Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography
Listing 277 results for authors beginning with ghi
Karl H. Göller. "Stab und Formel im Alliterierenden Morte Arthure." Neophilologus, 49:57-67.
Analysis of the Alliterative Morte Arthure that provides information about principles of construction in the long line (Langzeile) and about the manner in which the author works poetically. Shows via numerous examples that oral-formulaic technique is the determining order for this poet and maintains that the individuality of the work can be grasped only through a consideration of oral poetic composition.Area: ME
Karl H. Göller. "A Summary of Research." In The Alliterature Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem. Ed. Karl H. Göller, Arthurian Studies, 3. London and Totowa: D.S. Brewer and rowman & Littlefield. pp. 7-14, 153-57.
Includes a short bibliographical summary of the history of application of oral-formulaic theory to the Alliterative Morte Arthure (pp. 10-11).Area: ME
Veronika Görög. "Pour une méthode d'analyse de la littérature orale africaine: Introduction à une bibliographie analytique selective." Cahiers d'études africaines, 8:310-17.
Discussion and illustration of her method in Görög 1968-72: will include linguistic and anthropological studies as well as editions and translations.Area: AF, BB
Veronika Görög. "Bibliographie analytique sélective sur la littérature orale de l'Afrique noire." Cahiers d'études africaines, 8 (1968), 453-501; 9 (1969), 641-66; 10 (1970), 583-631; 12 (1972), 174-92.
A bibliography in serial format, compiled according to the principles stated in Görög 1968. Chiefly a listing of collections, both in the original and in translation, with some references to studies of oral literature (mostly the traditional folklore approach).Area: AF, BB
Veronika Görög. Littérature orale d'Afrique noire: Bibliographie analytique. Avec la participation de Michèle Chiche. Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose.
Continues and expands Görög 1968-72 through 1977, listing materials from English, French, and German sources.Area: AF, BB
Veronika Görög-Karady. "The Image of Gypsies in Hungarian Oral Literature." New York Folklore, 11:149-59.
Describes stories relating to the origins of the Gypsies in the Hungarian oral tradition and finds them to be of two types: one in which the Gypsies come into being through separation from the surrounding population and one in which they are created separately from all other races.Area: HU
Erhardt Güttgemanns. "Fundamentals of a Grammar of Oral Literature." In Patterns in Oral Literature. Ed. Heda Jason and Dimitri Segal. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. pp. 77-97.
Some suggestions on a text grammar for Biblical narrative, using the principles of structural analysis and based on the oral origin of the narratives. An example from Mark is included.Area: BI
Erhardt Güttgemanns. Candid Questions Concerning Gospel Form Criticism: A Methodological Sketch of the Fundamental Problematics of Form and Redaction Criticism. Trans. of the 2nd ed. of Offene Fragen zur Formgeschichte des Evangeliums by William G. Doty. Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series, 26. Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press.
Includes application of Parry-Lord theories on oral composition to form and redaction criticism of Biblical texts.Area: BI
John G. Gager. "The Gospels and Jesus: Some Doubts about Method." Journal of Religion, 54:244-72.
Examines three issues central to the quest for the "historical Jesus": the selection of sources, oral tradition, and the definition of criteria for identifying authentic words and deeds. On the model of work by Vansina and others, he contends that previous attempts to discover the historical figure proceeded on wrong or misleading assumptions about the nature of oral tradition.Area: BI
Julia H. Gaisser. "Adaptation of Traditional Material in the Glaucus-Diomedes Episode." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 100:165-76.
Argues that Homer has molded the traditional content of the Glaucus-Diomedes encounter in Iliad 6 to agree with details in the surrounding narrative (after Willcock 1964) and also for aesthetic effect.Area: AG
Julia H. Gaisser. "A Structural Analysis of the Digressions in the Iliad and the Odyssey." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 73:1-43.
Identifies three types of structural patterns in the digressions: (1) ring composition, (2) Ritornellkomposition (these first two after van Otterlo 1944a, 1944b, and 1948), and (3) the Parry-Lord theme (somewhat dependent on literary studies as well). Finds the Iliadic digressions homogeneous in style and generally cyclic, those of the Odyssey stylistically heterogeneous, with the repeated theme primarily an Odyssean feature. Postulates a diachronic development in traditional epic style from (1) to (2) to (3).Area: AG
Julia H. Gaisser. "Noun-Epithet Combinations in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 104:113-37.
Compares the usage of noun-epithet phrases in the Hymn to that in Homer, Hesiod, and the other hymns. In its differences from Homeric practice he finds the Demeter closer to Hesiod than to the other hymns. Explains the variance as resulting "either from a loosening of the bonds of Homeric word-association or from the creation of new formulae" (137).Area: AG
V.H. Galbraith. "The Literacy of the Medieval English Kings" (Raleigh Lecture on History, read 10 July, 1935). Proceedings of the British Academy, 21:201-38.
Explains how the tripartite division of medieval society into "those who fought, those who worked, and those who prayed" (201) made literacy the virtually exclusive possession of the clerics and insured that most of lay society was illiterate. Traces the coming of literacy through surviving royal writings or signatures and through the development of the royal charter. Notes that "from 597 [the advent of Augustine] to 1100 it is exceptional for a king to be able to write at all, or to read Latin; in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries kings learn to read Latin but do not (even if they can) write it; in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they are taught in youth both to read and write Latin, but in fact are far more occupied with French and English" (205-6).Area: OE, ME, CP
Pierre Gallais. "Recherches sur la mentalité des romanciers français du moyen âge: Les Formules et le vocabulaire des prologues." Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 7:479-93.
Denies even the probability that the chansons de geste were written for oral performance by arguing that the density of repeated expressions is no gauge for determining that provenance. Finds the chansons de geste, hagiographies, and other related genres too close in formulaic density to permit judgment of differences in nature or intention.Area: OF
Carlo Gallavotti. "I documenti micenei e la poesia omerica." In Atti del Convegno Internaizionale sul Tema: La Poesia epica e la sua formazione. Problemi Attuali di Scienze e di Cultura, no. 139. Ed. Enrico Cerulli et al. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. pp. 79-89.
Aware of the work by Parry, Murko, and others, and in the course of considering the possibility of an original Mycenaean source for the Homeric poems, he weighs the likelihood of the AG epic as oral traditional. Although he admires Parry's linguistic demonstrations, he cannot make the leap to "traditional" and "oral" without qualifications, among them comparisons to the (supposedly literate) OE Beowulf and OF Chanson de Roland.Area: AG, OE, OF, SC, CP
Bill Gammage. "Oral and Written Sources." 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. 115-24.
Describes oral evidence of Papuan leaders from the Raubal Strike taken a generation aftern written accounts of the strikebreaking were published and establishes the accuracy of the informal oral sources.Area: ML, PT
S. Gandz. "The Dawn of Literature: Prolegomena to a History of Unwritten Literature," Osiris, 7:261-522.
A lengthy interdisciplinary survey of various unwritten traditions. Considers questions of oral language, performance, and transmission and the interaction between oral and written literatures. Includes much early bibliography.Area: OE, ON, AG, RU, SK, OI, HB, AR, CP
Jeffrey Gantz, trans. with introduction. Early Irish Myths and Sagas. New York: Penguin.
Notes in the introduction that "the earliest form of transmission must have been oral" (p. 19) and that the storytellers memorized only outlines of the stories involved, but that the extant manuscripts are the product of an intervening written transmission.Area: OI
Kweku A. Garbrah. "A Linguistic Analysis of Selected Portions of the Homeric Odyssey." Glotta, 47:144-70.
Interprets the Telemacheia as linguistically more archaic than those sections of the Odyssey defined by the Analysts as "old" and "late." Concludes that the poem was composed in stages, but, given oral theory, he cannot say how many poets were involved.Area: AG
Luc Messanvi Garcia. "Archives et tradition orale: A propos d'une enquête sur la politique du royaume de Danhomé à la fin du 19e siècle." Cahiers d'études africaines, 16:189-206.
An interesting comparison of European written (archival) records and native Dahomeyan oral tradition as sources for the reconstruction of a historical event: the French conquest of the late 19th century and the installation of King Agoli-Agbo. Notes that the oral tradition cannot alone provide an unambiguous picture of the situation, but, "appuyée par les documents écrits, lorsqu'ils existent, elle apporte une part irremplacable à la reconstitution du passé" (204).Area: AF
Thomas Gardner. "How Free Was the Beowulf Poet?" Modern Philology, 71:111-27.
Argues that oral-formulaic theory cannot account for the wide spectrum of verbal association effects that he describes as beyond the concepts of formula and theme. Posits a literate poet in command of the formulaic style and able to consider how best to arrange traditional materials.Area: OE
John Gardner. The Construction of Christian Poetry in Old English. Literary Structures. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
In urging his conviction that OE poets were fully literate and acquainted intimately with classical and "native" rhetoric, he lambastes oral-formulaic theory (espec. pp. 123-25). Because of its literary sophistication he feels he "must throw out as unthinkable the notion that this poetry was orally composed; but there can be no doubt that, though written down from the first line forward, poems like Beowulf borrowed traditional oral devices" (pp. 124-25). Largely an untutored, careless exposition.Area: OE
Milton McG. Gatch. Loyalties and Traditions: Man and His World in Old English Literature. Pegasus Backgrounds in English Literature. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.
A study of customs and assumptions that form the background of OE literature. Includes discussion of Germanic context, the influence of early medieval Christianity, and the subsequent integration of the two from the time of Alfred the Great to the Conquest.Area: OE
Godfrey Gattiker. "The Syntactic Basis of the Poetic Formula in Beowulf." Unpub. Ph.D. diss. University of Wisconsin. Abstract in DAI, 23:2114-15.
Along with O'Neil 1960a, the initial statement of the "syntactic frame" theory of oral composition in OE, as further explained in Cassidy 1965.Area: OE
D.M. Gaunt. Surge and Thunder: Critical Readings in Homer's Odyssey. London: Oxford University Press.
Chiefly a translation of twenty interesting passages of varying lengths from the Odyssey with commentary. Contains discussion of Homer as poet and storyteller, with explanation of the nature and special characteristics of oral poetry. Intended for a nonspecialist audience.Area: AG
John S. Geary. Formulaic Diction in the Poema de Fernan González and the Mocedades de Rodrigo: A Computer-Aided Analysis. Studia Humanitatis. Madrid: Jose Porrua Turanzas.
In Chapter I he offers a review of relevant criticism on oral-formulaic theory as applied to Romance language traditions. Using Duggan's (1973a) methodology, he finds the MR approximately 14% formulaic and the PFG about 17% (pp. 24-25). Feels these figures place the two written (but in some respects traditional) poems nearer the romances studied by Duggan than the chansons de geste, and below his 20% threshold for orality. Analyses include formulas introducing dialogue (Chapter 2), formulas pertaining to battle (Ch. 3), and a comparative view of the overall formulaic repertoires of the MR and PFG (Ch. 4). On the basis of comparison with the Cid and other criteria, he finds the PFG more traditional: "the poet of the PFG, less removed in time from the age in which the popular epic is presumed to have flourished and before it reached its period of `decadence,' clearly integrated both the content and formulaic language of legendary material into a new mold," and in so doing "must have met the expectations of an audience accustomed to hearing such phrases" (pp. 113-14).Area: HI, OF, CP
Bruno Gentili. "L'interpretazione dei lirici greci arcaici nella dimensione del nostro tempo. Sincronia e diacronia nello studio di una cultura orale." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 8:7-21.
Applies Havelock's (1963) ideas on oral culture to lyric poetry, discussing audience-performer interaction and oral poetry as an educative medium that uses standard structures to organize and convey necessary cultural knowledge.Area: AG
Bruno Gentili. "Preistoria e formazione dell'esametro (I cosiddetti dattilo-epitriti nella poesia orale preomerica, nelle iscrizioni archaiche e nella lirici citarodica e corale da Stesocoro a Pindaro)." In Brillante et al., eds. I poemi epici rapsodici non ometrici e la tradizione orale. Padua: Antenor. pp. 75-86.
Includes relevant discussion of those sections of metrical arguments by Parry, G. Nagy, and Peabody that touch on formulaic structure.Area: AG
Bruno Gentili and Giovanni Cerri. "Written and Oral Communication in Greek Historiographical Thought." Trans. David Murray with John Van Sickle. In Communication Arts in the Ancient World. Ed. Eric A. Havelock and Jackson P. Hershbell. Humanistic Studies in the Communication Arts. New York: Hastings House. pp. 137-55.
In surveying ancient Greek ideas on historiography, they observe that Homer and Hesiod had already acquired a "bipolar conception of the two great epochs of mankind_that of heroes or demi-gods and that of men_a division according to which the heroic past, notwithstanding the uniqueness inherent in its character of factual reality, had to constitute the archetypical model for the present, almost in a perennial return to the mythical and exemplary age of the origins" (p. 138). Explores the writings of Thucydides and others and their link to oral culture.Area: AG
Birger Gerhardsson. Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. Acta Seminarii Neotestamentici Upsaliensis, 22. Lund: C.K. Gleerup.
Proposes the memorization of a fixed and consequent oral rote transmission by disciples in connection with the rabbinic schools and the New Testament. Describes memorization followed by interpretation as a major pedagogical principle throughout history. The process involved elements arranged associatively to facilitate remembering, an ancient method of ordering oral traditional materials. Written notes were sometimes used to aid in learning texts, as was the practice of recitation with a rhythmical melody.Area: HB, BI
Birger Gerhardsson. [Evangeliernas förhistoria] The Origins of the Gospel Tradition. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Considers the problem of the origins and history of the tradition from the time of Jesus to the appearance of the written texts, with a discussion of the oral aspects of the Torah tradition.Area: BI
Gabriel Germain. "Du Conte à l'épopée: l'exemple de l'Odyssée." In L'Epopée vivante, a special issue of La Table ronde, 132:77-88.
