between OF and SC epic on the grounds that "the two traditions resemble each other only to a slight degree" and that "we have reason to doubt" (p. 243) Parry and Lord's explanation of the composition of SC oral epic. Also denies the applicability of formulaic density as a criterion for orality, preferring Delbouille's (1959) critique of Rychner. Calin's comparative evaluations are faulty and misleading.
Area: OF, SC, CP

William Calin. "L'Epopée dite vivante: Réflexions sur le prétendu caractére oral des chansons de geste." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 8, iii:227-37.

The opening salvo in a highly polemical series of articles on the oral versus written issue and the OF chansons de geste by Calin (1981a, b) and J. Duggan (1981a, b). Calin denies the OF poems' orality, choosing to see the value of formulaic analysis in determining not the provenance of a text (which he assumes, on aesthetic grounds, to be written) but rather the ultimate origins of that text in an earlier oral tradition. Criticizes, somewhat amateurishly, the work of Parry and Lord, clinging to Spraycar (1976) in the face of overwhelming counter-evidence. Denies the viability of the comparative method in general and the comparability of and SC tests in particular. Contends that formulaic language is not a determinant of orality: "un taux de densité formulaire, que ce soit 20% ou 50% (cela dépend de votre définition de la formule) ne suffit point, ipso facto, à prouver une composition orale" (235).
Area: OF, SC, CP

William Calin. "Littérature médiévale et hypothèse orale: une divergence de méthode et de philosophie." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 8, iii:256-85.

The third in a series of four articles discussing the oral-written controversy and Old French epic (see Calin 1981a; J. Duggan 1981a, b). Replies to J. Duggan 1981a on seven points: (1) the putative "school" of oralists that Duggan denies, (2) the question of defining the formula, (3) Duggan's textual selection, (4) the 20% formulaic threshold prescribed by Duggan for orality (see J. Duggan 1973a), (5) the South Slavic analogy, (6) the so-called "romantic" tendency of oralist argumentation, and (7) Calin's admitted error on the relative length of OF and SC epic (this last a fair indication of the level of Calin's comparative remarks). The remainder of the piece consists of an attack on Duggan's (1973a) methodology in assembling formulaic statistics and of an affirmation of the "literary beauty" of the chansons de geste.
Area: OF, SC, CP

Enrico Campanile. Ricerche di cultura poetica indoeuropea. Pisa: Giardini.

Considers the formal features of (reconstructed) Indo-European poetry, as well as its cultural and ideological backgrounds, by collating information from surviving ancient poetries. The witnesses summoned include the Vedas, Sanskrit, Avestan, Persian, ancient Greek, Latin, Germanic, Old English, Old Norse, and Old Irish.
Area: HI, PR, AG, LT, OE, ON, OI, CP

Jackson J. Campbell. "Oral Poetry in the Seafarer." Speculum, 35:87-96.

Disputes the oral-formulaic character of the Seafarer, finding the poem, on the basis of a formulaic analysis and consideration of its vocabulary, to be the work of a Christian lettered poet. See the response by O'Neil (1960b).
Area: OE

Alistair Campbell. "The Old English Epic Style." In English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Ed. Norman Davis and C.L. Wrenn. London: Allen and Unwin. pp. 13-26.

Posits two stages in the development of OE poetry: an earlier, oral composition of "lays" and a later, learned, monastic, and written composition of "epic." Maintains that virtually all extant OE poems were composed for a written record and that the newer style gave birth to the elaborate parallelism usually called "variation."
Area: OE

Jackson J. Campbell. "Learned Rhetoric in Old English Poetry." Modern Philology, 63:189-201.

Maintaining that not more than 10% of extant OE verse was composed by oral poets, he describes a technique of composition--practiced by Cynewulf and others--that involved older formulas, newly created formulas, and sophisticated rhetorical structures that were echoes of classical Latin figures. Illustrates the occurrence in OE of many such rhetorical figures and contends that the poet of the Wanderer, as well as many of his fellows, "constructed the details of his poem, both big and little, in a conscious manner, fully cognizant of the techniques to be learned from the Latin rhetorical tradition as well as the English alliterative tradition" (201).
Area: OE, LT, CP

Jackson J. Campbell. "Knowledge of Rhetorical Figures in Anglo-Saxon England." Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 66:1-20.

Contends that many OE poets fused Latin rhetorical and OE oral-formulaic techniques in their style. A study of the Phoenix illustrates the compatibility of these two traditions.
Area: OE, LT, CP

Alistair Campbell. "The Use in Beowulf of Earlier Heroic Verse." In England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock. Ed. Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 283-92.

In making the case for a Germanic tradition of cyclical lays and considering the evidence for earlier heroic materials in episodes like the Unferth and Finnsburh stories, he argues (contra Magoun 1955b, 1963 and Creed 1966) against the assumption of oral composition. Disagrees with often stated proposition that formulaic poetry is necessarily oral: "the style of Beowulf, with its artistic control of the formula, its avoidance of long repetitions and its careful building of long paragraphs, recalls, not so much oral epic verse, as the sophisticated development of Homeric style found in late Greek epic" (p. 292). Suggests that the Beowulf-poet wrote in his study, with the realization that recitation would be the eventual medium but that his poem would be preserved in writing.
Area: OE, CP

Jackson J. Campbell. "Adaptation of Classical Rhetoric in Old English Literature." In Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric. Ed. James J. Murphy. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 173-97.

Begins with the premise that "vernacular literature in England cannot be separated from the study of the total learned culture, which was by definition a form of Latin Christian culture" (p. 174). Reconstrues the writings of Aldhelm, Bede, Boniface, and Alcuin in terms of classical Latin influence and points out that their work was available to others from the eighth century onward. Also studies Aelfric's homilies from a similar perspective. As in his 1966 and 1967 articles, he assumes a writing, learned poet familiar with Latin rhetoric and employing it together with the formulaic method to artistic advantage: "scholars now seem to agree that by the time of the extant poetry, the formulaic style was by no means incompatible with written composition accomplished silently by erudite men in a scriptorium" (p. 189).
Area: OE, LT, CP

Raffaele Cantarella. "Omero, tra formula e poesia." In Atti del convegno internazionale sul tema: La Poesia epica e la sua formazione. Ed. Enrico Cerulli et al. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. pp. 63-77.

Aware of the research of Parry and Lord, he discusses the phenomena of oral poetry, the Mycenean Linear B, formulaic structure, the poet's originality, the Serbo-Croatian analog, and Homeric epithets. Concentrates on the diachronic perspective, Homeric language, and the relationship between formulaic density and orality.
Area: AG, CP

Michael J. Capek. "A Note on Oral Formulism in the Nibelungenlied." Modern Language Notes, 80:487-89.

Employing the techniques set forth in Cassidy 1965, he finds evidence of an oral tradition underlying the Nibelungenlied.
Area: MHG

Michael J. Capek. "A Note on Formula Development in Old Saxon." Modern Philology, 67:357-63.

Argues that certain OE and OSX formulas stem from a common ancestor and that OSX phraseology developed differently because of linguistic and prosodic changes. Feels that none of the extant OE or OSX texts were orally composed, basing his assumption on lack of formulaic thrift and the inapplicability of enjambement criteria. Suggests the texts were composed in a transitional period by literate artists in control of the oral-formulaic idiom.
Area: OSX, OE, CP

Anna Caraveli. "The Song Beyond the Song: Aesthetics and Social Interaction in Greek Folksong." Journal of American Folklore, 95:129-58.

Advocates a synthetic approach to the meaning of Greek oral folksong, combining attention to the traditional associations of structural elements with consideration of living, present social context. Argues that apparent fragments are filled out by implications and context outside the given song text: "The song is completed and made relevant by the convergence of a long tradition behind the meaning of themes and patterns of expression, the local historical and aesthetic knowledge on the part of community members, and the continuity between song and speech in both ideas and ways of expressing them" (145). Draws heavily from Lord (1960) on oral traditional structure. An excellent study with important implications for other genres and traditions.
Area: MG

D.S. Carne-Ross. "Postscript: Structural Translation." In Patrocleia of Homer. Trans. Christopher Logue. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp. 51-63.

While commenting on Parry's description of formulas and the importance of the nature of diction to a translator, he adds: "Parry did not sufficiently ask himself what happened to the Greek oral tradition... when a poet of the highest genius irrupted into this closed world of fine verse craftsmen" (p. 53).
Area: AG

Pack Carnes. Fable Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. Garland Folklore Series, Alan Dundes, General Editor. New York and London: Garland Publishing.

This bibliography contains 1457 annotations on books, articles, pamphlets, and dissertations through 1981; 1982 is partially covered. Comprehensive indexes on author, subject, fables, and tale-type are included.
Area: FK, BB

Studies in Irish Literature and History. Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies.