Treats the continuing influence of folktales in the oral epic narrative of the Odyssey, which he believes owes a good deal developmentally to antecedent contes merveilleux. Especially with respect to characterization, which evolves out of generic types in the folktale toward highly wrought personages in the epic, "il se pourrait donc que l'Odyssée représente un cas assez rare d'invasion folklorique massive dans l'épopée" (p. 86).Area: AG, FK
Gabriel Germain. "Poésie d'Homère et poesie orale des Yougoslaves." Revue des études grecques, 74:469-76.
Denies the uniform comparability of Homeric and SC oral epic as described in Lord 1960 on the grounds of incongruity in verse form, musical line, social position of singers, and supposed quality of the poetry. Also treats questions of verbatim accuracy, fixed versus fluid texts, the influence of published songbooks, possible modes of transcription of oral songs, and aesthetic meaning. As far as literary judgements, he pronounces many of Lord's comparative deductions conceivable but not necessary. Stresses, in addition to structure, "qu'il faut entendre les voix profondes du pathétique humain" (476).Area: AG, SC, CP
Gabriel Germain. "Coordonnées poétiques de l'Odyssée." Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé, 4 ser., 3:317-37.
In a diatribe directed against many current critical methods, he dismisses the full applicability of the SC analogy to Homer, primarily on the basis of formulaic and metrical disparities. Argues for a written Homeric corpus, concluding that "l'Odyssée peut aussi bien être l'oeuvre ecrite d'un homme (ou d'hommes) formé par la tradition orale (mais non peut-être sans influence de textes écrits) ou l'une des dernières expressions parlées de cette tradition, fixée un peu postérieurement au succès du poème" (334). References to Russian byliny and Indic Rgveda.Area: AG, SC, CP
Gabriel Germain. "Des Epopées orales à l'épopée homerique. Questions de methode." In Actes du VIe Congrès national de littérature comparée (Rennes, 23-25 Mai 1963); Littérature savante et littérature populaire: bardes, conteurs, écrivains. Etudes de Littérature Etrangère et Comparée, Société Francaise de Littérature Comparée. Paris: Didier. pp. 31-39.
Raises methodological objections to Parry-Lord oral theory: (1) discrepancies between the singers and audiences in contemporary Yugoslavia and ancient Greece (based on the poetic descriptions in the Odyssey); (2) differences in formulaic structure, both in the metrical underpinnings and in the tenor or activity of the diction itself; and (3) the possibility that oral poets began to write their works. On this last point, he refutes Lord's evidence from field observation: "Même en composant le calame à la main (à supposer qu'ils n'aient pas dicté directement) les auteurs continueront a écrire comme ils parlaient, en bons Méditerranéens pour qui la pensée se forme dans la bouche: `je parle, donc je suis; et je suis ce que je parle'" (37).Area: AG, SC, CP
Gerhard Gesemann. Studien zur sudslavischen Volksepik. Veröffentlichungen der Slavistischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Prague). I. Reihe: Untersuchungen, Heft 3. Reichenberg: Verlag Gebrüder Stiepel.
A collection of essays on topics ranging from Kacic-Miosic's imitation of oral folk epic in his Razgovor ugodni to an addition to the Erlangen manuscript. Most important is his "Kompositionsschema und heroisch-epische Stilisierung: Ein Beitrag zur improvisatorischen Technik des epischen Sängers" (pp. 65-96), with illustration of singers' improvisation using traditional narrative patterns.Area: SC
Gerhard Gesemann. Die serbo-kroatische Literatur. Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion.
Introduction includes brief comments on the SC Volksepik, with mention of the guslar's improvisation.Area: SC
Gerhard Gesemann. Heroische Lebensform; zur Literatur und Wesenkunde der balkanischen Patriarchalität. Berlin: Wiking-Verlag. Trans. by Radosav Medenica as ojstvo i junastvo starih Crnogoraca. Cetinje: Obod, 1968.
A study of Montegrin heroism as it appears in the oral epic tradition of the region.Area: SC
Stanley Gevirtz. Patterns in the Early Poetry of Israel. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, 32. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rpt. 1973.
Analyzes the use of traditionally fixed pairs of parallel words as a stylistic device in Hebrew literature. Explicates five pre-Solomonic poems or portions of poems from this perspective.Area: HB, BI
Pietro Giannini. "Espressioni formulari nell'elegia greca arcaica." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 16:7-78.
Using the methods employed in Page 1963, he studies the recurrence of epic phraseology among the lyric poets. Posits an oral mentality that persisted in archaic Greece and fostered both formulaic composition and personal creativity within that idiom: "La prezenza di elementi memorizzati libera il poeta dalla fatica di `creare' l'espressione verbale con cui riempire il ritmo di una determinata parte del verso, consentendogli di concentrare il suo sforzo poetico sulla parte rimanente, realizzando cosi un'attivita in cui ripetizione e creativita coesisto, senza escludersi reciprocamente" (77).Area: AG
H.A.R Gibb. Arabic Literature: An Introduction. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2nd ed. 1963.
A history of the development of Arabic literature from the beginnings to the twentieth century. Pays particular attention in Chapters 3 and 4 to the early meter (rajaz) and the somewhat later ode tradition (qa|das). Notes that a poetic profession developed during the period 500-750 A.D. and describes the training and function of its members, their audience, and the conventional structure and content of their work.Area: AR
C.G.B. Gidley. "Roko: A Hausa Praise Crier's Account of His Craft." African Language Studies, 16:93-115.
Records Na Garin Danga's description of his craft, that of a free-lance praise-crier who performs without accompaniment. Includes sections on the origin, practice, and performance of the tradition of praise-crying, with specific reference to the damage such performances could do to one's reputation and the controls on this practice instituted by the Nigerian government. Sample cries from unregulated times also presented.Area: AF
Stephen Gilman. "The Poetry of the Poema and the Music of the Cantar." In Hispanic Studies in Honor of Edmund de Chasca, a special issue of Philological Quarterly, 51, i:1-11.
Discusses significant portions of de Chasca 1972, warning against what he feels is the latter's inappropriate application of Parry and Lord's work to the Cid, particularly in light of the irregularity of its meter. Suggests instead that some as yet undiscovered kind of oral composition was employed.Area: HI, CP
Ritchie Girvan. "The Medieval Poet and His Public." In English Studies Today, vol. 1. Ed. C.L. Wrenn and G. Bullough. London: Oxford University Press. pp. 85-97.
In the course of describing the transmission and audience of medieval works, he divides OE poetry into written and unwritten verse, understanding virtually all of the extant poems as part of the latter category. Describes an earlier oral scop "at home in the mechanics of story-telling in verse" (p. 96) but a Beowulf which "early attained a written form" (p. 97) because of its appeal to the Christian sensibility.Area: OE, CP
Yehoshua Gitay. "Deutero-Isaiah: Oral or Written?" Journal of Biblical Literature, 99:185-97.
Argues that Deutero-Isaiah was designed to be heard, that the speaker/writer was trying to reach his audience through aural devices, and that this intention accounts for the features of oral performance found in the work.Area: BI
Mark Glazer. "A Dialectical Semiology of the Oral Formula, or the Dialectics of Praise." Folklore Preprint Series (Indiana University Press), 6, ii:1-9.
Illustrates the dialectical praise-negation meaning of the oral formula in a Turkish chain tale. Proposes a semiological understanding of phraseology.Area: TK
Margaret E. Goldsmith. The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf. London: Athlone Press.
Argues against the "singer theory" as presented in Magoun 1953a and later related works. Juxtaposes examples from African traditions in order to recommend treating OE poetry as learned and sophisticated (espec. pp. 60-64).Area: OE, AF, CP
A.W. Gomme. "Homer and Recent Criticism." In More Essays in Greek History and Literature. Ed. David A. Campbell. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 1-18.
Denies the possibility of a purely oral-formulaic theory of composition for the Iliad and Odyssey, stressing the literary qualities of the epics.Area: AG
J. Gonda. Stylistic Repetition in the Veda. Verhandelingen der koninklijke nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, N.R., Deel 65, no. 3. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij.
Sees the origin of the repetitiveness and balanced structure of archaic diction in oral tradition and examines various patterns in the Vedic literature, among them symmetrical word-groups, positive and negative expression of the same thought, chiasmus, anaphora, responsion, alliteration, and other figures.Area: SK
William Gonzalez. "The Religious Ballad of New Mexico and the Canary Islands: A Comparative Study of Traditional Features." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers, rpt. 1983. pp. 294-300.
Compares the New Mexican alabado and the religious ballad of the Canary Islands, stressing typologies of formulas and formulaic expression. Concludes that the two poetries belong to the same tradition, even though flourishing in widely separated regions.Area: HI
John R. Goody, ed. Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
A collection of ten essays documenting the social impact of literacy on a variety of preliterate and semiliterate cultures. Includes a reprint of Goody and Watt 1963 (pp. 27-68).Area: CH, AF, TI, BR, CP, TH
John R. Goody. The Myth of Bagre. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
This transcription and translation of two great myths (the White and Black Bagre) of the LoDagaa contains a description of the ceremony and ritual associated with their recitation.Area: AF
John R. Goody. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
A critique of the "pervasive dichotomy between primitive and advanced societies" (p. 146) supports a developmental view of human civilization and cognition, with orality and literacy as fundamental categories. Briefly reviews Parry's conception of the formula, noting the distinction between oral transmission and verbatim memorization. Feels that "writing is critical not simply because it preserves speech over time and space, but because it transforms speech, by abstracting its components, by assisting backward scanning, so that communication by eye creates a different cognitive potentiality for human beings than communication by word of mouth" (p. 128).Area: CP
John R. Goody. "Alternative Paths to Knowledge in Oral and Literate Cultures." In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. 9. Norwood: Ablex. pp. 201-15.
Identifies three modes of acquiring knowledge among the LoDagaa and in other oral societies: (1) the learning that goes on in the experience of everyday life, (2) tenkouri yil, a specialized knowledge resulting from participation in ceremonies and discussion with elders, and (3) that transcendent form of information that one comes by spiritually. In literate societies this last form is relevant only to the arts and religion, and no longer practical in any sense. By "learning" literate societies usually mean "book-learning," while experiential training is accomplished by apprenticeship and imitation.Area: AF, CP
John R. Goody and Ian Watt. "The Consequences of Literacy." Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5:304-45. Rpt. in Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 27-68.
Interprets the invention of writing in the ancient Near East as the force that wholly transformed cultural tradition and made the Greek achievement possible. Emphasis on the special pliability of reality in oral as opposed to written cultures: the oral tradition can forget as well as preserve information. Invention of the alphabet seen as an analytical process which determines cultural development. Compare Havelock 1963.Area: AG, CP
G.P. Goold. "Homer and the Alphabet." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 91:272-91.
Argues that the first text of the Homeric poems was in the Ionic alphabet and that the influence of this text caused the Ionic system to become the standard script of the Greeks. Suggests that "Homer was a collector and stitcher of lays who effected the first great literary exploitation of the alphabet by compiling and preserving in two designedly comprehensive epics the vast treasures of oral literature" (290).Area: AG
G.P. Goold. "The Nature of Homeric Composition." Illinois Classical Studies, 2:1-34.
Takes a Neo-Analyst position, claiming that Homer revised a progressively fixed text in a series of expansions carried out in writing. Attempts to remove Homer from the world of oral composition and to align him with Elias Lönnrot, the collector-editor of the Finnish Kalevala. Shows little knowledge and less understanding of Parry-Lord theory, especially as it applies to SC oral epic (he postulates written processes for Homer that have been shown time and again to be part of SC oral tradition).Area: AG, FN, CP
I.L. Gordon. "Oral Tradition and the Sagas of Poets." In Studia Centenalia in Honorem Memoriae Benedilet S. órarinsson. Ed. B.S. Benedikz. Reykjavik: Typis Isafoldianis. pp. 69-76.
Envisions a developmental process in saga-composition, with oral sources underlying especially those sagas that are or claim to be biographies of poets.Area: ON, OI, CP
Gary H. Gossen. Chamulas in the World of the Sun: Time and Space in Mayan Oral Tradition. Rpt. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1984.
Aims to present the oral tradition of a contemporary Mayan community as a complete information system. All genres as defined by the Chamulas are considered both as works in themselves and in relation to the cultural background. Offers an alternative analytical language that takes into account the general sociological nature of the data on oral aesthetic forms as well as concrete data on a specific oral tradition. Contains sample narratives, games, prayers, and songs.Area: MY
Kent Gould. "Beowulf and Folktale Morphology: God as Magical Donor." Folklore, 96:98-101.
Provides Icelandic analogs to the Hrunting element of Beowulf with emphasis upon the aspect of the donor of a gift, who "actually has two functions: testing and donating" (99). Sees the Christian God of the Anglo-Saxons becoming the "magical donor" with Beowulf's discovery of the giant sword after the failure of Hrunting because "He replaces Unferth's failed sword with an unfailing one, supplanting any heathen donors" (100). Concludes that a signficant difference between pre-Christian and Christian myth is apparent in the Hrunting episode and its analogs, since in the Christian tradition the "magic is workable only when the man is pure and strong enough himself to put it ot use" (99) and that such overlays of subsequent traditions illustrate, in the case of Beowulf, the "unique meld of ancient Germanic hero worship and recent Christian submission to God" (101).Area: OE, ON, CP
Darinka N. Grabovac. Homer u Srba i Hrvata. Filoloski Fakultet Beogradskog Universiteta, Monografije, knj. 13. Belgrade: University of Belgrade. With French résumé, pp. 247-52.