His guiding judgment is that Irish saga is "a literature based in part upon oral tradition, but the assumption that it is oral tradition in any very full sense cannot be made" (p. 322).
Area: OI

James Carney. The Irish Bardic Poet: A Study in the Relationship of Poet and Patron as Exemplified in the Persons of the Poet, Eochaidh o hEoghusa (O'Hussey) and His Various Patrons, Mainly Members of the Maguire Family of Fermanagh. Statutory Public Lecture of the Celtic School of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 20 March 1958. Dublin: The Dolmen Press.

A consideration in historical context of a professional poet or ollav to the Maguire family from about 1586-1602 as an example of "the more gifted of his profession down through the centuries" (p. 7). Although most of the monograph treats the sociocultural context, there is mention of his poems and their epithets, diction, and narrative structure.
Area: MI, OI

Rhys Carpenter. Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics. Sather Classical Lectures, 20. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chiefly in Chapter 1 ("Literature without Letters," pp. 1-22), he explains the background of the Iliad and Odyssey--as well as Beowulf, Russian byliny, and other medieval and ancient poetic forms--as oral tradition. Mentions the metrical formulas that comprise Homeric diction and theorizes about the transmission and recording of the poems. Argues that Parry's work constitutes the "unanswerable and unassailable proof that the Iliad and Odyssey belong to the class of oral literatures--composed in the mind and not on paper, retained in the memory and not in books, recited to audiences, heard and not read" (p. 6). The rest of his investigation, including the putative identity of AG and OE mythic patterns, assumes an anterior oral tradition.
Area: AG, OE, CP

Hazel Carter. "Poetry and Society: Aspects of Shona, Old English and Old Norse Literature." Zambezia, 3, ii:11-25.

Finds OE and Shona verse more similar in respect to certain poetic techniques than are OE and ON skaldic poetry. Assuming OE to be in large part oral traditional poetry, she finds the reason for these similarities of compounding, variation, structural parallelism, and use of kennings in the social backgrounds of OE and Shona verse-making. Notes the importance of supporting social structure, generic function, and the poet's place in the community as common to the cultures that produced the nhetembo dzorudzi (clan praises) of the Shona and the narrative and meditative poems of the Anglo-Saxons.
Area: OE, AF, CP

Jean-Paul Carton. "Oral Traditional Style in the Chanson de Roland: `Elaborate Style and Mode of Composition'." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 9:3-19.

Reviews the controversy surrounding Duggan's (1973) extension of the Parry-Lord theory to the Song of Roland and applies Miletich's (1973, 1974) methodology in an analysis of "elaborate style," or "a delay in the flow of the narrative line through the use of certain kinds of repetitions" (5) in the Roland. Concludes that the "narrative style of the Roland differs considerably from that of oral-traditional or folk poetry and indicates that the poem is not likely an orally composed text but a literary text which contains both written (or learned) as well as oral or folk stylistic elements" (5-6).
Area: OF

Frederic G. Cassidy. "How Free Was the Anglo-Saxon Scop?" In Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistics Studies in Honor of Francis P. Magoun, Jr. Ed. Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. and Robert P. Creed. New York: New York University Press. pp. 75-85.

An illustration of the relative compositional freedom of the OE singer. Since much of his diction was syntactically rather than lexically prefabricated, he was able to manipulate the actual phraseology to a much greater degree than had been suspected by some oral theorists. Based on O'Neil 1960a and Gattiker 1962.
Area: OE

Frederic G. Cassidy. "A Symbolic Word-Group in Beowulf." In Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley. Ed. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 27-34.

In examining the Christian overtones of certain word associations, he mentions the Christian transmutation of the Germanic oral-formulaic style of composition and understands this word-group (sunne, leoht, beacen, and tacen) to be part of a formulaic and recurrent network of phraseology.
Area: OE

Diego M.P. Catalán. Siete siglos de romancero. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.

Looks at the fourteenth-century roots of the romancero as a kind of news medium, especially of political news, through versions of poems on Fernán Rodriguez and the rebellion of the Jaboneros. Studies the continuity of medieval and modern works and analyzes the oral traditional character of the Moor Búcar episode involving the Cid in various texts.
Area: HI

Diego M.P. Catalán. Por Campos del romancero: Estudios sobre la tradición oral moderna. Biblioteca Románica Hispanica. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.

A study of the living Iberian oral traditions (Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan branches), with special attention to Canary Islands and Judeo-Hispanic material in North Africa and the Middle East. Collects, compares, and contrasts medieval through modern romanceros, finding the modern texts comparable in narrative agility, dramatic tension, and epic measure to the greatest of the older poems. Asserts the superiority of the little-studied Portuguese oral tradition.
Area: HI

Diego M.P. Catalán. "Memoria e invención en el Romancero de tradición oral." Romance Philology, 24:1-25, 441-63.

Proposes to investigate "la `creación' tradicional,... la génesis, transformación y enriquecimiento del Romancero oral, en tiempos antiguos y en tiempos modernos" (5). In Part I he stresses the importance of studies of the oral traditional literature of Iberian (Sephardic) Jews and their descendants worldwide, especially as a touchstone for an evolutionary view of Iberian oral literature. Takes issue with Menéndez Pidal's "traditionalism" and approves with reservations G. Di Stefano's (1968) method of synchronic analysis. In Part II he discusses and recommends Bénichou's (1968) emphasis on the comparative study of modern oral tradition.
Area: HI

Diego M.P. Catalán. "Análisis electrónico de la creación poética oral: El Programa romancero en el Computer Center de UCSD [University of California/San Diego]." In Homenaje a la memoria de Don Antonio Rodríguez-Moñino, 1910-1970. Madrid: Editorial Castalia. pp. 157-99.

A brief and preliminary presentation of a project applying computer analysis to the study of oral literature, specifically the romancero. His goal is to describe how the poems are re-created and how the cultural ambience and poetic tradition interact. Based on an experimental computer program at UCSD used to analyze the 632 versions of La Condesita.
Area: HI

Diego M.P. Catalán and Samuel G. Armistead, eds., with the collaboration of Antonio Sánchez Romeralo. El Romancero en la tradición oral moderna. 1er Coloquio Internacional. Madrid: Catédra Seminario Menéndez Pidal y Rectorado de la Universidad de Madrid.

A collection of fourteen papers, with discussion, from the first international colloquium on the romancero and oral poetry. Essays are presented under three heads: (1) "El Romancero Sefardí ayer y hoy," (2) "La Tradición oral: Perspectivas de una nueva exploración," and (3) "La Creación tradicional en el Romancero oral moderno: Nuevos métodos." Most contributions have no specific relation to oral-formulaic theory as defined by the work of Parry and Lord, but offer parallel investigation (often stylistic analysis).
Area: HI

Diego M.P. Catalán, Samuel G. Armistead, and Antonio Sánchez Romeralo, eds. El Romancero hoy: Poética, vol. 3 (Romancero y poesía oral). 20 Coloquio Internacional, University of California, Davis. Madrid: Cátedra Seminario Menéndez Pidal, 1979.

The proceedings of a symposium on the romancero and oral tradition, with sections devoted to traditional creation, structural patterns, the computer and literary analysis, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and collection and archiving. A substantial bibliography (pp. 365-89) is appended. Separately annotated are Ochrymowycz, Petersen, and Webber.
Area: HI, FB

John G. Cawelti. "The Concept of Formula in the Study of Popular Literature." Journal of Popular Culture, 3:381-90.

Calls for an approach to popular fiction through formulas, by which he means conventional narrative tropes that operate actively on an audience to convey some pattern implicitly recognized by the culture. Uses the work of Ong and McLuhan to illustrate this "conventional system for structuring cultural products" (386).
Area: CN

Hector Munro Chadwick. The Heroic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rpt. 1967.

Comparative study of two main groups of heroic poetry and traditions, the Teutonic and the Greek, with references to other literatures. Considers respective distributions, the relationships between different versions of various stories, their antiquity, and the conditions of their production, as well as the significance of their historical, mythic, and fictitious contents. Notes striking characteristics common to both groups and argues that the resemblances stem from the similarity between heroic ages.
Area: AG, OE, SC, OI, GM, CP

Nora K. Chadwick. Russian Heroic Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964.

Primarily a translation of byliny from various manuscript collections. Introduction (pp. 1-32) gives a history of collection and a discussion of structure and historical and cultural context.
Area: RU

Nora K. Chadwick. Poetry and Prophecy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Considers oral literature with emphasis on the prophetic poets of nonliterate communities. Concludes that in such communities spiritual thought and its expression are primarily traditional, having originated in some center(s) of civilization rather than in the indistinct primitive past.
Area: CP

Hector Munro Chadwick and Nora K. Chadwick. The Growth of Literature, 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rpt. 1968.