A history of native scholarship on Homer. Most important are Chapters 2 ("Comparative Research on Homer and [Serbo-Croatian] Folk Poetry," pp. 101-62) and 4 ("Linguistic Studies," pp. 207-35). Provides the best index available to the kind and extent of comparative work on Homer by Yugoslav scholars.Area: AG, SC, CP
D.H.F. Gray. "Homeric Epithets for Things." Classical Quarterly, 41:109-21. 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. 55-67.
Tabulates noun-epithet formulas for sea, shield, and helmet, finding "traditional" combinations and "individual" creations. Assumes an early stage of the Kunstsprache with a generic shape, an idiom which Homer inherited and elaborated with striking adjectives.Area: AG
Bennison Gray. "Repetition in Oral Literature." Journal of American Folklore, 84:289-303.
Contends that the study of repetition in oral literary works enables one to make a systematic inventory of literary data, but that density analyses typical of applications of oral-formulaic theory prove nothing.Area: CP
Donald C. Green. "Formulas and Syntax in Old English Poetry: A Computer Study." Computers and the Humanities, 6:85-93.
Continues the work of O'Neil 1960a, Gattiker 1962, and Cassidy 1965. Computer analysis of Beowulf, the Finnsburh Fragment, Juliana, Fates of the Apostles, Phoenix, Exodus, Maldon, and some shorter Chronicle poems for confirmation of the syntactic frame theory of oral-formulaic composition. Dismisses percentage formula density as a criterion for dating or authorship and distinguishes favored metrical types within the sample.Area: OE
Thomas A. Green and W.J. Pepicello. "The Riddle Process." Journal of American Folklore, 97:189-203.
Discusses ambiguity in the riddling process on the levels of phonology, morphology, and syntax with regard to the "blocking element." Discusses potential factors influencing the origin and transmission of both grammatically and metaphorically based riddles.Area: FK
William C. Greene. "The Spoken and the Written Word." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 60:23-59.
Feels (after Parry) that an unwritten heroic tradition could have preceded the songs of Homer, but that the master poet must have had at least some "notes" (hypomnemata) to help him remember the complex epics in performance. Supposed traces of planning and revision mandate the use of writing at some stage in the composition of the poems as well as in their recording.Area: AG
Stanley B. Greenfield. "The Theme of Spiritual Exile in Christ I." Philological Quarterly, 32:321-28.
Argues that the minor theme running through the poem_"a theme reflecting the Christian tradition of man's life as a spiritual exile from Heaven, Eden, and the natural bond with his Creator" (321) _is the harmonizing force that binds together the separate lyrics within the poem. Presages the oral-formulaic argument of two years later.Area: OE
Stanley B. Greenfield. "The Wife's Lament Reconsidered." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 68:907-12.
Explains how the common pattern of exile is individually elaborated for structural and thematic purposes. Also presages his thematic study of 1955.Area: OE
Stanley B. Greenfield. "The Formulaic Expression of the Theme of `Exile' in Anglo-Saxon Poetry." Speculum, 30:200-6.
Along with Magoun 1955b, the first statement on the theme in OE poetry. Describes the structure and morphology of the multiform, denominating four typical aspects (status, deprivation, state of mind, and movement in or into exile) and comments on the possibilities for originality within the traditional pattern.Area: OE
Stanley B. Greenfield. "Syntactic Analysis and Old English Poetry." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 64:373-78. Rpt. in Old English Literature: Twenty-Two Analytical Essays. ed. Martin Stevens and Jerome Mandel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968; rev. 1976. pp. 82-86.
Contends and attempts to illustrate that formulas are not simply compositional devices, that the OE poet can manipulate the conventional diction to aesthetic advantage.Area: OE
Stanley B. Greenfield. A Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York University Press.
Mentions oral composition and formulaic diction at many points (espec. pp. 73-82), postulating originality in the poetic usage of stock elements.Area: OE
Stanley B. Greenfield. "The Canons of Old English Criticism." English Literary History, 34:141-55.
Disagrees with Creed (1959) on the remaking of the passage from Beowulf, with Whallon (1965a) on the meaning of traditional epithets in OE, and with Cassidy (1965) on the concept of syntactic frames in oral-formulaic composition. The role of aesthetics in a formulaically composed poem remains his primary concern (see further Greenfield 1963 and 1967b).Area: OE
Stanley B. Greenfield. "Grendel's Approach to Heorot: Syntax and Poetry." In Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays. Ed. Robert P. Creed. Providence: Brown University Press. pp. 275-84.
Continues the argument in Greenfield 1963: formulaic diction was available for "conventional" usage or for deployment according to the poet's artistic sense.Area: OE
Stanley B. Greenfield. The Interpretation of Old English Poems. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
In Chapter 2 ("Expectations and Implications in Diction and Formula," pp. 30-59), he examines lexical, formulaic, and dictional association to recover reverberations of meaning. Includes a critique of oral-formulaic theory.Area: OE
Stanley B. Greenfield and Fred C. Robinson. A Bibliography of Publications on Old English Literature to the End of 1972, using the collections of E.E. Ericson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
A listing, with occasional light annotations, of relevant scholarship through 1972, divided by general area and by individual works. See espec. items 1134-1254.Area: OE, BB
Henri Gregoire. "L'Epopée vivante à Byzance." In L'Epopée vivante, a special issue of La Table ronde, 132:109-13.
Reports the historical contribution of the Armouropoulos, which as an originally oral epic is more comprehensive on the events of the ninth century than are the official histories. Notes the contemporary evidence, in Arethas (c. 932) and in the celebrated verse epic Digenis Akritas, of orally composed poetry of length and complexity. Reconstructs the no longer extant epic cycles from the writings of historians.Area: BG, CP
Gerald K. Gresseth. "The Gilgamesh Epic and Homer." Classical Journal, 70:1-18.
Sees the Iliad, Odyssey, and Gilgamesh as the first fruits of a new humanism and compares them through a focus on hero, general outlook, and genre.Area: SU, AG, CP
Gerald K. Gresseth. "The Odyssey and the Nalopakhyana." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 109:63-85.
Employing his own terminology of "structure-slot," "motif," and "theme" (the last described as more individualistic and less traditional than the second), he calls attention to the marked similarities between the Odyssey and an episode in the Mahabharata. Concludes from these two versions of the same story that Homer consciously shifted themes for dramatic effect.Area: AG, SK, CP
Jasper Griffin. "The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer." Journal of Hellenic Studies, 97:39-53.
Contends that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unlike the Trojan epic cycle and other epics in that they eschew the fantastic, the miraculous, and the romantic. Also views the style of the Homeric epics as vastly superior to that of the other works. These differences are understood as indicating the greatness and uniqueness of Homer's poems. Argues on this basis that a well-organized formulaic technique does not guarantee masterpieces.Area: AG
Gerald K. Gresseth. Homer on Life and Death. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sees the Homeric poems as the "end of a tradition of oral poetry" (p. xiii), but maintains that even if this much is true it does not tell us enough about their composition. Follows Finnegan (espec. 1977) in denying the need for an oral poetics because the line between oral and written is unclear. Understands Homeric art as the individual use of traditional diction (on this point, see espec. Chapter 2, "Characterization," pp. 50-80).Area: AG
Neil R. Grobman. "Adam Ferguson's Influence on Folklore Research: The Analysis of Mythology and the Oral Epic." Southern Folklore Quarterly, 38:11-22.
Describes how the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher anticipated the twentieth-century scholarship of Parry and Lord on oral poetry.Area: TH
Neil R. Grobman. "Thomas Blackwell's Commentary on the Oral Nature of Epic." Western Folklore, 38:186-98.
An account of the eighteenth-century Scot's conception of an oral Homer and oral poetic tradition, as reported in his An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer (1735).Area: TH
Laila Gross. "The Meaning and Oral-Formulaic Use of Riot in the Alliterative Morte Arthure." Annuale Mediaevale, 9:98-102.
Employs oral-formulaic theory to disentangle the variant meanings of riot/realtee in the text.Area: ME
Loren C. Gruber. "Motion, Perception, and o[[pi]][[pi]]æt in Beowulf." In In Geardagum: Essays on Old English Language and Literature. Ed. Loren C. Gruber and Dean Loganbill. Denver: Society for New Language Study. [occasional numbers], I, pp. 31-37.
Describes the recurrent o[[pi]][[pi]]æt ("until") phrase as indicating both a spatial or chronological and a psychological movement.Area: OE
Herbert Grundmann. "Litteratus-Illitteratus." Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 40:1-65.
Traces in painstakingly documented detail the influences of Latin_its grammar and usage_on the development of the "literate" person in medieval German-speaking countries. Shows how very gradually a transformation took place in which literacy in the mother tongue replaced literacy in Latin, but still was not widespread.Area: LT, GM, CP
David M. Gunn. "Narrative Inconsistency and the Oral Dictated Text in the Homeric Epic." American Journal of Philology, 91:192-203.
Following Lord (espec. 1938, 1953a, and 1960), he examines another kind of narrative inconsistency in oral epic: the theme rendered poorly or mistakenly in a given oral performance. Proceeding from an example in a song by the Parry-Lord guslar Sulejman Forti, he argues that certain passages in the Homeric poems show analogous slips and concludes that the Iliad and Odyssey are oral texts.Area: AG, SC, CP
David M. Gunn. "Thematic Composition and Homeric Authorship." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 75:1-31.
Surveying the repertoires of Parry-Lord singers from the Novi Pazar district (SCHS I and II), he finds thematic content and structure shared among guslari but the actual verbal expression of the theme distinctive to the individual. The relative stability of themes in the Iliad and Odyssey thus indicates by analogy a common authorship for the two AG epic texts that have survived.Area: AG, SC, CP
David M. Gunn. "Narrative Patterns and Oral Tradition in Judges and Samuel." Vetus Testamentum, 24:286-317.
Interprets narrative patterns, especially those of battle and violent death, as evidence that parts of Judges and Samuel originated in oral tradition. Concentrates on the overall structures, linguistic affinities among instances, and the embedding of pattern in narrative. Denies the possibility of direct literary dependence on the basis of the complexity of their relationship and the maintenance of structure in different environments, characteristics typical of oral traditional style.Area: BI, CP
David M. Gunn. "The Battle Report': Oral or Scribal Convention?" Journal of Biblical Literature, 93:513-18.
Response to Van Seters 1972. Points out the problems with Van Seters' dismissal of a prose formula and unelaborated oral style by citing prose oral traditions and possible reasons for the terseness of Old Testament narrative. Sees the Mesopotamian evidence that suggests scribal convention as a coincidence whose importance has been exaggerated and observes that coherence within separate bodies of text is greater than that between and among them. Proposes leaving the question of the role of oral tradition open.Area: BI, CP
David M. Gunn. "David and the Gift of the Kingdom (2 Sam 2-4, 9-20, 1 Kgs 1-2)." Semeia, 3:14-45.
Concerned, mostly through literary analysis, to show that the vision of the narrator of these passages is essentially artistic and not propagandistic, that he is "a fine teller of tales" (36).Area: BI
David M. Gunn. "Traditional Composition in the Succession Narrative'." Vetus Testamentum, 26:214-29.
Adds to his earlier investigation (1974a) further evidence of traditional composition in the form of patterned episodes in Samuel and Kings. Argument depends strictly on motif repetition without actual verbal correspondence; thus he stops at calling the passages traditional, choosing to leave the question of their possible or ultimate orality unanswered.Area: BI
David M. Gunn. "On Oral Tradition: A Response to John Van Seters." In Oral Tradition and Old Testament Studies. Ed. Robert C. Culley. Special issue of Semeia, 5, i:155-63.
Contra Van Seters 1975 and 1976. Repeats his warning against generalizations from particular models, denial of annalistic evidence, and the possibility that certain passages derive ultimately from oral tradition. Emphasizes the relationship between oral tradition and history. Argues for a spectrum of different kinds of texts between the transcription of an oral performance and the literary text.Area: BI
Aaron J. Gurevich. "Oral and Written Culture in the Middle Ages: Two Peasant Visions' of the Late Twelfth-Early Thirteenth Centuries." New Literary History, 16:51-66.
Discusses the interaction of oral and literate traditions in two accounts of visions, one of which relies upon an oral account to substantiate its validity, while the other claims a written source, concluding "...if the historian does not seek the sources for this or that genre, or the genesis of particular motives, but wants rather to approach culture as an integration which actually functioned in the given society, at one and the same time reflecting its attitudes and forming them, he must admit that in fact only in such a symbiosis with the scholarly tradition could popular culture exist in the Middle Ages" (64-65).Area: CP, OE, ME, OF, LT
Lawrence Gushee. "Lester Young's Shoeshine Boy'." In Transmission and Form in Oral Traditions. Ed. Leo Treitler et al. In International Musicological Society: Report of the Thirteenth Congress (Berkeley 1977). Kassel: Bärenreiter. pp. 151-69.
Discusses the insights gained by applying oral-formulaic theory to the work of jazz saxophonist Lester Young. Treats the collective structure of the performance, as well as the concepts of formula and formulaic system. Distinguishes individual from shared patterns and points out that composition proceeds along several tracks at once.Area: MU
Erhardt Güttgemanns. Offene Fragen zur Formgeschichte des Evangeliums. Beitrage zur evangelischen Theologie, 54. 2nd rev. ed. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag.
Making reference to Lord's (1960) arguments, he contends that comparative evidence renders dubious a smooth transition from a period of oral to a period of written transmission for the Gospel tradition.Area: BI, CP
Christian J. Guyonvarc'h and Francoise Le Roux. "L'Epopée irlandaise du cycle d'Ulster." In L'Epopée vivante, a special issue of La Table ronde, 132:128-39.