Focuses on literature, ancient to modern, produced in a culture before writing has become the conventional literary mode. Volume 1 presents descriptive analyses of the more remote or isolated ancient literatures of Europe; volume 2 treats Russian and SC oral poetry, as well as early Indian and Hebrew literature; volume 3 covers the oral literature of the Tatars and Polynesia, with shorter notes on the traditions of the North Borneans and some African peoples. Concludes with a general survey of the characteristics of oral literature: genres, types, circumstances of composition and recitation, singers. A remarkably wide-ranging and yet exacting comparative work that will not be superseded as a reference.
Area: CP

Wallace L. Chafe. "Integration and Involvement in Speaking, Writing, and Oral Literature." In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. 9. Norwood: Ablex. pp. 35-53.

A linguistic analysis of spoken and written language, with reference to Seneca oral literature and the dichotomy of colloquial and ritual language.
Area: AI, TH

Marie Chan. "Chinese Heroic Poems and European Epic." Comparative Literature, 26:142-68.

A discussion of several Chinese poetic representations of the heroic enterprise in an attempt to show that "heroic poetry" need not be limited to epic narrative but may be thought of as a genus for a number of poetic species, e.g. the elegy. Comparisons with the distribution of poetic genres in the West.
Area: CH, CP

Pierre Chantraine. "Remarques sur l'emploi des formules dans le premier chant de l'Iliade." Revue des études grecques, 45:121-54.

Finding Parry's doctrines illuminating but too rigid, he argues for the flexibility of the formulaic method. A survey of the formulas in the first book of the Iliad reveals both an adaptation of formulaic diction to specific context and an interplay between and among separate instances of the same formula.
Area: AG

Pierre Chantraine. "La Langue poétique et traditionnelle d'Homere." Conférences de l'Institut de Linguistique de l'Université de Paris, 8:33-44.

Reviews the dialectal mix of the Homeric language, which draws on the linguistic forms of diverse eras and regions. Contends that irregularities, and in general the formulaic and traditional character of Homeric diction, result from the mnemonic and metrical constraints that oral performance placed on the bard.
Area: AG

Pierre Chantraine. "La Langue de l'Iliade." In Introduction à l'Iliade. Ed. Paul Mazon. Paris: Société d'Edition "Les Belles Lettres." pp. 89-123.

Notes that "dans la langue, les formules archaîques maintenues par les exigences de la diction oral ont perpétué des éléments extrêmement anciens: à bien des égards la langue remonte à une antiquité beaucoup plus haute que la date probable où l'Iliade que nous connaissons a été composée" (p. 96). Also describes the artificial poetic dialect of Homer, Parry's concept of formula, and the singer's mode of composition (with reference to SC oral tradition).
Area: AG, SC, CP

Margaret Chaplin. "Oral-Formulaic Style in the Epic: A Progress Report." In Medieval Hispanic Studies Presented to Rita Hamilton. Ed. Alan D. Deyermond. London: Tamesis. pp. 11-20.

Finds traces of oral style as described by Parry and Lord in medieval Spanish epic, but contends that these characteristics are neither numerous nor vital and that there is insufficient thrift in the diction. Concludes that while oral techniques may have assisted in forming the poems, the epics as they now exist are learned and literate.
Area: HI, BB

Franz Charitius. "Über die angelsächsischen Gedichte vom hl. Guthlac." Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, 2:265-308.

Uses repeated phrases in an attempt to establish the authorship of Guthlac B, with references to Elene, Christ, and Juliana. Phrases grouped by wording, idea, or grammatical type. Some formulaic diction under the category of "phraseologische Material." One of the earliest contributions to the evolution of formulaic theory in OE.
Area: OE

H.J. Chaytor. From Script to Print: An Introduction to Mediaeval Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Interested in differences between written texts that are orally communicated and texts which are read.
Area: CP

Michael D. Cherniss. "Beowulf: Oral Presentation and the Criterion of Immediate Rhetorical Effect." Genre, 3:214-28.

Encourages reading Beowulf as a poem composed for oral delivery, specifically with the idea in mind that each passage has a particular momentary context. The poet included everything necessary to the presentation of his poem. Also discusses inconsistency, digression, and interpolation. Feels that the possible written method of composition does not change the argument considerably.
Area: OE

Michael D. Cherniss. Ingeld and Christ: Heroic Concepts and Values in Old English Christian Poetry. The Hague: Mouton.

Treats oral-formulaic theory and OE poetry, concentrating on Parry, Lord, and Magoun. Views Beowulf as existing as an oral heroic poem for a time before the advent of Christianity, and then undergoing a partial transformation by a literate Christian poet. As for the more obviously Christian poems, "we shall not need to assume that they are totally formulaic or orally composed so long as we can agree that they are heavily influenced by the tradition of oral-formulaic composition" (p. 20).
Area: OE

Howell D. Chickering, Jr. "Some Contexts for Bede's Death Song." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 91:91-100.

Believes that Bede composed this short poem using the traditional theme of man's ignorance concerning God's judgment on his soul. Notes five instances of this Christian vernacular theme from the OE poetic canon, including The Seafarer (ll. 39-43) and Maxims II (ll. 54-65).
Area: OE

Brevard S. Childs. "A Study of the Formula `Until this Day'." Journal of Biblical Literature, 82:279-92.

Although assuming a written transmission during which the formula in question was affixed to a received testimony for the purpose of its illocutionary force, he offers a complete morphology of the phrase--contextual and linguistic--as well as a discussion of its etiology.
Area: BI

Helen O. Chukwuma. "The Oral Nature of Traditional Poetry and Language." Journal of the Nigeria English Studies Association, 8:12-22.

A general account of the dynamics of oral traditional poetry, emphasizing the role of oral literature as the conveyor of knowledge. Using examples from Ibo texts, primarily proverbs and short songs, she illustrates typical modes of repetition and variation, including the formula, verse structure, refrain, and stanza.
Area: AF

Linda L. Clader. Helen: The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition. Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava, Supplementum 42. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Considering the evidence from the formulaic diction surrounding Helen in the Iliad and Odyssey, together with the fragmentary remains of her worship as a cult figure, she links the Homeric Helen to the Indo-European Sun-princess and consort of the Dioskouroi. Contends that this IE figure was hypostatized as the beautiful but dangerous woman of Homeric epic at the time of the uniquely Greek hypostasis of IE and Mediterranean religion and mythology.
Area: AG, IE

M.T. Clanchy. From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066-1307. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

A two-part study of the advent of functional literacy in England, the first section treating the making of records and their accumulation as a preparation for more general literacy and the second detailing the "growth of a literate mentality" (p. 2) which nonetheless included the residual use of traditional oral techniques during and after the Middle Ages. In the discussion of the spoken word in legal procedure, he notes that the narrator or pleader for the litigant was an oral performer and makes specific reference to the work of Parry and Lord: "A narrator, whether of common law pleadings or of epic and romance, had originally reconstructed his tale in due form on the basis of a few remembered formulas. He was a professional oral remembrancer, very necessary before law and literature were committed to writing" (p. 222).
Area: OE, ME, BR, CP

George Clark. "Beowulf's Armor." English Literary History, 32:409-41.

Concentrates on themes detailing (1) the impact of a weapon on a warrior's armor or on the man himself and (2) an advancing army, with special relation to reflexes of these patterns in Beowulf.
Area: OE

George Clark. "The Traveler Recognizes His Goal: A Theme in Anglo-Saxon Poetry." Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 64:645-59.

Establishes "the traveler recognizes his goal" as a theme, discusses its structure, and demonstrates that OE poets were able to manipulate its traditional contents as part of their artistic design.
Area: OE

George Clark. "Beowulf and Njálssaga." in Proceedings of the First International Saga Conference, University of Edinburgh, 1971. Ed. Peter Foote, Hermann Pálsson, and Desmond Slay. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, University College. pp. 66-87.

Notes that "both texts have their roots in a common Germanic heroic tradition" (p. 66) and shows that Njálssaga briefly re-creates a narrative pattern used in Beowulf. Argues that the ON author depended on the audience's recognition of the dragon-slaying pattern as part of the aesthetic dynamic for his work.
Area: OE, ON, GM, CP

Francelia Clark. "Flyting in Beowulf and Rebuke in The Song of Bagdad: The Question of Theme." In Oral Tradition Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983. pp. 164-93.