Primarily a sociohistorical study of Old Irish epic, with descriptions of the filid or bards (their oral tradition being originally exclusively a courtly phenomenon and only later becoming popular as well), the lack of writing in pre-Christian Ireland, the various genres and cycles (Ulster, Finn, mythological, kings), and stylistics (catalogs, prose style, poetic sections, repetition, aesthetics). They conclude that "l'épopée irlandaise est donc, au depart et par tradition tres ancienne, une epopee à la fois orale et savante" (p. 131).Area: OI
G.B. Gybbon-Monypenny. "The Spanish Mester de Clerecía and its Intended Public: Concerning the Validity as Evidence of Passages of Direct Address to the Audience." In Medieval Miscellany Presented to Eugene Vinaver by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends. Ed. F. Whitehead, A.H. Diverres, and F.E. Sutcliffe. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press and Barnes & Noble. pp. 230-44.
Examines passages in the mester de clerecía texts which seems to describe oral performance, maintaining that quite possibly they reflect an imagined rather than real oral audience. Also points to junctures that indicate a poet consulting a manuscript and contends that these texts may be intended for written dissemination.Area: HI
Francois Hédelin (Abbé d'Aubignac et de Meimac). Conjectures académiques, ou Dissertation sur l'Iliade (1715). Ed. with intro. by V. Magnien. Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1925.
The remarkable "conjectures" of Hedelin, only published forty-two years after his death, anticipate certain aspects of oral-formulaic theory. Among his more notable conclusions: (1) that Homer "n'a jamais rien laisse par ecrit" (p. 144); (2) that we would have none of his works except for the intercession of singers who preserved them for later ages; (3) that his heirs sang only parts of the great songs; (4) that the Iliad and the Odyssey were formed piecemeal and over time; (5) that Lycurgus and Peisistratus were at different times nominal editors of the Homeric poems; and (6) that the inconsistencies in the texts make a single master poet unlikely.Area: AG
Andreas Haarder. Beowulf: The Appeal of a Poem. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.
Chapter 8 ("The Anglo-Saxon Scop," pp. 171-204) contains a fairly thorough review of the more significant contributions to oral-formulaic theory in OE since Magoun 1953a.Area: OE
W. Mary Hackett. "La Technique littéraire de Girart de Roussillon." In Mélanges de linguistique romane et de philologie médiévale offerts à M. Maurice Delbouille. Vol. 2. Ed. Jean Renson. Gembloux: Duculot. pp. 259-73.
Contends that the technique of laisses similaires in the Girart is much too complex to be the result of improvisation or oral composition of any sort.Area: OF
W. Mary Hackett. "Le Style formulaire dans Girart de Roussillon." In Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à Pierre Le Gentil par ses collègues, ses élèves et ses amis. Paris: S.E.D.E.S. et C.D.U. Réunis. pp. 345-52.
Citing Nichols 1961 and J. Duggan 1966, she undertakes a quantitative formulaic analysis of the Girart, finding the use of formulas a conscious design on the part of the poet, "non pas par nécessité mais par choix, comme du style convenant au genre qu'il a choisi, et la maîtrise avec laquelle il le manie exclut, il me semble, toute idée d'improvisation" (p. 352). Complements her 1964 article in making the case for a literate poet and literary text.Area: OF
Moses Hadas. A History of Greek Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Rpt. 1959, 1962.
In Chapter 3 ("Homer," pp. 16-27), he posits a long tradition of stories and metrical taletelling behind the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, observing repetitiveness at the levels of diction and narrative.Area: AG
Douglas Haggo and Koenraad Kuiper. Review of Conversational Routine. Ed. Florian Coulmas. Linguistics, 21:531-51.
Criticizes the book for its inadequate handling of important material and goes on to suggest an application of the Jackendorff generative theory of full entries to the question of formulae.Area: TH
Douglas Haggo and Koenraad Kuiper. "Stock Auction Speech in Canada and New Zealand." In Regionalism and National Identity. Ed. Reginald Berry and James Acheson. Christchurch, NZ: Association ofr Canadian Studies, pp. 189-97.
Compares discursive structure, formulae, and prosody of livestock auctioneers in Canada and New Zealand with detailed descriptions of each, concluding that "...the similarities are largely due to their descent from a common ancestor. We take the differences to be the result of divergent development" (196).Area: FK
Rebecca H. Hague. "Ancient Greek Wedding Songs: The Tradition of Praise." Journal of Folklore Research, 20:131-43.
Working from the premise that wedding songs are a genre with characteristic themes and language, contends that Greek wedding songs as found in Homer, Xenophon, Lucian, and Aristophanes follow a definable pattern of praise of the bridegroom in terms of a comparison with things of nature, especially plants. Suggests, following Dornseiff (1936), that a similar pattern of motif and imagery in Egyptian and Biblical songs argues for "a very old tradition of wedding songs common to many people of the Eastern Mediterranean" (139).Area: AG, EG, BI, CP
J.B. Hainsworth. "The Homeric Formula and the Problem of its Transmission." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (University of London), 9:57-68. Rpt. in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz, Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979. pp. 368-86.
Argues for a Homeric formulaic diction which has the increased flexibility of formula-types, that is, metrically equivalent expressions of various meaning, but one which is focused by context and word-association. Conceives of formulas that are flexible by (1) mobility, (2) modification, and (3) separation of constituents. Under such malleable conditions, he finds it no surprise that so little arguably Mycenaean phraseology survives in the Homeric texts.Area: AG
J.B. Hainsworth. "Structure and Content in Epic Formulae: The Question of the Unique Expression." Classical Quarterly, 14:155-64.
Champions a more flexible formulaic diction, citing four main points: (1) the unique phrases in Homer imply a creativity inspired by context; (2) the pattern and structure of phrases do not play a large part in the formation of new diction; (3) formulas once created tend to persist, contributing to a conservative diction; and (4) in proposing modifications of Parry-Lord oral theory, he seeks only to strengthen it.Area: AG
J.B. Hainsworth. "Joining Battle in Homer." Greece & Rome, ser. 2, 13:158-66.
Construes the narrative event of joining battle as a sequence of six minor themes: (1) conversation/council, (2) a meal, (3) council of chiefs, (4) arming, (5) parade of the troops, and (6) charge and battle.Area: AG
J.B. Hainsworth. "A Note on Elision in Homer." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (University of London), 14:17-21.
Explains restrictions inherent in the epic practice of elision as a function of formulaic structure.Area: AG
J.B. Hainsworth. "Greek Views of Greek Dialectology." Transactions of the Philological Society, 1967:62-76.
Discusses the persistent scholarly view of AG dialectology as tripartite, suggesting that the division of Doric, Aeolic, and Ionic is founded on inappropriate or erroneous considerations. Recommends that lexical studies and literary exegesis be replaced by linguistic analysis to study the validity of the tripartite segmentation.Area: AG
J.B. Hainsworth. The Flexibility of the Homeric Formula. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Brief review of Parry's and Lord's works and of reactions to both. Defining formulas as "repeated word-groups" (p. 35), he illustrates the flexible morphology of formulaic diction according to four processes: mobility, modification, expansion, and separation (cp. Hainsworth 1962). Describes the diction as an accumulation of ready-made phrases, many of which are capable of being bent to various syntactic needs in one way or another. Also stresses the role of word-association and argues for more attention to phraseological content as opposed to structure. Constitutes an important contribution to the history of the oral theory both in AG and in comparative research because it rigorously proves a suppleness in Homeric diction which many had believed was lacking.Area: AG
J.B. Hainsworth. Homer. Greek and Roman New Surveys in the Classics, 3. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
This useful bibliographical essay treats the application of oral theory to the Homeric poems under headings such as "Text," "Comparison," "Craft," and "Art."Area: AG, BB
J.B. Hainsworth. "The Criticism of an Oral Homer." Journal of Hellenic Studies, 90:90-98.
A discussion of appropriate critical approaches to oral poetry, especially Homeric epic. Concludes that one must separate the performance from the poem before distinguishing episodes in the transcribed text. Feels that the essential structure of the Homeric poems is unlike typical oral poetry, that it more closely resembles drama, and that therefore it is suited to orthodox (literary) aesthetic criticism.Area: AG, CP
J.B. Hainsworth. "Phrase-Clusters in Homer." In Studies in Greek, Italic, and Indo-European Linguistics Offered to Leonard R. Palmer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, June 5, 1976. Ed. Anna M. Davies and Wolfgang Meid. Innsbrucker Beitráge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Band 16. Vienna: Ernst Becvar. pp. 83-86.
Finds clustering among noun-epithet formulas that are infrequently employed. This and related discoveries lead him to propose a "retreat" toward Parry's original model, with a consequent emphasis on the persistence of a permanent stock of formulas, and a corresponding de-emphasis on the patterns or systems thought to produce them.Area: AG
J.B. Hainsworth. "Criteri di oralità nella poesia arcaica non omerica." 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.
A review of scholarly opinions on the orality of non-Homeric AG poetry, with special emphasis on the criteria for definition and including formulaic analyses of sample passages from the Iliad and from Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days.Area: AG
J.B. Hainsworth. "Good and Bad Formulae." In Homer: Tradition and Invention. Ed. Bernard C. Fenik. University of Cincinnati Classical Studies, n.s. 2. Leiden: E.J. Brill. pp. 41-50.
Argues against a purely synchronic structural model for formulaic diction, assuming instead that the poetic language is both composed (in part) of fixed word groups and vulnerable to change through generative processes of formulaic evolution. Using examples of noun-epithet formulas for eight major gods and the Iliadic heroes, he makes a case for the life-cycle of the formula, from generative system (with some products forever remaining too generic to become true formulas) to particularized phrases that are archaic, outmoded, and ripe for replacement by another product of the generative process.Area: AG
J.B. Hainsworth. "Ancient Greek." 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. 20-47.
Covers the historical setting of the Homeric epic, along with the literary situation, content, ethos, heroism, historicity, manner of composition and performance, style, social function, audience, and other topics. Fine general introduction for the comparatist.Area: AG, CP
Thomas A. Hale. "Kings, Scribes, and Bards: A Look at Signs of Survival for Keepers of the Oral Tradition among the Songhay-speaking Peoples of Niger." Artes Populares, 10-11:207-20.
Describes the declining social importance of the oral poets of the Songhay peoples of Niger and government efforts to preserve the tradition, suggesting that the tradition can be saved through the application of appropriate efforts.Area: AF
Robert A. Hall, Jr. "Orality and Organization." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 8:389-90.
A brief note arguing for a combined oral and written history for the surviving text of the Chanson de Roland: "it is perfectly reasonable to assume that a `last redactor' took earlier material, which had originated and at least in part been transmitted orally, and reworked it to a certain extent, writing it down but preserving many features inherited from earlier versions, including archaic assonances in some laisses and a poetic style which had formulaicity as one of its essential characteristics" (390). Compares speeches by William Jennings Bryan.Area: OF, CP
Peter Hallberg. "Hrafnkell Freysgoi the `New Man'_A Phantom Problem." Scandinavian Studies, 47:442-47.
Disagrees with F. Heinemann's (1974) type-scene analysis of the saga, which he feels stems from an extremely biased and unsupported reading of the work. Contends that Hrafnkell's murder of Samr and his brother Egvindr is well within the revenge conventions of the saga.Area: ON
Joel M. Halpern, Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern, and John M. Foley. "Traditional Recall and Family Histories: A Commentary on Mode and Method." In Selected Papers on a Serbian Village: Social Structure as Reflected by History, Demography, and Oral Tradition. Ed. Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern and Joel M. Halpern. Research Report no. 17. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Department of Anthropology. pp. 165-98.
A comparison of written historical population records and traditional oral recall of family history from a Serbian village, with stress on the differences in mode and their implications for sociolinguistic investigation.Area: SC, BR, CP
James W. Halporn. "Reflections on Metrics by Computer." Revue: Organisation internationale pour l'étude des langues anciennes par ordinateur (Université de Liège), 6:1-11.
A reply to Dyer 1967, in which he contends that metrists employing data-processing methods have ignored a great deal of earlier work and depend too heavily on parochial notions of prosody. Denies Dyer's assumption of a Homeric oral tradition.Area: AG
Sandra J. Hamartiuk. "A Statistical Approach to Some Aspects of Style in Six Old English Poems: A Computer-Assisted Study." In Glottometrika 2. Ed. R. Grotjahn. Quantitative Linguistics, vol. 3. Bochum: Brockmeyer. pp. 89-107.
Finds stylistic differences between Juliana and the other Cynewulfian poems. Compare Diamond 1959 on formulaic analysis.Area: OE
Rita Hamilton. "Epic Epithets in the Poema de Mio Cid." Revue de littérature comparée, 36:161-78.
From an investigation of epithets and their morphology, she derives the hypothesis that the Cid was written by a juglar who was both master of his traditional craft and an intellectual or scholar who molded the tradition to his own (often historical) ends.Area: HI
Andras Hamori. "Examples of Convention in the Poetry of Abu Nuwas." Studia Islamica, 30:5-26.
Claims that the poetic conventions (figures of speech, stock motifs, and conventional descriptions) used by Abu Nuwas, a medieval Arabic poet, must be regarded as functional elements and not mere structural commonplaces. Distinguishes between the Parry-Lord formula and the AR patterns by comparing the latter to the unchanging longer Homeric repetition which does not advance the narrative.Area: AR
Andras Hamori. On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
In Chapter 1 ("The Poet as Hero," pp. 3-30), he discusses the qasidas, a representative genre from the pre-Islamic oral tradition. Notes the existence of convention, repetition, and thematic conservatism.Area: AR
Patricia E. Hampton. "Oral Interpretation as a Means of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England." In Studies in Interpretation. Ed. Esther M. Doyle and Virginia H. Floyd. Amsterdam: Rodopi NV. pp. 229-53.
Treats the place of oral recitation in the monastic communities of the Anglo-Saxon period. Describes the variety of functions as well as occasions, methods, punishments, and roles of different kinds of participants in oral reading. Also considers the religious and secular courses offered by monastic schools of the time.Area: OE
William L. Hanaway, Jr. "The Iranian Epics." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 76-98.
Some general remarks about oral audience, derivation of the epics from oral tradition, and typical traditional narrative elements.Area: IR
Robert W. Hanning. "Sharing, Dividing, Depriving_The Verbal Ironies of Grendel's Last Visit to Heorot." Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 15:203-13.
Using the example of words with the root dael- and scear- ("share" and "shear," respectively), he explains how the Beowulf-poet manipulates traditional formulaic phraseology to relate different scenes and bind them together in lexical and ideational ways.Area: OE
Adolphe Hanoteau. Poésies populaires de la Kabylie du Jurjura: Texte Kabyle et traductions. Paris: Imprimerie imperiale.
Along with Basset 1920, an early study on oral tradition among the Berbers that influenced Parry's intellectual leap from the demonstration of Homer's traditional diction to the hypothesis of an oral poetry.Area: BA
William F. Hansen. The Conference Sequence: Patterned Narration and Narrative Inconsistency in the Odyssey. University of California Classical Studies, vol. 8. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Examines a compositional multiform, the conference sequence, which is larger than the formula or theme and which consists of a pattern of themes typical of extensive narrative sequences. Finds eight examples of the conference (Aiaian, Egyptian, Thrinakian, Ogygian, and Scherian accounts as well as the three occurrences within the Telemacheia), explaining them as "different expressions of a related set of compositional tendencies" (p. 58) and ascribing certain narrative inconsistencies to an oral poet's handling of the traditional pattern.Area: AG, SC, CP
William F. Hansen. "Odysseus' Last Journey." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 24:27-48.
Brings to light analogs to episodes from Odyssey 9-12 in contemporary oral tradition and examines certain Homeric story features as oral folklore.Area: AG, FK, CP
William F. Hansen. "The Homeric Epics and Oral Poetry." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction ot the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 7-26.
Intended as an introduction to Homer, this essay includes a full discussion of the Parry-Lord oral theory as a solution to the Homeric Problem. Documents formula, theme, and larger narrative patterns.Area: AG
William F. Hansen. "Greek Mythology and the Study of the Ancient Greek Oral Story." Journal of Folklore Research, 20:101-12.
Argues for a more comprehensive view of the ancient Greek oral story, one which includes comic tales, fables, and the like from sources as disparate as Herodotus, Pausanias, and Plutarch in order to remedy the lack of a "systematic treatment of the folktale or of the traditional story" (103). Sees this approach as alleviating the problem that material which does not qualify as mythology per se is very often not included in handbooks of the Greek folktale.Area: AG
William Harkins. "O metrieskoj roli slovesyx formul v serboxorvatskom i russkom narodnom epose." In American Contributions to the Fifth International Congress of Slavists (Sofia, September 1963), vol. 2: Literary Contributions. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 147-65. With English summary, p. 165.
Noting that "the relative metrical regularity of the deseterac, the verse line of the Serbocroatian epic, is facilitated by the use of verbal formulas" (p. 165), he studies the same phenomenon in the Russian bylina epos of T.G. Rjabinin and other singers from the Onega region. Identifies recurrent phrases at the beginning (anaphora), middle (mesodiplosis), and end of the line (epiphora), suggesting a three-colon structure. Stresses how formulaic passages are rhythmically more regular than more individualized passages.Area: RU, SC, CP
Robert W. Harms. "Bobangi Oral Traditions: Indicators of Changing Perceptions." In The African Past Speaks. Ed. Joseph C. Miller. London and Hamden, CT: Dawson and Archon Books. pp. 178-200.
Contends that oral traditions have a present reality that reflects the dynamic changes in society, as well as the more usually recognized traditional past. Focuses on the Bobangi Society and its traditions for an example of the analysis of change in oral tales. Claims that changes point to underlying shifts in the cultural, social, and political realities that the traditions reflect. Concludes that "the very characteristics of oral tradition which frustrate the reconstruction of historical narratives can prove invaluable in providing clues to an underlying process of change" (000).Area: AF
Joseph Harris. "The senna: From Description to Literary Theory." Michigan Germanic Studies, 5:65-74.
Discusses the ON saga-scene the senna, a stylized battle of words, in the context of oral literature research, and relates it to the ritual games of verbal abuse or insult among Turkish boys (see Dundes et al. 1972) and black American youths (see Labov 1972). Perspective is that of speech-act theory, tracing the movement from communicative act to oral literary form.Area: ON, CP
Joseph Harris. "The King in Disguise: An International Popular Tale in Two Old Icelandic Adaptations." Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 94:57-81.
Treats the oral/literary question and the problem of European influence on saga literature in a common tale-type.Area: ON
Joseph Harris. "Satire and the Heroic Life: Two Studies (Helgakvia Hundingsbana I, 18 and Bjorn Hítdoelakappi's Grámagaflím)." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983. pp. 322-40.
Combines an approach from traditional narrative structures with that from the social or ideological matrix of the structures in a study of two hero lives. Treats the place of satire in a heroic pattern.Area: ON
Joseph Harris. "Eddic Poetry as Oral Poetry: The Evidence of Parallel Passages in the Helgi Poems for Questions of Composition and Performance." In Edda: A Collection of Essays. Ed. Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason. Manitoba Icelandic Series. Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press. pp. 210-42.
Places the Eddic poems against the background of what is known of oral literature, allowing for the tradition-dependent character of the ON works and their own stylistic heterogeneity. Considers the role of memorization as well as oral-formulaic composition. Includes a full review of directly relevant and more tangential criticism.Area: ON, CP
Philip W. Harsh. "Repetition of Lines in Euripides." Hermes, 72:435-49.
Argues that lines repeated in the Euripidean corpus are valid and should not be rejected indiscriminately as interpolations. Points to various artistic purposes such as characterization, emphasis, and comedy for which Euripides may have employed repetition and suggests that some repetitions may be considered to be formulas.Area: AG
Thomas E. Hart. "Tectonic Design, Formulaic Craft, and Literary Execution: The Episodes of Finn and Ingeld in Beowulf." Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik, 2:1-61.
Finds traditional oral forms and techniques compatible with literary composition entailing tectonic (numerical) patterns.Area: OE
Thomas R. Hart. "The Rhetoric of (Epic) Fiction: Narrative Technique in the Cantar de Mio Cid." In Hispanic Studies in Honor of Edmund de Chasca, a special issue of Philological Quarterly, 51, i:23-35.
Offers evidence of the narrator's manipulation of the reader's attitude in his commentary on action, foreshadowing, irony, use of epithets and direct address, and associations of the Cid with dawn formulas. Finds none of these features "incompatible with the view, held by many scholars, that the Cantar belongs to the vast body of oral heroic poetry" (35).Area: HI
A.E. Harvey. "Homeric Epithets in Greek Lyric Poetry." Classical Quarterly, n.s. 7:206-23.
Shows that Greek lyric poets employed Homeric formulaic phraseology with an artistic design consciously in mind.Area: AG
L.P. Harvey. "The Metrical Irregularity of the Cantar de Mio Cid." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 40:137-43.
Ascribes metrical and other manuscript problems to the proposed oral-dictated text of the Cid. On the analogy of the guslar as reported in Lord 1960, he envisions a poet unable to maintain the regular rhythm typical of the uninterrupted oral performance because of the slowed pace of dictation and the lack of an instrument. Also discusses the implications for editing, claiming that the received text has a certain status but that scholars might, in a companion volume, attempt to reconstruct the "ideal text."Area: HI, SC, CP
L.P. Harvey. "Oral Composition and the Performance of Novels of Chivalry in Spain." In Oral Literature: Seven Essays. Ed. Joseph J. Duggan. Edinburgh and New York: Scottish Academic Press and Barnes and Nobel, 1975. [= Forum for Modern Language Studies, 10, iii:84-100.]
On the basis of an Inquisition dossier, he describes Román Ramírez as a "teller of novels," a kind of traditional performer who created and re-created novels of chivalry without fixed texts. The sort of textual variation found among versions can thus be ascribed to traditional methods and the post-Renaissance novel can be shown to have its roots in oral tradition.Area: HI
L.P. Harvey. "Medieval Spanish." 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. 134-64.
In the section of this introductory essay devoted to the place of epic in the contemporary literary tradition, he argues that the Poema de Mio Cid "belongs to an oral genre... and appears to be an exceptional case of an oral epic set down in writing" (146). His analysis of the Castilian tradition proceeds from this judgment.Area: HI
M.W. Haslam. "Homeric Words and Homeric Metre: Two Doublets Examined leibw/eibw Iaia/aia." Glotta, 54:201-11.
Argues that eibw and aia are mutations of aeibw and Iaia respectively, caused by oral performance under the influence of the Homeric hexameter.Area: AG
Robert L. Hathaway. "The Art of the Epic Epithets in the Cantar de mio Cid." Hispanic Review, 42:311-21.
Understands epithetic technique in the Cid not simply as a mnemonic device or filler but as a conscious affective process "which continually reminds [the juglar's] audience that a happy resolution awaits for each problem the hero must face" (321).Area: HI
Arthur T. Hatto. Shamanism and Epic Poetry in Northern Asia. Foundation Day Lecture 1970. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Finds links among oral epics in SU, BY, AG, OE, RU, FN, OS, VG, JP (Ainu), KR, Samoyed, Yakut, and Tungus in terms of shamanistic tradition.Area: SU, BY, AG, OE, RU, FN, OS, VG, JP, KR, CP
Arthur T. Hatto. "Germanic and Kirgiz Heroic Poetry: Some Comparisons and Contrasts." In Deutung und Bedeutung: Studies in German and Comparative Literature Presented to Karl-Werner Maurer. Ed. Brigitte Schludermann et al. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 19-33.
Compares various Germanic "heroic lays" (OE, MHG), which he considers memorized with roots in oral tradition, to episodes from the Kirgiz oral heroic tales in terms of style and common themes.Area: OE, MHG, KR, CP
Arthur T. Hatto, ed. The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy-Khan (Kökötöydün Asi): A Kirghiz Epic Poem. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
An edition and translation of, along with extensive commentary on, the earliest Kirghiz oral traditional epic extant, a poem which "bears witness to a pithy and at times ornate bardic style with well-worn, beautifully structured epithets and other formulae..." (p. 90). Demonstrates that the existing manuscript is a fair copy of a field record made by Valikhanov, documents parallel passages, and includes (Appendix 8, pp. 269-70) remarks by Radlov on oral performance and improvisation. Notes also Parry's debt to Kirghiz oral poetry and to Radlov (1885) in particular.Area: KR
Arthur T. Hatto, ed. Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Volume One: The Traditions. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 9. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association.
Separately annotated are Auty, Bailey, Bawden, Cushing, Dunn, Hainsworth, Harvey, Hatto 1980b, Hatto 1980c, Morris, Ross, and Smith.Area: AF, AG, HI, JP, KR, MHG, MN, NR, OF, OHG, OS, SC, SK, VG, CP
Arthur T. Hatto. "Medieval German." 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. 165-95.
Views the medieval German heroic lay (the Hildebrandslied is the sole surviving example) as a "highly artistic tradition [that] grew from an established tradition of improvisation" (116). Illustrates the development from this stage to the longer narrative form typified by the Nibelungenlied and to other Middle High German texts.Area: OHG, MHG, CP
Arthur T. Hatto. "Kirghiz: Mid-Nineteenth Century." 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. 300-27.
A two-part general overview of the recorded heroic epic tradition of mid-nineteenth century Kirghizia. In Part I he discusses the oral-formulaic nature of the poetry in its various genres and surveys the corpus of extant texts, explicating such aspects of the poetry as its heroic ethos, its diction and style of performance, and its idealization of the Khans. Part II examines in more depth the cycle of epic poetry surrounding the Kipchak hero Manas as an example of Kirghiz epic style and speculates on the possible origins of the epic in Kirghiz tradition.Area:
Helmut A. Hatzfeld. "Les Etudes de style et la littérature médiévale." In Mélanges offerts à Rita Lejeune, Professeur à l'Université de Liège. Gembloux: Duculot, vol. 2. pp. 1601-11.
In Part I (pp. 1601-4), he reviews a number of oralist studies of OE and OF poetry, finding straight Parry-Lord theory unsatisfactory and recommending Benson's (1966) perspective on the literary character of formulaic diction. Conceives of medieval poets as literate artists imitating an earlier oral style, seconding Zumthor's (1963) idea of a popular style with a formulaic texture employed in literary genres.Area: OF, OE, CP
Helmut A. Hatzfeld. Estudios de estilistica. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta.
A study, both theoretical and applied, of "la estilistica romanica," translated in part from Giuseppe E. Sansone's Saggi di stilistica romanza. Among the subjects treated are formulas, epithets, and stock figures.Area: HI, OF, CP
Eric A. Havelock. Preface to Plato. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rpt. 1982.
Working from Platonic and pre-Socratic pronouncements on the nature of Homeric poetry and from an understanding of the epics as oral tradition, he seeks to demonstrate the ongoing mimetic function of the Iliad and Odyssey: "poetry is central in the educational theory. It occupied this position so it seems in contemporary society, and it was a position held apparently not on the grounds that we would offer, namely poetry's inspirational and imaginative effects, but on the ground that it provided a massive repository of useful knowledge, a sort of encyclopedia of ethics, politics, history, and technology which the effective citizen was required to learn as the core of his educational equipment. Poetry represented not something we call by that name, but an indoctrination which today would be comprised in a shelf of text books and works of reference" (p. 27). Includes comments on oral performance, audience, and the role and meaning of formulaic structure. Constitutes his major contribution to scholarship; a seminal work.Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. "Pre-literacy and the Pre-Socratics." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (University of London), 13:44-67. Rpt. in The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. pp. 220-60.