Compares the recurrent scene of argument in OE and SC tradition, arguing that the Parry-Lord concept of "theme" cannot account for the OE structure. Observes that the scene in Beowulf is much less consistently verbalized: half-line repetition makes up 47% of the SC, as against about 6% of the OE scene.
Area: OE, SC, CP

Howard W. Clarke. The Art of the Odyssey. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

An introduction intended for the general reader. Assumes an oral Homer working with formulas and themes, insisting that repeated elements must be appreciated because they "have a subtle effectiveness, in that they provide a stable background, a kind of security" (p. 50).
Area: AG

Howard W. Clarke. "The Oral Homer," a subsection of "Homer Anatomized." In his Homer's Readers: A Historical Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey. Newark and London/Toronto: University of Delaware Press and Associated University Presses. pp. 263-81, 304-5.

A historical account of Parry's and Lord's original scholarship and fieldwork, emphasizing the traditional units of formula and theme and the hypothesis of an oral dictated text. Criticizes the notion of theme as an inexact concept, claiming that oral theory does not work effectively beyond the level of phraseology. Also frowns on Parry's lack of study of narrative structure, the putatively over-mechanistic model and consequent lack of attention to meaning, and "the apparent denial of originality to Homer" (p. 276). Expresses doubts about the validity of the SC analogy and the call for an oral poetics independent of literary poetics. Feels that oral theory is largely extraneous to Homer's art and that if readers must have analogs, "they are more likely to look for them in works such as Paradise Lost (another epic dictated by a blind man) than in Yugoslavian songs" (p. 281). Not a rigorous or carefully researched exposition.
Area: AG, SC, CP

David B. Claus. "Aidôs in the Language of Achilles." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 105:13-28.

Counters A. Parry 1956. Feels that "whether or not... the use of formulaic speech implies thought patterns less flexible than those of non-formulaic speech,... the proposition that they bring with them a system of thought and values that is wholly inflexible seems, on examination, to be impossible" (26). At issue is the question of possibilities of meaning in formulaic diction.
Area: AG

Dee L. Clayman and Thomas van Nortwick. "Enjambement in Greek Hexameter Poetry." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 107:85-92.

Terms Parry's statistics on enjambement unreliable because (1) he did not choose samples randomly, (2) he analyzed only three poems, and (3) he did not employ standard statistical tests for significance. On the basis of new data and a revised methodology, they claim that "enjambement cannot be used as evidence for judging the influence of oral composition on style or for establishing any relative chronology among hexameter poems" (91).
Area: AG

Dorothy Clement and Benjamin N. Colby. "Folk Narrative." In Current Trends in Linguistics 12: Linguistics and Adjacent Arts and Sciences; vol. 2, pt. 3: Linguistics and the Verbal Arts. Ed. Thomas A. Sebeok. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 809-33.

A brief review of various schools of folk narrative analysis, including "The Generative Approach of Lord and Parry" (pp. 811-12).
Area: CP, TH

Carol J. Clover. "Scene in Saga Composition." Arkiv für nordisk filologi, 89:57-83.

Explores the compositional status of the "scene," considering questions of fixity versus flexibility, traditional structure, the relationship of formulas to scenes, and the place of oral tradition in the development of saga. Feels the saga shows both traditional composition and conscious artistry, and that the scene unit had at some earlier time an oral antecedent.
Area: ON

Carol J. Clover. "Hárbarsljó as Generic Farce." Scandinavian Studies, 51:124-45.

Finds the H. a parody of the tradition of the sennamannjafnar (verbal contest) that invokes the context of Germanic flyting, a set piece which draws on "a common stock of clichés which are sufficiently genre-specific to identify the nature of the exchange despite considerable variation in matters of length, elaborateness, mode (prose or poetry), formal status (dependent or independent), and intention" (125).
Area: ON, OE, GM, CP

Carol J. Clover. "The Germanic Context of the Unferth Episode." Speculum, 55:444-68.

Analyzes the Germanic type-scene of flyting with respect to setting, contenders and dramatic situation, structure (Claim, Defense, and Counterclaim), content, and outcome. Applies the general outline gathered from about 40 occurrences in Eddic poetry, Saxo Grammaticus, classical saga, legendary saga, and elsewhere to the Unferth episode in Beowulf, concluding that the Beowulfian instance of verbal contest follows the larger Germanic pattern and should be read against that background.
Area: ON, OE, GM, CP

Carol J. Clover and John Lindow, eds. Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide. Islandica, 45. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

A critical handbook on the corpus of Old Norse and Old Icelandic literature including references on the saga, the epic, and other oral or oral-derived genres.
Area: ON

Margaret Clunies Ross. "Modes of Formal Performance in Societies without Writing: The Case of Aboriginal Australia." Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1:16-26.

Describes the oral traditions of the Australian Aborigines, describing the "formal performance" as possessing three characteristics: "firstly, that those who practice them consciously consider them to constitute an entity separable from other behavior sets; secondly, that the entity possesses consistent structural features over and above those of the communication medium itself; and thirdly, that it is performed in specific contexts that the practitioners recognise as conventional and appropriate" (18). Enumerates the characteristics of non-literate modes of formal performance. Conlcudes that "as Aborigines, unaccustomed to separating words and melodies, cannot easily dissociate them, one assumes that both elements have a part to play in the conveyance of that associative particularity of meaning of emblems and events that lies at the heart of Aboriginal formal performance" (23).
Area: AU

Margaret Clunies Ross and Stephen A. Wild. "Formal Performance: The Relations of Music, Text, and Dance in Arnhem Land Clan Songs." Ethnomusicology, 28:209-35.

Analyzes the effect of dance upon the musical and textual components of formal mortuary rites of the Arnhem Land aborigines. Concludes that such performances must be studied as an integrated whole, and emphasizes interdisciplinary study "eliminating barriers between the component disciplines in the training of researchers" (210).
Area: AU

Fausto Codino. Einführung in Homer. Berlin: De Gruyter.

An introduction to Homer intended for the layman, this study includes discussion of pre-Homeric and Homeric Greece, a review of scholarship to the eighteenth century, and brief remarks on epic characterization, religion and mythology, and epic composition.
Area: AG

Fausto Codino, ed. La Questione omerica. Strumenti per la ric. interdiscipl., 18. Rome: Ed. Riuniti.

A collection of reprinted articles or sections of books translated into Italian. Pertinent contributions by Kirk (pp. 78-99), Havelock (pp. 100-10), Mazon (pp. 139-57), and Page (pp. 158-75).
Area: AG

Michael Coffey. "The Function of the Homeric Simile." American Journal of Philology, 78:113-32.

During the course of discussing the various possibilities for expression in Homeric similes, he concludes that "the short comparison as found in both the Iliad and the Odyssey has certain marks which suggest that it was a formula to assist the process of improvised oral composition" (114). Feels that longer similes are probably late and learned.
Area: AG

Ralph Cohen, ed. Oral Cultures and Oral Performance. Special issue of New Literary History, 8, iii.

A group of essays, largely theoretical in orientation, on various aspects of oral tradition. Separately annotated are Ngal, Scheub, Havelock, Ong (1977b), Hymes, Tedlock, Beardsley, and Kellogg (1977a).
Area: AF, AG, AI, HI, TH, CP

David William Cohen. "Reconstructing a Conflict in Bonafu: Seeking Evidence Outside the Narrative Tradition." In The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Ed. by Joseph C. Miller. Hamden, CN: Archon, pp. 201-20.

Relates the tale of the conflict between Womanfu and Nofa, arguing that the story, as well as the depiction of the context of which it formed a part, reveals the character of the political situation in the pre-colonial Lake Plateau region.
Area: AF

Clark Colahan and Alfred Rodriguez. "Traditional Semitic Forms of Reversability in Sem Tob's Proverbios Morales." Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13:33-50.

Cites evidence that the Castilian Proverbios Morales ultimately employ Semitic literary forms which "derive from an antithetical rhetorical tradition in medieval Semitic literature" (33). Proposes that such a stylistic feature suggests an intellectual relativism in the author's world view.
Area: HI, CP

Benjamin N. Colby and Michael Cole. "Culture, Memory and Narrative." In Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies. Ed. Robin Horton and Ruth Finnegan. London: Faber and Faber. pp. 63-9l.

A prolegomenon to a study of the relation between cultural processes and cognitive skills, with special attention to the Parry-Lord research on the SC guslar.
Area: AF, MY, SC, CP

Janet Coleman. "Memory, Preaching, and the Literature of a Society in Transition." In her Medieval Readers and Writers 1350-1400. New York and London: Columbia University Press and Hutchinson & Co. pp. 157-84.

Covers topics such as writing and remembering, the connection between the Alliterative Revival and oral composition, and the changing character of narrative. Feels that the line separating oral and written literature is "not clearcut" and so explains the fourteenth-century texts that show both literary art and oral structure as hybrid works.
Area: ME

Rowland L. Collins. "Introduction." In Beowulf. Trans. Lucien D. Pearson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 9-31.