Examines the pre-Socratics for evidence of their interaction with oral culture. Analyses of the philosophical fragments of Xenophanes of Colophon, Heraclitus, and Parmenides indicate that they all "composed within an oral culture: that the world view of that culture was still furnished by Homer and Hesiod: that the philosopher's task was of necessity to revise this world view and the language in which it was expressed: and yet that at the same time he can argue for change only within a frame of reference supplied by his traditional prototypes" (63).Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. "Thoughtful Hesiod." Yale Classical Studies, 20:59-72. Rpt. in The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. pp. 208-19.
Portrays Hesiod in the Works and Days as attempting (and ultimately failing) to manipulate and even escape his tradition, viewing the poetic process "as one of topicalization carried on within the existing matrix of narrative oral poetry" (72).Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. Prologue to Greek Literacy. University of Cincinnati Classical Studies, 2nd ser., 2:329-91. Rpt. in The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press as "The Transcription of the Code of a Non-Literate Culture," pp. 89-121, and as "The Character and Content of the Code," pp. 122-49.
A social history of literacy in ancient Greece, with stress on the storage of cultural information in the rhythmic oral epic (cp. Havelock 1963). Argues that the invention of the Greek alphabet made transcription of this oral record possible. Includes examples of decoding the narrative to reveal data on custom, religious belief, agriculture, crafts, and so on. Sees epic structures such as formulas and narrative rings as originating in the need for oral mnemonics.Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. Origins of Western Literacy. Monograph series, 14. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Rpt. in The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982 as "Spoken Sound and Inscribed Sign," pp. 39-59; as "The Pre-Greek Syllabaries," pp. 60-76; as "The Greek Alphabet," pp. 77-88; and as "Aftermath of the Alphabet," pp. 314-50.
Treats the relationship between sound and sign, the alphabet and its precursors, and the effects of the alphabet on Greek society. Understands literacy as a social condition measurable not by writing but only by reading. Contends that the Greek invention meant a wholly new basis for thought and communication, and that typography eventually freed the alphabet from the confinement of manuscripts.Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. "The Preliteracy of the Greeks," New Literary History, 8 (1977), 369-91. Rpt. in The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. pp. 185-207.
Feels the Athenian population did not become fully literate until the end of the fifth century B.C. Postulates (1) that the invention of the Greek alphabet was an immensely significant event for Western culture, (2) that classical Greek culture predated that invention, (3) that civilization is "an ongoing experiment in the storage of cultural information for reuse" (370), (4) that a nonliterate culture is not necessarily primitive, (5) that poetry is an invention of preliterate man used to record and transmit cultural data, (6) that this storage and transmission took place in groups composed of a bard and his audience, (7) that the Greek alphabet was first applied to transcribing already composed statements, (8) that the education of preliterate Greeks was oral, and (9) that for a long time only traders and craftsmen used the new invention. Also treats epigraphic and artistic evidence from the period. An overview of all his work.Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. The Greek Concept of Justice: From its Shadow in Homer to its Substance in Plato. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Considers the shift from Homer to Plato, from "a justice orally managed to a justice formulated in writing" (p. 2). Like Havelock 1963, it also discusses the storage and retrieval system comprised by Homeric epic, a continuous and dynamic inventory put before the society via oral performance and helping to mold the society over time. Chapters cover legality, morality, and justice in the Iliad and Odyssey, and also in Hesiod. Views justice as a concept imbedded in its mimetic action until literacy assists in cleaving the two and forming an abstract principle that exists apart from its application.Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. "The Alphabetization of Homer." In Communication Arts in the Ancient World. Ed. Eric A. Havelock and Jackson P. Hershbell. Humanistic Studies in the Communication Arts. New York: Hastings House. pp. 3-21. Rpt. in The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. pp. 166-84.
Starting with a comparison of passages from Gilgamesh and the Iliad, he hypothesizes a lost oral epic far richer than either poem and goes on to speculate on the dynamics of Homeric oral epic. Describes the function of the oral encyclopedia, the echoic principle of sound and idea association, the dream metaphor for oral epic composition, dating through alphabetization, and the necessity for understanding oral modes of thought.Area: AG, SU, CP
Eric A. Havelock. "The Ancient Art of Oral Poetry." Philosophy and Rhetoric, 12:187-202. Rpt. in The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. pp. 150-65.
A detailed review of Peabody 1975 that considers a number of aspects of oral traditional form. Notes that Peabody "cleaves firmly to the phonemic realities which underlie a genuinely oral compositional process" and that "he listens to the singer compounding cola into formulas, formulas into thematic clusters, enclosing clusters in hexameters and hexameters in stanzas, following the lead of the phonetic shapes of the words, by a kind of psychological automatism"(rpt., p. 165). An article important for its own configuration of oral traditional processes as well as for its comments on Peabody.Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. "The Oral Composition of Greek Drama." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 35:61-113. Rpt. in The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. pp. 261-313.
Contends that since general literacy was not achieved before the last third of the fifth century B.C., Greek tragedy from Aeschylus to Euripides evolved "in a state of continuous psychological tension between the modes of oral and written communication" (rpt., p. 265). The testimony of Aristophanes' The Frogs reveals, in comparison to the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, a common didactic orientation (characteristic of oral culture), yet a growing and typically literate intellectualization in the work of Euripides. Elaborates this contrast between oral and literate mentalities through a study of oral features in The Seven Against Thebes.Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
A group of thirteen of his essays, twelve of them reprinted (from 1966a, 1966b, 1971 [2], 1976 [4], 1977, 1978b, 1979, 1980) and the introduction newly published (1982b).Area: AG
Eric. A. Havelock. "The Oral and the Written Word: A Reappraisal." In The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 3-38.
Argues that the history of Greek literature and thought needs to be rewritten in light of the modulation from oral to literate modes of expression. An "explosive technology" that revolutionized the Greek mind, the alphabet gradually produced a shift from procedure to principle, from a discourse of action to a discourse of reflection or analysis. Surveys broad historical periods and genres as an introduction to the essays that comprise the Lit Rev volume.Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. "The Linguistic Task of the Presocratics." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. Ed. by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy/The Hegeler Institute, pp. 7-82.
In Part One, "Ionic Science in Search of an Abstract Vocabulary," he proposes that the Ionian Pre-Socratics, writing in a period "poised between non-literacy and literacy" (9), would have composed under both a form of immediate audience control in the style of oral poetics and in expectation of a "reception at the hands of readers" (9). Presents evidence from Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles which shows that these philosophers were concerned to reject the terms of common speech, and hence the rhythmic and narrative precepts of oral poetry. Shows that they attempted to provide an alternative in the form of comprehensive statements designed to replace particular instances, thereby changing the epic language by originating new syntactical relationships, the effect of which was to universalize and unify application. While suggesting that one way of so doing was the Parmenidean use of the verb einai, he realizes that it was not until words were "stretched... out of the specificity of a human being to the dimension of cosmic reality" (32) that the beginning of conceptual thought was possible. Thus, still adverting to his belief that thought does not precede language, he concludes that the Pre-Socratics were the linguistic originators of the categories of time, space, matter, and motion. In Part Two, "The Language of the Milesian `School,'" he holds that the prime source_the Doxai compiled by Theophrastus_from which our knowledge of Milesian thinking derives, employs not the language of the Milesians themselves, but rather imposes the conceptual and categorical language of the Aristotelian school upon the original Pre-Socratic thoughts. Proposes that the fragments of undoubted Milesian origin are an attempt "to rationalize the cosmic architecture of Hesiod's Theogony" (69) and "to comment upon and correct the cosmic imagery of Homer" (80) in a language close to that of the original epic verse. Thus he posits a linear progression of conceptual language by questioning the likelihood of the Milesians, chronologically pre-Heraclitean, being linguistically more advanced than Heraclitus_an individual who still retained elements of oral poetry in his compositions.Area: AG
Eric A. Havelock. "Oral Composition in the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles." New Literary History, 16:175-95.
Studies the nature of the Greek drama, which was composed in writing but performed orally and before a live audience and which demonstrates that acoustic echoes of the sort inherent to African oral traditional mnemonics played a significant role in its composition.Area: AG, AF, CP
Eric A. Havelock and Jackson P. Hershbell, eds. Communication Arts in the Ancient World, Humanistic Studies in the Communication Arts (New York: Hastings House, 1978).
A collection of nine essays on subjects as diverse as the Greek alphabet, Aristotle, learning to write in the ancient world, the telegraph, art and art history, rhetoric and visual aids, and historiography. Separately annotated are Havelock (1978b), Russo (1976b), and Gentili and Cerri.Area: AG, LT, CP
Adnan Haydar. "The Mucallaqa of Imru al-Qays: Its Structure and Meaning, I." Edebiyât: A Journal of Middle Eastern Culture, 2:227-61.
Structural analysis of a pre-Islamic poem which assumes that the text is oral in the sense that it was delivered before an audience and was set down in writing some time after delivery.Area: AR
Edward R. Haymes. Mündliches Epos in mittelhochdeutscher Zeit. Erlangen: Palm und Ecke. Reissued with new foreword as Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, no. 164. Göppingen: A. Kümmerle, 1975.
Points out oral traditional characteristics in a number of MHG works. Concludes that at least the Nibelungenlied is the product of an individual master singer working within a rich and complex tradition.Area: MHG
Edward R. Haymes. "Das Nibelungenlied: Strophe 2233." The Explicator, 30, no. 65.
Interprets the third line of the strophe as meaning "that the oral poet is making ironic mockery of the writer's claim to superiority" (65).Area: MHG
Edward R. Haymes. A Bibliography of Studies Relating to Parry's and Lord's Oral Theory. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature: Documentation and Planning Series, no. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Printing Office.
An unannotated listing of approximately 500 items which either stem directly from the work of Parry and Lord or are parallel to it. Emphasis on AG and OE scholarship through 1971. See further Armistead 1975 and Holoka 1975.Area: CP, BB
Edward R. Haymes. "The Oral Theme of Arrival in the Nibelungenlied." Colloquia Germanic, 159-66.
Examines the occurrences of a common theme in the MHG Nibelungenlied to illustrate the morphology of a basic schema and the oral traditional structure of the poem. Also comments on a narrative inconsistency caused by the thematic unit overriding the narrative progress.Area: MHG
Edward R. Haymes. "Oral Poetry and the Germanic Heldenlied." Rice University Studies, 62, ii:47-54.
Contends that Heusler's classic taxonomy of early Germanic narrative as short oral Lieder and long written Epos is incompatible with the surviving evidence in OE, ON, OSX, and MHG, and that it does not take account of the widespread oral-formulaic style of epic in most early Germanic literatures. Also considers the question of improvisational versus memorial traditions.Area: MHG, OE, ON, OSX, GM, CP
Edward R. Haymes. Das mündliche Epos: Eine Einführung in die "Oral Poetry" Forschung. Sammlung Metzler, 151. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.
Sections on the development of the Parry-Lord oral theory, the formal aspects of oral poetics, and the spread of the methodology from ancient Greek to early Germanic, Spanish, and French epic. Bibliography added at the end of each unit.Area: AG, GM, HI, OF, CP, BB
Edward R. Haymes. "Oral Composition in Middle High German Epic Poetry." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983. pp. 341-46.
Considers the implications of oral theory for the history and criticism of literature, with special emphasis on the probable social milieu of the Nibelungenlied.Area: MHG
Edward R. Haymes. "Formulaic Density and Bishop Njegos." Comparative Literature, 32:390-401.
Through a comparison of the work of the Parry-Lord guslar Sulejman Maki and those of the literate nineteenth-century leader and poet Njegos, he recommends against the density of repeated phrases as a determinant of oral composition on the basis of similar densities of repeated expressions. Also points out the difference between repeated phrase and compositional formula, suggesting that imitations of oral traditional poems by lettered poets may be common in medieval times in various literatures.Area: SC, CP
Shirley Brice Heath. "Protean Shapes in Literacy Events: Ever-shifting Oral and Literate Traditions." In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. 9. Norwood: Ablex. pp. 91-117.
Tests others' findings about oral narrative and speech events by an analysis of data collected in Trackton, a Piedmont community in the Carolinas, between 1969 and 1979. Looking at home, church, and work contexts, she finds speech acts involving both the spoken and written word, according to interactive rules, settings, and participants. Places Trackton "somewhere on a continuum from full literacy to restricted literacy or non-literacy" (p. 111), with reading and formulaic discourse existing side by side, and cautions against oversimplifying communities by labeling them strictly oral or strictly literate.Area: US, TH
Fredrik J. Heinemann. "Judith 236-291a: A Mock Heroic Approach-to-Battle Type Scene." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 71:83-96.
Understands the Judith poet, well in control of his traditional materials, as employing a commonplace pattern for aesthetic purposes by creating a mock heroic version of the approach-to-battle sequence.Area: OE
Edward A. Heinemann. "Composition stylisée et technique littéraire dans la Chanson de Roland." Romania, 94:1-28.
Feels that the traditional style amounts to a poetic instrument, neither good nor bad in itself, that can be turned to an artistic purpose. Finds in the Chanson de Roland "une interpénétration du lyrisme et de la narration qui dépend de ces ressources traditionnelles" (2). Makes the point that the traditional wordhoard is not a memorized inventory of words but rather a language. Also discusses the formula, motif, and the stereotyped character, as illustrated in the battle of Roncevalles. Notes the aesthetic possibilities inherent in this "composition stylisée" and calls for studies relating artistic problems and thematic structure.Area: OF
Edward A. Heinemann. "Formulas, Motifs, and the Song of Roland." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 1:23-31.
In this review article on J. Duggan 1973a, he applauds formulaic and thematic analysis but questions whether the presence of such structures proves orality. Feels that formulas amount to a literary convention, and that both narrative and phraseological patterns should be studied more carefully to bring out the poet's craft.Area: OF
Fredrik J. Heinemann. "Hrafnkels Saga Freysgoa and Type-Scene Analysis." Scandinavian Studies, 46:102-19.
Assuming the traditional narrative character of the sagas but putting aside the question of their orality, he analyzes the "fight type-scene" in this saga and argues that the poet uses the traditional form to manipulate audience response.Area: ON
Edward A. Heinemann. "La Place de l'élément `brandir la lance' dans la structure du motif de l'attaque à la lance." Romania, 95:105-13.
Shows that the second of seven elements in the "Attack with a lance" theme described by Rychner (1955), namely "brandishing the lance," occurs 26 times in 106 total attacks over the course of seven chansons de geste, but not at all in the two oldest, the Roland and Gormont. Concludes that this element (in its three forms or aspects) was a relatively late addition to a pre-existent six-element motif.Area: OF
Edward A. Heinemann. "La Composition stylisée et la transmission écrite des textes rolandiens." In Société Rencesvals. Vle Congrès International (Aix-en-Provence, 29 Août-4 Septembre 1973). Actes. Ed. Jean Subrenat. Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence. pp. 253-72.
Studies "la grande liberté que cette grammaire [formulaire] laisse à celui qui débite une chanson de geste (que ce soit un scribe ou un jongleur)" (p. 256). Stresses the fluidity and generativity of OF epic diction and contends that even written transmission may make use of formulaic composition by remaining faithful to "certains noeuds essentiels" (p. 268) rather than exactly replicating manuscript copies.Area: OF
Fredrik J. Heinemann. "Hrafnkels Saga Freysgoa: The Old Problem with the New Man." Scandinavian Studies, 47:448-52.
A reply to Hallberg's (1975) critique of his earlier type-scene analysis (F. Heinemann 1974). Expands on the multiform nature of the scene, which he sees the saga author inheriting from oral tradition and artfully suiting to his own designs.Area: ON
Edward A. Heinemann. "Network of Narrative Details: The Motif of Journey in the Chanson de Geste." In The Epic in Medieval Society: Aesthetic and Moral Values. Ed. Harald Scholler. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. pp. 178-92.
Studies the repeated or conventional narrative element, using the ideas of "narrative detail" ("any item of content abstracted from the particular formulation it receives in the text" [180]) and formula, defined as "a metrical unit of syntax" (181). Sees details as forming networks of formulas of different consistencies and the listener/reader as the user of a traditional langue to decode a specific parole. Thus the journey motif associates with a network of details, and the whole system is subject ot artistic variability.Area: OF
Edward A. Heinemann. "Linguistic Counterpart in Roland, Laisse XII: Expressions of Parallel Alignment in Langue and in Parole and the Place of Convention and of Construction in a Semantic Set." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 8:115-29.
A discussion of counterpoint semantic rhythms within the laisse structure leads to denying that such patterns prove either oral or written composition. Feels that formulaic structure has been overemphasized, and that "the extent to which the entire genre is governed by an esthetic based on the play of variation against repetition remains to be discovered" (115).Area: OF
Fredrik J. Heinemann. "The Hero on the Beach in Fzstbroethra Saga." Neophilologus, 68:557-61.
Discusses the occurrence of the oral-formulaic "Hero on the Beach" theme-composition in a fight in Chapters 4-5 of the Fzstbroethra Saga, a unique occurrence in the corpus of saga literature. Suggests that this occurrence is congruent with the idea that "Sagas derived their present form from oral sagas" (560) and calls for a more comprehensive formulist study of the sagas to "demonstrate how saga style expresses saga mind" (560).Area: ON
Ernst Heitsch. Epische Kunstsprache und homerische Chronologie. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Includes study of the Homeric poetic dialect from a structuralist perspective (cp. Parry 1932).Area: AG
Ernst Heitsch. "Eine junge epische Formel (Ilias Y142)." Gymnasium, 76:34-42.
On the basis of Iliad 20.142 and three other verses containing the same formula, he argues that not all three stem from pre-Homeric times.Area: AG
Mireille Helffer. Les Chants dans l'épopée tibétaine de Ge-sar, d'après le livre de la Course de Cheval. Centre de Recherches d'Histoire et de Philologie de la 4e Section de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 2. Hautes Etudes Orientales, 9. Geneva: Droz.
Within this magisterial work, which includes Tibetan oral texts (with French translations), ethnography, and stylistic analysis, the author presents evidence of oral-formulaic repetition by the epic singers (sgrun-mkhan). Discusses the poetic line and various epithetic and narrative repetition (pp. 381-426) and formulaic structure (pp. 427-36). Also treats the role of music (pp. 461-518).Area: TB, MU
Bertrand Hemmerdinger. "Epopée homérique et lais héroïques serbes." Revue des études grecques, 90:78-80.
Obstinately following von Miklosich's view of 1858 that there was no such thing as epic in Southslavic, full in the face of 1500 such imaginary beasts in the Parry Collection at Harvard University, he argues that Parry's attempt to prove Wolf's (1795) hypothesis_a proof Parry in fact never essayed_was useless. A tour de force of unimaginable myopia and at best partial learning.Area: AG, SC, CP
Hamish Henderson. "The Oral Tradition." Scottish International, 6:27-32.
An extensive review article on Buchan 1972, with consideration of Mrs. Brown of Falkland and her contribution to folk balladry, of comparative oral literature research, of the Child ballads in general, of modern versions of ballads gathered from fieldwork, of the nature of individual texts and their relationship to tradition, of the ubiquitous genre of bawdry (not discussed by Buchan), and of the interplay between literacy and oral composition.Area: BR, FB, CP
David P. Henige. "The Problem of Feedback in Oral Tradition: Four Examples from the Fante Coastlands." Journal of African History, 14:223-35.
An interesting exposition that illustrates by example how printed information can "feed back" into oral traditions of history, especially when some degree of literacy facilitates its incorporation. Argues that "before the history in the oral traditions can be properly understood, the history of these traditions must be essayed" (235).Area: AF
David P. Henige. The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera. Oxford Studies in African Affairs. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Primarily a study of Fante oral history, with explanations of chronological telescoping and related phenomena that occur when history is fashioned and transmitted orally. Part of Chapter 3 (pp. 97-103) examines specifically the effect of literacy on oral tradition, giving examples of "feedback" from written sources into the tradition.Area: AF
David P. Henige. "`The Disease of Writing': Ganda and Nyoro Kinglists in a Newly Literate World." In The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Ed. by Joseph C. Miller. Hamden, CN: Archon, pp. 240-61.
Questions the oral nature of the tradition of kinglists and argues that such lists demonstrate an oral-written confluence and are not a true reflection of African society and history.Area: AF
Ursula Hennig. "Die Bezeichnung des Redeeingangs im Nibelungenlied_eine `Formel'?" In Festschrift für Kurt Ruh zum 65. Geburtstag. Ed. Dietrich Huschenbett et al. [=Medium AEvum deutsch, 1979]. Tübingen: Max Niemayer. pp. 165-74.
Looks at the deployment of verba dicendi (quedan, antwurten, and sprechan) as evidence of oral formulas that begin a speech in the Nibelungenlied and other MHG poems. Notes the significance of the prosodic frame into which such verbs are fitted: "Die strenge Kadenzregelung der Nibelungenstrophe hat er selbst eingeführt oder bereitwillig akzeptiert: ihr unterwirft er seine bewusste Auswahl unter den sprachlich möglichen Bezeichnungsvarianten" (p. 174).Area: MHG
Gottfried Hermann. "Über die Wiederholungen bei Homer." In Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979, pp. 47-59. Trans. by Joachim Latacz from "De iteratis apud Homerum." In Godofredi Hermanni Opuscula. Ed. Theodore Fritzche, vol. 8. Leipzig: E. Fleischer. pp. 11-23.
Distinguishes three kinds of repetitive phrases in Homer: (1) true repetitions, made intentionally by one and the same poet in a single poem, (2) apparent repetitions, taken from the work of another poet or from another poem by the same poet, and (3) repetitions which owe their recurrence to the tradition of the Iliad and Odyssey rather than one particular poet. The third of these categories constitutes an early notion of the traditional phrase, what commentators on OE poetry in this period call part of the Phrasenvorrat.Area: AG
Czeslaw Hernas. "O przystosowywaniu formuly poetyckiej." Literatura Ludowa, 19:3-13. With English summary, 13.
Basing his remarks on the folk ballad Pani pana zabila (A Lady Killed Her Husband), he contends that various adaptations prove that the oral performer does not simply repeat mechanically but modifies formulas both to modernize and to exercise his individuality.Area: PO, FB
Jackson P. Hershbell. "The Oral-Poetic Religion of Xenophanes." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. Ed. by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy/The Hegeler Institute, pp. 125-33.
Argues in agreement with Havelock for the inclusion of Xenophanes in the oral poetic tradition; states that Xenophanes had to work within the extant tradition, given the memorial-rhythmic collocation present in oral cultures, if he wished to "correct and replace" (128) Homeric and Hesiodic concepts of the universe with his own. Contends that Xenophanes' advances were not so much in the realm of positing one divinity and arguing against a plurality of gods, but in rejecting anthropomorphism.Area: AG
Melville J. Herskovits. "The Study of African Oral Art." Journal of American Folklore, 74:451-56.
A general, brief overview of aspects of African oral tradition intended as an introduction to the field.Area: AF
Melville J. Herskovits and F.S. Herskovits. Dahomean Narrative: A Crosscultural Analysis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Consists primarily of a wide variety of Dahomean oral narratives collected in West Africa in 1931. Introduction describes the collection and classification processes and includes a section on the non-narrative forms of the riddle, proverb, and verse. Also treats ethnographic context and Dahomean mythology.Area: AF
Hans Herter. "L'Inno Omerico a Hermes alla luce della problematica della poesia orale." In I poemi epici rapsodici non omerici e la tradizione orale. Ed. by C. Brillante, M. Cantilena, C.O. Paves. Padua: Antenor, pp. 183-201.
Argues against the interpretation of shared formulaic lines in Homer and the Hymns as evidence of the orality of the latter, noting also differences in genre, provenance, and audience.Area: AG
Michael Herzfeld. Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece. Dan Danciger Publication Series. Austin: University of Texas Press.
In illustrating the role of folklore theory in the shaping of national consciousness, he includes numerous comments on the collection and edition of oral materials, on early analyses of oral tradition by native investigators, and specifically on oral folk poetry in the Balkans. Refers to Parry-Lord theory (p. 58).Area: MG, FK, TH, CP
George Herzog. "Speech-Melody and Primitive Music." The Musical Quarterly, 20:452-66.
Working chiefly with Jabo (Western Liberia) and Navaho (both tonal languages), he studies the interrelation between melody and speech in oral tradition, concluding that "the songs illustrate a constant conflict and accommodation between musical tendencies and the curves traced by the speech-tones of the song-text" (466).Area: AF, AI, MU, TH
George Herzog. "Stability of Form in Traditional and Cultivated Music." In Papers Read by Members of the American Musicological Society at the Annual Meeting (Washington, DC, December 29th and 30th, 1938) (n.p., 1940), pp. 69-73. Rpt. in The Study of Folklore. Ed. Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965. pp. 169-74.
Explains how in traditional song "the form itself and many of its constituent elements appear in a state of constant flux and re-creation" (rpt., p. 170). Shows that variation is not only tolerated by tradition but integral to its continuance. Stresses role of composition in performance.Area: MU, AF, AI, SC, CP
George Herzog. "The Music of Yugoslav Heroic Epic Folk Poetry." Journal of the International Folk Music Council, 3:62-64.
A preliminary description of formulaic melody-units which coincide with the unit of the ten-syllable verse in SC oral epic. Includes a morphology of introductory line, line of continuity, dramatic line, and closure.Area: MU, SC
Alfred Heubeck. Die Homerische Frage: Ein Bericht über die Forschung der letzten Jahrzehnte. Erträge der Forschung, Band 27. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
The history of criticism section includes a discussion of the Analyst-Unitarian debate, Neoanalysis, and "die oral-poetry-Forschung." In this last part (pp. 130-52) he reviews scholarship briefly from Parry to date and suggests a rapprochement between oral theory and Neoanalysis.Area: AG, BB
Alfred Heubeck. "Homeric Studies Today: Results and Prospects." In Homer: Tradition and Invention. Ed. Bernard C. Fenik. Univeristy of Cincinnati Classical Studies, n.s. 2. Leiden: E.J. Brill. pp. 1-17.
A careful consideration of the very different contributions to Homeric studies made by oral literature research and Neoanalysis, which concentrates on Homer's individual transcendence of his tradition and thus on the possibilities of and evidence for original creative composition. Feels oral theory alone cannot explain the overall plan and unity of the Iliad, finding features in Achilles' character, for example, that indicate a literate poet who surpassed the genre and situation of oral poetry. A valuable summary and illustration of German Neoanalytical criticism.Area: AG, BB
A. Kent Hieatt. "Introduction" to Beowulf and Other Old English Poems. Trans. Constance B. Hieatt. New York: Odyssey Press. Rpt. 1982.
This introduction (pp. 1-22) contains some comments on the oral tradition from which Beowulf is said to stem, but the author maintains that the poet who composed the surviving text was almost certainly literate (espec. pp. 3-4 and 17-20).Area: OE
Constance B. Hieatt. "Dream Frame and Verbal Echo in the Dream of the Rood." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 72:251-63.