Includes discussion of the story of Caedmon, formulaic diction, oral composition, and the SC analog, suggesting that literate Christian poets were able to use the formulaic tradition to translate Latin learning into the native OE medium.
Area: OE, CP

Frederick M. Combellack. "Omitted Speech Formulas in Homer." University of California Publications in Classical Philology, 12:43-56.

Treats what he calls the hos pháto dialogue transition, which appears 21 times in Homer. Concludes (1) that Homer has a clear and regular technique for the use of this formula, (2) that all apparent exceptions to this technique can be explained as situations in which the available formulas are somehow inappropriate, and (3) that this regularity presents important evidence of the integrity of the textual tradition.
Area: AG

Frederick M. Combellack. "Contemporary Unitarians and Homeric Originality." American Journal of Philology, 71:337-64.

Expresses concern that then-ascendant Unitarians may precipitate their own downfall by insisting on Homer's creation of some original character, motif, or scene as a demonstration of his supreme excellence. Discusses and discards numerous scholarly examples of Homer's originality before attacking those who assume that Homer as a great poet must also have been a great inventor.
Area: AG

Frederick M. Combellack. "Words that Die." Classical Journal, 46:21-26.

A contribution to the discussion of épea pteróenta ("winged words")--their formulaic character and possible meaning (cp. Calhoun 1935 and Parry 1937). Understands a limited denotation for this stock designation, claiming that Homer means to indicate "that words are evanescent things which fly away and do not persist after being uttered" (24-25).
Area: AG

Frederick M. Combellack. "Contemporary Homeric Scholarship: Sound or Fury?" Classical World, 49:17-26, 29-55.

Presents a survey of Homeric scholarship from January 1939 to April 1955 in the form of a survey of trends in the main fields of scholarship, including oral poetry; Unitarian versus Analyst studies; Homer the poet; text, language, and transmission; art and archaeology; and influence and translation.
Area: AG, BB

Frederick M. Combellack. "Milman Parry and Homeric Artistry." Comparative Literature, 11:193-208.

Suggests that Parry's ideas deny Homer creativity and remove from the epics much of the artistry and beauty described by generations of readers and critics. Cites examples of "especially appropriate" diction whose formulaic nature must now subvert its particularly striking effect. Treats Homeric humor from a similar perspective. Worries that critics can no longer distinguish between the convenience of formulaic diction and the occasional occurrence of le mot juste.
Area: AG

Frederick M. Combellack. "Some Formulary Illogicalities in Homer." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 96:41-56.

Attempts to explain some passages involving apparent logical inconsistencies as instances of the misuse of the "required" or "normal" formula in an unusual narrative situation.
Area: AG

Frederick M. Combellack. "Homer the Innovator." Classical Philology, 71:44-55.

Finds unwarranted the claims for (1) freshly invented characters, (2) newly invented episodes, and (3) manipulation and modification of traditional formulaic diction. After considering various arguments on the third issue, he concludes that "the remarkably small number of instances in which Homer seems to have employed a deliberately chosen unusual phraseology makes it all but certain that this was a kind of innovation in which he either had very little interest or had very little ability. A fair further conclusion from this would be that he very seldom employed the normal formulas with the deliberate purpose of producing an especially fine original effect" (55).
Area: AG

Frederick M. Combellack. "Two Blameless Homeric Characters." American Journal of Philology, 103:361-72.

Treats two famous cruces in which the adjective amumon ("blameless") is applied to Aegisthus and Pandarus in apparent disregard of their hardly blameless actions. Argues that they are not "generically" appropriate, as Parry contended, but rather that they name one specific aspect (and not the whole) of the immediate context. Compare Amory Parry 1973.
Area: AG

Domenico Comparetti. Il Kalevala; o la poesia tradizionale dei Finni. Rome: Accademia dei Lincei, 1891. Trans. by Isabella M. Anderton, with intro. by Andrew Lang, as The Traditional Poetry of the Finns. London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.

An early study of the traditional form of the rune, with a section on composition (trans., pp. 116-57) and speculations on myth and the origins of epic. Along with the work of Murko, this book was an important influence on Parry as he made the step from "traditional" to "oral" poetry (see especially Parry 1932).
Area: FN

John W. Conlee. "A Note on Verse Composition in The Meters of Boethius." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 71:576-85.

Argues, on the basis of the high formulaic density of the Meters, that they and much other OE poetry were composed "within a lettered tradition which had thoroughly assimilated the formulaic style" (579).
Area: OE

Bridget Connelly. "The Structure of Four Bani Hilal Tales: Prolegomena to the Study of Sira Literature." Journal of Arabic Literature, 4:18-47.

Contends that much scholarly confusion over the al-sira tales in Middle Arabic (a genre similar to epic) can be cleared up by recognizing their orality. A detailed comparison of four tales reveals formulaic variation on various levels and a Lévi-Straussian "mythic function" (that is, the movement from systematic oppositions toward their resolution).
Area: AR

Patrick Conner. "Schematization of Oral-Formulaic Processes in Old English Poetry." Language & Style, 5:204-20.

Describes a transformational generative grammar for OE formulaic composition.
Area: OE

Dwight Conquergood. "Boasting in Anglo-Saxon England: Performance and the Heroic Ethos" Literature in Performance: A Journal of the Literary and Performing Arts, 1, ii:24-35.

An attempt to offset the opinion that boasting is overproud behavior in OE poetry and to illustrate the "complexity and sophistication of the boast as a genre of cultural performance" (34). Sees the formal boast as an oral expression of group solidarity, analogous in that respect to the building of the great meadhall Heorot.
Area: OE

Carl Conrad. "Traditional Patterns of Word-Order in Latin Epic from Ennius to Vergil." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 69:195-258.

Recognizing the traditional, formulaic character of Homeric diction, and especially of the caesura-system and metrical cola to the extent that they condition placement of formulaic elements, he explains how later Greek and Latin habits of word-order evolve from Homeric practice. Notes that "Vergil was most himself and most Roman in that he was most loyal among the Roman poets to Homer" and that "appropriation of a tradition means more than just devotion and adherence to inherited forms; it means the mastery of inherited forms and the expression of one's own national and personal character through them" (254).
Area: LT, AG, CP

Patricia Conroy, ed. Ballads and Ballad Research: Selected Papers of the International Conference on Nordic and Anglo-American Ballad Research, University of Washington, Seattle, May 2-6, 1977. Seattle: University of Washington.

A collection of articles on origins, oral tradition, language, motifs and themes, collections and classifications, and history and heritage. Separately annotated are Beatie, Holzapfel, Nicolaisen, Nygard, Ochrymowycz, Petersen, Richmond, Ward, and Webber.
Area: FB, CP

Patricia Conroy. "Oral Composition in Faroese Ballads." Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung, 25:34-50.

Begins with a short review of Parry-Lord theory as applied to folksong. Examines the ballad repertoire of a Faroese singer for formulas and themes against the sociocultural background. Explains apparently contradictory results of formulaic analysis (some songs show high densities, others quite low) and thematic analysis (hints of a memorized text) in terms of performance and transmission habits in Faroese society.
Area: FA, FB

Elizabeth Constantinides. "Andreiomeni: The Female Warrior in Greek Folk Songs." Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 1:63-72.

A structuralist analysis of conventions employed in the description of female warriors in Greek folk songs.
Area: AG, MG

Jenny Cook-Gumperz and John Gumperz. "From Oral to Written Culture: The Transition to Literacy." In Writing: The Nature, Development, and Teaching of Written Communication, vol. 1: Variation in Writing: Functional and Linguistic-Cultural Differences. Ed. Marcia Farr Whiteman. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp. 89-109.

During a discussion on intracultural change and literacy, they take note of differences between oral and written cultures (espec. pp. 90-97), expounding the conclusions of Lord (1960) and Havelock (1963) and noting that with the advent of literacy, (1) writing systems change the nature of the storage and transmission of knowledge, (2) acquiring cultural knowledge and the activities of daily life become separated, and (3) methods of reasoning modulate correspondingly.
Area: TH

Thomas D. Cooke. "Formulaic Diction and the Artistry of Le chevalier qui recovra l'amor de sa dame." Romania, 94:232-40.

Although the OF fabliaux were composed in the written rather than oral medium, the tale under examination shows one seventh of its 254 lines to be formulas expressing the ideas of haste, speed, or impatience. Feels these formulas contribute aesthetically toward the comic climax, serving a parodic function that distinguishes them from the formulas of other genres.
Area: OF

Mary P. Coote. "Yugoslavia: Bibliographical Spectrum." In The Multinational Literature of Yugoslavia. Ed. Albert B. Lord. New York: St. John's University. [= Review of National Literature, 5, i]. pp. 127-40.

This review of research, scholarship, and criticism on major Yugoslav literary works includes mention of the primary collections of oral literature and of the development of oral theory.
Area: SC, BB

Robert B. Coote. "The Application of the Oral Theory to Biblical Hebrew Literature." In Oral Tradition and Old Testament Studies. Ed. Robert C. Culley. Special issue of Semeia, 5, i:51-64.

Briefly reconstrues Parry-Lord oral theory and, cautioning that each oral tradition must be allowed its individual features such as prosody and other aspects of language, he examines the Hebrew oral formula. Judges against seeing the formula as a parallel word pair (after Whallon 1963) and in favor of Culley's concept of "a repeated phrase a line or colon long" (1967: p. 32). Difficulties include the uncertain nature of the Hebrew poetic line, a sample too small to make formulaic density studies meaningful, and unmeasurable thrift (because of the unknown authorship of the material and the stylistic tendency toward parallelism). Feels that nonetheless there are clear signs that the surviving poetry emerged from an oral tradition and that this minimal theory helps to explain structure and manuscript variants.
Area: BI, HB, AG, SC, CP

Mary P. Coote. "Women's Songs in Serbo-Croatian." Journal of American Folklore, 90:331-38.

Relates to the social context the customary division of SC folksongs into the classes of heroic songs, women's songs (zhenske pjesme), and borderline songs. Examines a sampling of the three types, using Lomax's 22-category system for the analysis of the semantic content of folksongs.
Area: SC

Mary P. Coote. "Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction ot the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 257-85.

A thorough history of the oral epic tradition of the South Slavs, as represented in the various song cycles and collections. Discussion of performance and composition includes descriptions of formula, theme, and story pattern. Full bibliography of scholarship by both native researchers and the Parry-Lord school in this country. A superb introduction to the SC oral epic tradition.
Area: SC, BB

Mary P. Coote. "The Singer's Themes in Serbocroatian Heroic Song." California Slavic Studies, 11:201-35.

A comprehensive thematic analysis of the repertoire of the Parry-Lord guslar Camil Kulenovic. Distinguishes (after Bynum 1970) "paradigmatic" themes, general narrative ideas expressed in variable motifs, from "compositional" themes, narrative units that repeat a set of formulas. By studying thematic morphology, she illustrates how the singer relies more on compositional themes in his longer songs and goes on to postulate a five-part taxonomy of narrative multiforms, only the most formulaic of which are especially "useful" during composition in performance. Also discusses the role of sound patterns, syntactic balancing, "marker" phrases, and clusters of repeated lines. A model study: careful investigation of a large mass of material from a known oral tradition.
Area: SC

Mary P. Coote. "Lying in Passages." In Oral Tradition. Ed. John Miles Foley. A special issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies. pp. 5-23.

Investigation of an important motif in the "Return Song" subgenre of epic, carried out from a comparative viewpoint.
Area: SC, AG, TK, RU, CP

Trevor Cope, ed., coll. by James Stuart and trans. by David Malcolm. Izibongo: Zulu Praise-Poems. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Includes a section on the "appreciation" of these oral poems, with discussion of the reciter, method of delivery, function of the poems, nature and content, and prosodic developments. A collection of representative examples, in both the original and translation, is appended.
Area: AF

Raymond J. Cormier. "Tradition and Sources: The Jackson-Loomis Controversy Re-examined." Folklore, 83:101-21.

Supports Kenneth Jackson in his criticisms of R.S. Loomis' "Celtic hypothesis" for the origination of the Arthurian legends. Reviewing recent work on the meaning of oral tradition, he argues that oral "conservatism" needs to be taken into account and that "face-to-face participation and pact between respected tradition-bearer (the `singer of tales') and his receptive community of listeners (a commonplace among folklorists) lies at the heart of the Jackson-Loomis rift" (108-9).
Area: FK, CP

Raymond J. Cormier. "The Problem of Anachronism: Recent Scholarship on the French Medieval Romances of Antiquity," Philological Quarterly, 53:145-57.

Argues that the generally recognized features of oral culture--among them orality, dynamism, and polemicism--fit the twelfth-century audience of romances only in part.
Area: OF

Raymond J. Cormier. "Anonymity and Oralism in the Táin." Studia Celtica, 14-15:66-70.

Describes the anonymity of medieval literature, the admixture of prose and poetry, rhythm and rhyme, memorization, and alliterative epithets as these matters bear on the orality of the Táin.
Area: OI

Muriel Cornell. "Varieties of Repetition in Old English Poetry, Especially in The Wanderer and The Seafarer." Neophilologus, 65:292-307.

A study of the rhetorical design of repetition, with attention to alliteration (semantic emphasis, rhythmical regularity, and linkage of lines), repeated morphemic units (echo-words, compound elements, and synonyms), and repeated syntactic groups (including formulas). Interested in demonstrating a conscious stylistic design involving traditional elements and in differentiating the Wanderer and Seafarer poets.
Area: OE

R. Cornevin. "Les Poèmes épiques africains et la notion d'épopée vivante." Présence africaine, n.s. 60:140-45.

Claims that Rene Louis' definition of "l'épopée vivante" (1958) as orally transmitted heroic narrative has wide applicability throughout Africa. Further suggests that African narrative may provide a model for the comparative study of the Chanson de Roland and other medieval poems.
Area: AF, OF, CP

Manuel da Costa Fontes. "D. Duardos in the Portuguese Oral Tradition." Romance Philology, 30:589-608.

Notes that the ballad employed by Gil Vicente to close his Tragicomedia de Don Duardos (c. 1525) was transmitted in both oral and written traditions. Studies the major variants of the original in Portuguese oral tradition.
Area: HI

Florian Coulmas, ed. Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardized Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech. Rasmus Rask Studies in Pragmatic Linguistics, vol. 2. The Hague: Mouton.

Part I contains seven essays on the use of patterned phraseology, called "formulas" by some of the authors, in Greek, Turkish, Lithuanian, Arabic, Japanese, and American English. Separately annotated in this volume are Tannen and Oztek.
Area: TH

Harold Courlander. The Drum and the Hoe: Life and Lore of the Haitian People. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rpt. 1973.

A principally ethnological and musicological study that includes many examples and analyses of the various genres of Haitian oral tradition.
Area: HA, MU

Sr. Francis D. Covella. "Grammatical Evidence of Multiple Authorship in Piers Plowman." Language & Style, 9:3-16.

Identifies 17 major grammatical patterns and analyzes the A-, B-, and C-texts of the poem to argue against the assumption of single authorship. Also briefly notes a corresponding formulaic contrast among the three versions (11).
Area: ME

P.C. Craigie. "A Note on `Fixed Pairs' in Ugaritic and Early Hebrew Poetry." Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 22:140-43.

Questions the importance of fixed pairs as an indication of a common traditional poetic diction for Syro-Palestinian literatures and as a critical tool for the interpretation of vexed passages.
Area: HB, UG, BI, CP

P.C. Craigie. "The Problem of Parallel Word Pairs in Ugaritic and Hebrew Poetry." Semitics, 5:48-58.

Argues for caution in considering M.J. Dahood's proposal (Ras Shamra Parallels, vol. 1) that the cognate parallel word-pairs in Ugaritic and Biblical poetry constitute evidence of a "Canaanite thesaurus from whose resources the Ugaritic and Hebrew poets alike drew" (Dahood, p. 74).
Area: HB, UG, CP

Owen C. Cramer. "Ulysses the Good? What is the Formula at Od. 2.71, 3.98, 4.328?" Transactions of the American Philological Association, 104:77-80.

Stresses the importance of reading the context of formulaic expressions. In this connection he claims that esthlòs Odysseús is not a formula, esthlòs being an epithet of patér.
Area: AG

Robert P. Creed. "Studies in the Techniques of Composition of the Beowulf Poetry in British Museum MS. Cotton Vitellius A. xv." Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University.

An often cited source, along with Magoun 1953a, for evidence of formulaic structure in the poem. A brief introduction on formulaic scholarship from the nineteenth century on. Major contribution is a formulaic analysis of all of Beowulf based on the poem itself, finding a high density (e.g., 19% whole-verse repeats).
Area: OE

Robert P. Creed. "Beowulf 2231a: sinc-faet (sohte)." Philological Quarterly, 35:206-8.

An emendation offered on the basis of formulaic evidence.
Area: OE

Robert P. Creed. "The andswarode-System in Old English Poetry." Speculum, 32:523-28.

Illustrates how the andswarode phrase serves as an "oral question mark" at the beginning of a speech. Elaborates the formulaic morphology in a number of different OE poems, pointing out that the essential idea remains the same. Comparative references to similar expressions in AG and SC.
Area: OE, AG, SC, CP

Robert P. Creed. "Genesis 1316." Modern Language Notes, 73:321-25.

A second emendation offered on the basis of formulaic evidence (see Creed 1956).
Area: OE

Robert P. Creed. "The Making of an Anglo-Saxon Poem." English Literary History, 26:445-54. Rpt. with "Additional Remarks" in The Beowulf Poet: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Donald K. Fry, Jr. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. pp. 141-53.

One of the classic contributions to oral-formulaic theory in OE (and also comparatively), and one which has inspired much lively debate. Remakes lines 356-59 of Beowulf in the traditional style, illustrating the flexibility and multiformity of oral traditional structures in the composition of alliterative poetry. Redefines the formula as "a word or group of words regularly employed under certain strictly determined metrical conditions to express a given essential idea" (BP, p. 143). "Additional Remarks" in the BP reprint respond to Stevick 1962, Lawrence 1966, and others who had reacted to the original article, debating the role of memory and the nature of the formulaic repertoire of a traditional singer.
Area: OE

Robert P. Creed. "On the Possibility of Criticizing Old English Poetry." Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 3:97-106.

Sees a possibility for originality in composition not at the level of formulaic diction but at the level of theme. Understands the single occurrence of a theme as reverberating not simply against parallel passages within a work, but also, and more comprehensively, against the poet's and audience's knowledge of the theme in the entire poetic tradition. A significant step forward in solving the problem of aesthetics and oral traditional structure.
Area: OE

Robert P. Creed. "The Singer Looks at His Sources." Comparative Literature, 14:44-52. Rpt. in Studies in Old English Literature in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur. Ed. Stanley B. Greenfield. Eugene: University of Oregon, 1963. Rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1973. pp. 44-52.

Examines the theme of the singer in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Beowulf. The reference to earlier moments in tradition as a source for the present performance constitutes the main idea of the pattern, which provides a compositional way of unifying the texts. Feels that the portraits of Demodokos and the Beowulfian singer on horseback indicate considerably more than memorization and recapitulation, illustrating true re-creation of songs in the traditional manner. Compare Opland 1976a.
Area: OE, AG, CP

Robert P. Creed. "Afterword" to Beowulf. Trans. Burton Raffel. New York: Mentor, et seq. pp. 123-48.

Discusses the singer's art of composing with traditional themes and formulas, as well as the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, historical background, the influence of Christianity, and the poet's skillful development of Beowulf's character through action and dialogue.
Area: OE

Robert P. Creed. "...wél-hwel gecwæ[[pi]]: The Singer as Architect." Tennessee Studies in Literature, 11:131-43.

Contradicts Magoun's (1958b, 1963) view of a divided Beowulf text by interpreting the title phrase as a sign of an oral telling with links among the major fight-scenes. Posits an oral-dictated text (after Lord 1953a).
Area: OE

Robert P. Creed, ed. Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays. Providence: Brown University Press.

A collection of papers on various aspects of OE verse. Relevant to the present purpose and separately annotated are Bessinger, Nist, Renoir, Creed (1967b), Bonjour, Isaacs, Greenfield (1967b), and Taylor.
Area: OE, CP

Robert P. Creed. "The Art of the Singer: Three Old English Tellings of the Offering of Isaac." In Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays. Ed. Robert P. Creed. Providence: Brown University Press. pp. 69-92.

Studies the one prose and two poetic versions of the Isaac episode comparatively. Scores the Genesis A version for performance by a singer-poet and discusses its oral nature.
Area: OE

Robert P. Creed. "Widsith's Journey through Germanic Tradition." In Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John C. McGalliard. Ed. Lewis E. Nicholoson and Dolores W. Frese. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 376-87.

Making comparative references to ancient Greek and African oral performers (see especially Havelock 1963), he argues for maintaining the manuscript reading of the opening lines of Widsith, which he understands as a poem about "the singer singing within an oral tradition" (p. 387).
Area: OE, CP

Robert P. Creed. "The Beowulf-Poet: Master of Sound-Patterning." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers, rpt. 1983). pp. 194-216.

Applies Peabody's (1975) methodology to Beowulf, analyzing the text for phonemic redundancy, formula, enjambement, theme, and song, explaining the need to view and interpret Beowulf as a traditional work. Ranges from close philological scrutiny to phenomenological commentary.
Area: OE, AG, CP

Robert P. Creed. "Is There an Ancient Gnome in Beowulf Line 4?" Folklore Forum, 13:109-26.

The three alliterating nouns in line 4 of Beowulf--Scyld, Scefing, and scea[[pi]]e[na]--carry the etymological meanings of "cut, bunch or tuft, and injure" (115) in an archaic association possibly dating back to the Neolithic revolution. Feels that this information, preserved in the oral "verse dialect," has been relocated into a historical and heroic context appropriate to the needs of the Beowulf-poet.
Area: OE, IE, CP

Robert P. Creed. "Sound-Patterning in Some Sung and Dictated Performances of Avdo Medjedovic." In Oral Tradition. Ed. John Miles Foley. Special issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, pp. 116-21.

Treats the function of sound-patterning in the narrative composition of the greatest of recorded Yugoslav guslari. Compare Lord 1956b.
Area: SC

Robert P. Creed. "The Basis of the Meter of Beowulf." In Approaches to Beowulfian Scansion. Old English Colloquim Series, No. 1. Ed. with intro. and sel. bibliography by Alain Renoir and Ann Hernández. Berkeley: University of California/Berkeley Old English Colloquium, pp. 27-36.

Describes computer-assisted procedures for lineation of the manuscript and identification of four measures per poetic line, proposing the measure as the archetypal unit of OE verse.
Area: OE

Ruth Crosby. "Oral Delivery in the Middle Ages." Speculum, 11:88-110.

Part I consists of an encyclopedic summary of textual evidence on oral recitation in the Middle Ages, with remarks on ancient practice as well. Includes portraits of reciters and of common situations for performance. In Part II, a consideration of the characteristics of orally recited poetry, she discusses the nature of repetition (espec. 102-8), relating formulas and stock phrases directly and explicitly to oral delivery. This article is of course too early to be in the Parry-Lord school, but Crosby is very close to anticipating a number of their later conclusions.
Area: OE, ME, OF, CP

Ruth Crosby. "Chaucer and the Custom of Oral Delivery." Speculum, 13:413-32.

Adduces textual evidence of Chaucer's awareness of an aural audience in the form of (1) direct address and (2) "the conventional language of poetry intended for oral recitation by the minstrel" (420). Includes introductory phrases and formulas in this latter category. Points out that Chaucer's aim in using "verse-tags" was to maintain the interest of his fourteenth-century oral audience.
Area: ME

J. E. Cross. "On `The Wanderer' Lines 80-84: A Study of a Figure and a Theme." Vetenskaps-societen i Lund Årsbok [for 1958-59]:75-110.

Argues for a Latin Christian source for the sum-figure in The Wanderer and other Old English poems, contra Magoun's (1955b) explanation using the "Beasts of Battle" theme.
Area: OE

Frank M. Cross. Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

See especially Chapter 6 ("The Song of the Sea and Canaanite Myth," pp. 11- 44), in which he says of the mythic cycle of Ba'l and 'Anat: "There can be no doubt that this poetic cycle was orally composed. It is marked by oral formulae, by characteristic repetitions, and by fixed pairs of synonyms (a type of formula) in traditional thought rhyme (parallelismus membrorum) which marks Semitic oral literature as well as much of the oral literature throughout the world" (p. 112).
Area: BI, HB, UG, CP

Frank M. Cross. "Prose and Poetry in the Mythic and Epic Texts from Ugarit." Harvard Theological Review, 67:1-15.

Argues that this material was composed "in poetic formulae and patterns which reveal original oral composition" (1). Various instances of "formulaic confusion" suggest errors in dictation by the singer and permit (where parallel texts exist) the reconstruction of a putative original.
Area: UG

Daniel Crowley. I Could Talk Old-Story Good: Creativity in Bahamian Folklore. Folklore Studies: 17. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Although it does not explicitly employ Parry-Lord terminology or method, this study examines a coherent oral story tradition in terms of formula, motif, and characteristic variation.
Area: BH

David K. Crowne. "The Hero on the Beach: An Example of Composition by Theme in Anglo-Saxon Poetry." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 61:362-72.

Describes the recurrent theme of "(1) a hero on the beach (2) with his retainers (3) in the presence of a flashing light (4) as a journey is completed (or begun)" (368). Explains the similarities between Beowulf and Andreas not as literary borrowing, as had been conventionally assumed, but as evidence of a common oral tradition. This article was to prove truly seminal, spawning a number of studies of the same theme in OE and ME.
Area: OE

Robert C. Culley. "An Approach to the Problem of Oral Tradition." Vetus Testamentum, 13:113-25.

Claims that despite Biblical scholars' frequent invocation of "oral tradition" as a factor in the early transmission of Old Testament texts, the term has been inconsistently and imprecisely used. Work in analogous traditions by the Chadwicks (1932-40) and Lord (1960), who underscore the role of improvisation and memorization, traditional elements, and audience, should help to articulate more clearly the process of textual hypostasis as well as the complexities of determining which stage in that process each surviving text represents.
Area: BI, CP

Robert C. Culley. Oral Formulaic Language in the Biblical Psalms. Near and Middle East Series, vol. 4. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

After three opening chapters dealing thoroughly with the notions of oral-formulaic composition, formulaic and thematic structure, and oral traditional texts, he turns the Parry-Lord method to the analysis of the psalms. Discovers a formulaic density in the texts ranging from 40 to 65 percent. Interprets these figures as strong evidence for oral-formulaic language but not necessarily for oral-formulaic composition. Discusses the possible meaning of his findings in the larger Biblical and Near Eastern contexts. Appendix on the work of Parry and Lord and their influence on a variety of analyses in other literatures.
Area: BI, CP

Robert C. Culley. "Metrical Analysis of Classical Hebrew Poetry." In Essays on the Ancient Semitic World. Ed. J.W. Wevers and D.B. Redford. Toronto Semitic Texts and Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 12-28.

Reviews various opinions on the metrical structure of Biblical Hebrew poetry and suggests a descriptive approach through syllable count. Mentions during the discussion of methodology the additional problems posed by orally composed poetry: "we do not know which texts were composed and transmitted orally or how such texts came to be written down" (p. 13). Notes the features of dialect and parallelism typical of oral traditional material.
Area: BI, HB

Robert C. Culley. "Oral Tradition and Historicity." In Studies on the Ancient Palestinian World (Presented to Professor F. V. Winnett on the Occasion of His Retirement, 1 July 1971). Ed. J. W. Wevers and D. B. Redford. Toronto Semitic Texts and Studies, 2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 102-16.

A survey of books and articles dealing with the problem of the historicity of oral historical sources, in particular what sorts of accuracy and "forgetting" can be expected to occur. Possible implications of these crosscultural studies for biblical scholarship.
Area: BI, CP

Robert C. Culley, ed. Oral Tradition and Old Testament Studies. Special issue of Semeia, 5.

See the separate annotations: Culley (1976b), Long, R. Coote, Wittig, Lord (1976b), Whitaker, Urbrock, Van Seters, and Gunn (1976b).
Area: BI, CP

Robert C. Culley. "Oral Tradition and the Old Testament: Some Recent Discussion." In Oral Tradition and Old Testament Studies. Ed. Robert C. Culley. Special issue of Semeia, 5, i:1-33.

Coherent treatment of oral literary techniques, primarily of Parry-Lord theory, and Old Testament studies. Bibliography and topics like formula, theme, texts and variants, and comparative studies.
Area: BI, BB, CP

Robert C. Culley. Studies in the Structure of Hebrew Narrative. Semeia Supplements, 3. Missoula and Philadelphia: Scholars Press and Fortress Press.

An extensive introduction on the "Oral Transmission of Prose" (Chapter 1, pp. 1-32) considers various previous studies of the problem and concludes that the consensus of investigators is that different kinds of patterns can be detected in oral prose and that more analysis is needed to clarify their characteristics. Remainder of the volume is spent analyzing various Biblical texts for episodic patterns and narrative structures which may (he suggests tentatively) be viewed as deriving ultimately from an oral prose tradition. Recommends that "in view of the general difficulty of establishing the precise degree to which biblical texts are related to oral, it may be more useful to speak in terms of more traditional and less traditional, indicating by this the relative level of redundancy or amount of repeated elements of different kinds found in the text" (p. 118).
Area: BI, HB

Michael Curschmann. "Spielmannsepik: Wege und Ergebnisse der Forschung von 1907-1965." Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 40:434-78, 597-647.

An omnibus review of scholarship on Spielmannsepik, including a consideration of oral theory in the section on "Sprachstil" (605-14).
Area: MHG

Michael Curschmann. "Oral Poetry in Mediaeval English, French, and German Literature: Some Notes on Recent Research." Speculum, 42:36-52. Rpt. in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 469-96.

A wide-ranging overview covering many topics and drawing together several independent yet related lines of relevant research. Includes description of contemporary developments and critiques of terminology and theoretical explanations. Discusses the problems inherent in determining the oral, written, or transitional character of a text.
Area: OE, OF, MHG, CP

Michael Curschmann. Spielmannsepik: Wege und Ergebnisse der Forschung von 1907-1965, mit Ergänzungen und Nachträgen bis 1967. Überlieferung und mündliche Kompositionsform. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.

Continues Curschmann 1966. An assessment of research and scholarship on MHG Spielmannsepik, with emphasis on the role of tradition and the nature of poetic art. Treats the application of oral theory, especially in Dukus Horant and the Nibelungenlied (pp. 59-61, 102-8).
Area: MHG

Michael Curschmann. "The Concept of the Oral Formula as an Impediment to Our Understanding of Medieval Oral Poetry." Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. 8:63-76.

Argues that overconcern with the formula, variously defined, has blinded scholars to the true nature of an oral culture, in which oral and written versions can exist side by side and compete for prominence. Reviews the application of the Parry-Lord theory to early German texts and offers as an example his view that the Nibelungenlied took shape in the "active interdependence of the two cultures [oral and written]" (74).
Area: MHG, CP

Michael Curschmann. "`Nibelungenlied' und `Nibelungenklage': über Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit der Episierung." In Deutsche Literatur im Mittelalter--Kontakte und Perspektiven: Hugo Kuhn zum Gedenken. Ed. Christoph Cormeau. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1979. pp. 85-119.

Contends that the Nibelungenlied can be classified as oral poetry and that the original version (Urfassung) of the Nibelungenklage stood very close to the original version of the Nibelungenlied.
Area: MHG

Michael Curschmann. "The Prologue of Thithreks Saga: Thirteenth Century Reflections on Oral Traditional Literature." Scandinavian Studies, 56,ii:140-51.

Discusses Thithreks Saga as one of "two occasions in the history of medieval Germanic heroic literature when the transition into a new medium of communication, coupled with an act of deliberate compilation, has given rise to a certain amount of retrospective reflection and stock taking" (140). Maintains that "this literary saga model builds on its own concept of orality and its role in human affairs" and that "writing as well as memorization, in addition to oral composition ad hoc, are integral parts of this concept" (146). Goes on to conclude that the distinction between oral and written is never absolute, and that "one is really not so surprised to read, towards the end, that such a text can apparently lead back again quite naturally--through memory--to purely oral informal prose" (148).
Area: ON

Michael Curschmann. "Hören--Lesen--Sehen. Buch und Schriftlichkeit im Selbstverständnis der volksprachlichen literarischen Kultur Deutschlands um 1200." Beiträge der Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 106:218-57.

Drawing upon works by Thomasin of Circlaria, Hartmann von Aue, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, he illustrates the interdependency of oral, literate, and pictorial representation of traditional subject matter.
Area: MHG

Michael Curschmann. "The Prologue of Thidreks Saga: Thirteenth-Century Reflections on Oral-Traditional Literature." Scandinavian Studies, 56:140-51.

Discusses the description of a living oral tradition's poetry and prose by the author of Thidreks Saga. The Saga "builds on its own concept of orality and its role in human affairs" (146), including writing, oral composition, and memorization.
Area: ON

Philip D. Curtin. "Field Techniques for Collecting and Processing Oral Data." Journal of African History, 9:367-85.

A discussion of considerations to be given attention in field recording from African oral tradition, with special attention to possible pitfalls from a practical perspective.
Area: AF

Philip D. Curtin. "The Uses of Oral Tradition in Senegambia: Maalik Sii and the Foundation of Bundu." Cahiers d'études africaines, 15:189-202.

Argues that African oral history is not essentially different from European written history, in that both were designed to teach useful lessons about patriotism, political wisdom, and moral rectitude. Relates the story of Maalik Sii and his establishment of the kingdom of Bundu in the 1690s as an example of the uses of history by Senegambian bards. As a source of historical knowledge, such stories make a maximum contribution when examined comparatively and in the fullest possible cultural context.
Area: AF

G.F. Cushing. "Ob Ugrian (Vogul and Ostyak)." In Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Volume One: The Traditions. Ed. by A.T. Hatto. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 9. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, pp. 211-35.

A general introduction to the languages, culture and religions, and oral traditions of the Vogul and Ostyak peoples of North-West Siberia and to the research performed to date on their epics. Relates several tales of hero-gods, providing examples of the epic's formal introduction, heroic charac- teristics, themes associated with war and with peace, and the religious and mythical significance of the Ob Ugrian heroic epic.
Area: UG, VG, OS, CP