Sees verbal echo as a functional medium that participates in the poem's central fiction by helping to create "the various dreamlike transferences and parallels" (254) characteristic of the narrative movement. Notes the structural function of word clusters and their role in providing unity. Like other studies of verbal echo (cp. Kintgen 1974, etc.), this method runs parallel to oral-formulaic theory in OE.Area: OE
Constance B. Hieatt. "Envelope Patterns and the Structure of Beowulf." English Studies in Canada, 1:250-65.
Basing her observations on Bartlett 1935, she finds ten of the fitts, or manuscript divisions, bounded by "envelope patterns" (the repetition of words or actions or both at the extremities of a narrative unit), and suggests that this boundary structure was significant in the composition and meaning of Beowulf.Area: OE
Constance B. Hieatt. "Divisions: Theme and Structure of Genesis A." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 81:243-51.
Looks at repeated words and verbal structures (especially verbs of "dividing") to illustrate thematic and general artistic coherence of the poem.Area: OE
Constance B. Hieatt. "Judith and the Literary Function of Old English Hypermetric Lines." Studia Neophilologica, 52:251-57.
Notes how the hypermetric lines, with and without accompanying envelope patterns, "clarify the thematic intentions and technical artistry of the poet" (257) and indicate that the fitt divisions in Judith may be correct. Also treats significant verbal repetition.Area: OE
Constance B. Hieatt. "Modthrytho and Heremod: Intertwined Threads in the Beowulf-Poet's Web of Words." Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 83:173-82.
Describes the traditional mythic identities of the bad rulers Modthrytho and Heremod and the influence of such identities on the reception of the poem. Suggests that the anagrammatic nature of their names may be significant, arguing that "... the connections between characters are multiple and often far more subtle than they might appear at first glance. However, attention to this particular parallel is especially helpful in that it provides, I believe, the solution to the most vexed difficulty in the passage concerned, the matter of the lady's name" (182).Area: OE
Constance B. Hieatt. "Cædmon in Context: Transforming the Formula." Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 84:485-97.
Compares creation hymns from Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon to Cædmon's Hymn with respect to formulaic composition and the use of motifs and themse to describe the manner in which pre-Christian poetics addresses Christian ideas. Noting that traditional Germanic poetry relates the creation in terms of earth being formed before heaven, she concludes that Cædmon's Hymn is an examples of Lönnroth's "Creation theme" type-scene and that Cædmon expands "upon the formula's basic content [eorth/upheofon] at the same time that it contradicts it" (496).Area: OE, ON, GM
Angela Hildyard and David R. Olson. "On the Comprehension and Memory of Oral vs. Written Discourse." In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. 9. Norwood: Ablex. pp. 19-33.
Aware of work on oral literature, the investigators describe the results of an experiment intended to determine the differences between oral and written apprehension of narrative. They find that "the listeners pay primary attention to the theme of the story, building a coherent representation of what was meant," while the readers "are able to pay closer attention to the meaning of the sentences per se, recalling more incidental but mentioned details and being more accurate in their judgments of what was in fact stated in the text" (pp. 31-32).Area: TH
Delbert R. Hillers and Marsh H. McCall, Jr. "Homeric Dictated Texts: A Reexamination of Some Near Eastern Evidence." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 80:19-23.
Argues that "the bulk of the evidence from Near Eastern literature cited in support of Lord's theory of Homeric dictated texts should not be so used" (23), demonstrating that misconceptions arise from faulty translations of the term lmd as "dictated" rather than "apprentice" in the Ugaritic Baal epic, and from untenable hypotheses about recording the Hittite texts of Kumarbi and Ullikummi. Nonetheless they urge further application of the oral-formulaic theory.Area: AG, UG, HT, CP
E.C. Hills. "Irregular Epic Metre: A Comparative Study of the Metre of the Poem of the Cid and of Certain Anglo-Norman, Franco-Italian, and Venetian Epic Poems." In Homenaje ofrecido a Menendez Pidal: Miscelanea de estudios linguisticos, literarios e historicos, vol 1. Madrid: Libreria y Casa Editorial Hernando. pp. 759-77.
Includes the notion of an artificial poetic dialect as one feature of orally performed poems in irregular meters.Area: HI, ANR, IT, CP
Eric D. Hirsch. The Philosophy of Composition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Of greatest relevance is Chapter 1 ("Distinctive Features of Written Speech," pp. 14-32), which notes that some language uses reverse the customary order of relations by making written speech primary and oral speech derivative. Argues that the different contexts of oral and written communication produce different "conventions of code" between encoder and audience.Area: TH
Renate Hitze. Studien zu Sprache und Stil der Kampfshilderungen in den chansons de geste. Kölner Romanistische Arbeiten, n.f., 33. Geneva and Paris: E. Droz and Minard.
Includes (1) a historical overview of stylistic criticism of OF epic, (2) comments on the question of oral poetry and formulaic style (pp. 15-34), (3) study of battles as structural elements, (4) motif and formula analyses of battles, (5) formulaic description (pp. 80-144), and (6) comparison of the chanson de geste with the Cid and with Chrétien de Troyes' Roman de Renart.Area: OF
A. Hoekstra. "Une Formule para-homérique." Mnemosyne, 4o ser., 7:297-99.
Presents linguistic evidence in Hesiod and Homer for Nilsson's claim that there existed alongside the oral heroic tradition another oral poetry, "composée également en hexamètres, qui avait pour sujet la sagesse pratique des astronomes, des pilotes et des agriculteurs de l'époque préhomérique" (297).Area: AG
A. Hoekstra. "Hésiode et la tradition orale: Contribution à l'etude du style formulaire." Mnemosyne, 4deg. ser., 10:193-225.
Treats the relationship of Hesiodic and Homeric traditional diction, offering a developmental hypothesis to explain their common or similar phraseology.Area: AG
A. Hoekstra. Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes: Studies in the Development of Greek Epic Diction. Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, n.r., Deel 71, no. 1. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij. Rpt. 1969.
Contends that (1) part but not all of Homer's diction is formulaic and traditional, (2) the orality of the Iliad and Odyssey is uncertain, (3) single words cannot be regarded as formulas, and (4) there is no conflict between metrical localization rules and formulaic structure. Sees Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns as evidence of the evolution of Homeric epic diction. On the basis of factors such as quantitative metathesis and nu-movable, he postulates an epic koine which predates the twelfth century B.C.Area: AG
A. Hoekstra. The Sub-Epic Stage of the Formulaic Tradition: Studies in the Homeric Hymns to Apollo, to Aphrodite, and to Demeter. Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, n.r., Deel 75, no. 2. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij.
Argues that, although the evidence of the Hymns varies somewhat because of genre, length, and other considerations, the general indication is that their diction shows post-Homeric developments from the presumably early epic Kunstsprache (termed "sub-epic").Area: AG
A. Hoekstra. "Homerus M. Parry en wij." Lampas, 2:82-95.
A brief account of the Parry-Lord research and scholarship and its bearing on the study of Homeric epic.Area: AG, SC, CP
A. Hoekstra. "Aèdes anciens et poètes ioniens: Le témoignage de quelques expressions homériques." In Le Monde grec: Hommages à Claire Préaux. Ed. J. Bingen, G. Cambier, and G. Nachtergael. Brussels: Université de Bruxelles. pp. 25-32.
Examining various Homeric words and phrases to determine their age and provenance, he uses formulaic structure as a guide to traditional character, noting that "les innovations que nous venons d'observer se sont glissées dans le langage traditionnel parce que les poètes ont subi l'influence de l'ionien parlé de leurs temps" (32). Conceives of a corresponding ideational development away from the traditional toward the more abstract and differentiated.Area: AG
A. Hoekstra. "Metrical Lengthening and Epic Diction." Mnemosyne, 4o ser., 31:1-26.
Finds that three instances of metrical lengthening entered the poetic tradition at different times, as well as further evidence of formulas of different ages. Proposes that the singers must have employed old formulas beside newer ones and that the traditional diction must have evolved accordingly.Area: AG
Uvo Hoelscher. "The Transformation from Folk-Tale to Epic." In Homer: Tradition and Invention. Ed. Bernard C. Fenik. University of Cincinnati Classical Studies, n.s. 2. Leiden: E.J. Brill. pp. 51-67.
Attempts to distinguish the basic folktale or story underlying various Homeric episodes from the fully developed epic style in which we have them. Tries to ascertain the relative roles of tradition and invention (the dialectic being analogous, for him, to that of oral versus written composition). Discusses from this perspective (1) the beginning of the epic narrative, (2) the beginning of the putative Odyssey folktale and its relation to the Telemacheia, (3) Penelope's "deception" of the suitors in Book 18, and (4) the test of the bow and Penelope's sleep in Book 21.Area: AG, FK
Henry Hoenigswald. "Summary." 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. 273-78.
Offers a brief history of linguistic investigation in AG epic before Parry. Feels that the 1974 conference on "Oral Literature and the Formula" decided that Parry was treating a special case rather than a general phenomenon. Sees comparative research taking root from the Homeric epics but evolving in a number of ways.Area: AG, CP, TH
Felix Hoerburger. "Erzählliedsingen bei den Albanern des Has-Gebietes (Metohija)." Zbornik za narodni zivot i obiaje juznih slavena (Zagreb), 40:193-201.
Studies the shaping role of melodic formulas in Albanian oral song, with emphasis on the relationship between phraseology and melody, and even between melody and sense.Area: MU, AB
Werner Hoffmann. Mittelhochdeutsche Heldendichtung. Grundlagen der Germanistik, 14. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.
In section I.6 ("Die Lebensform der mittelhochdeutscher Heldendichtung [Verhältnis zur `oral poetry']," pp. 53-59), he argues that MHG heroic poetry was not composed orally. Sees the poems as the work of literate poets who were aware of and able to manipulate the formulas and other conventions of oral poetry. Admits a centuries-old oral tradition must have preceded this stage of versemaking.Area: MHG
James C. Hogan. "Double prin and the Language of Achilles." Classical Journal, 71:305-10.
Contends that Achilles' use of this particular grammatical figure distinguishes him not only for the audience but for other characters in the poem, who themselves employ the figure when speaking to him. One of a series of articles sparked by A. Parry 1956.Area: AG
Bengt Holbek. Formal and Structural Studies of Oral Narrative: A Bibliography (=Unifol, Årsberetning 1977, pp. 149-94). Copenhagen: Institut for Folkemindevidenskab, Kobenhavns Universitet.
Primarily a listing of works deriving from the school of structural analysis stemming from Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss, but it does contain some studies pertaining to oral-formulaic research.Area: CP, TH, BB
Michael Holland. "Rolandus resurrectus." In Melanges offerts à René Crozet à l'occasion de son soixante dixième anniversaire. Ed. Pierre Gallais and Yves-Jean Riou. Poitiers: Société d'Etudes Médiévales, vol. 1, pp. 397-418.
Assuming with Rychner (1955) that the Chanson de Roland is a literate but traditional composition, he probes the aesthetic possibilities of the laisse structure and certain typical motifs. Documents formulaic and thematic structure.Area: OF
William E. Holland. "Formulaic Diction and the Descent of a Middle English Romance." Speculum, 48:89-109.
Dismissing the proposed necessary connection between formulaic structure and oral composition on the grounds that a literate composer used patterned phraseology because it was conventional, he argues that the manuscript history of ME verse romances (in particular his example of five versions of Arthour and Merlin) cannot be traced in the customary way because they are dense with conventional (and shared) formulaic diction.Area: ME
James P. Holoka. "Homeric Originality: A Survey." Classical World, 66:257-93.
An annotated survey of Parry's and Lord's writings and related studies on AG epic through 1972, with sections on epithet, formula, theme, comparative epic, larger structural patterns, and critical resources.Area: AG, BB
James P. Holoka. [Supplement to Haymes 1973]. Classical World, 68:385-86.
Adds items to and corrects entries in Haymes' bibliography of two years earlier.Area: AG, OE, BB
James P. Holoka. "The Oral Formula and Anglo-Saxon Elegy: Some Misgivings." Neophilologus, 60:570-76.
Includes a formulaic analysis of The Wife's Lament and The Husband's Message, according to the method first described by Magoun (1953a). Feels that the correspondences in diction are not really formulaic but rather "allusive verbal nuances one associates with literate artistry" (571). Posits a skilled singer who, because of the brevity of the songs in this genre, could memorize a text and work on it in his mind, effectively producing a written text.Area: OE
James P. Holoka. "`Thick as Autumnal Leaves'_The Structure and Generic Potentials of an Epic Simile." Milton Quarterly, 10:78-83.
In discussing the Miltonic simile at Paradise Lost 1.299-313, he describes the Homeric simile as a paratactic form which "had its origin in the exigencies of oral improvisation" (78-79) and calls for an oral poetics to deal with this traditional element.Area: AG, CP
James P. Holoka. "Homer Studies 1971-1977." Classical World, 73:65-150.
A survey of Homeric scholarship of all kinds, with annotations for a majority of the works cited. Most important for oral literature research are pp. 69-90.Area: AG, BB
James P. Holoka. "`Looking Darkly (Hypodra idon)': Reflections on Status and Decorum in Homer." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 113:1-16.
Examines all 26 Homeric occurrences of the formula hypodra ido^n ("looking darkly") to show that its force is to connote "irritation and resentment and... to stop short an offender against social decorum" (4). Thus it amounts to a nonverbal signal that one character's "infraction of propriety" (16) has brought interpersonal relations to the breaking point.Area: AG
Otto Holzapfel. "Homer_Nibelungenlied_Novalis: Zur Diskussion um die Formelhaftigkeit epischer Dichtung." Fabula, 15:34-46.
Concurs that the computer serves a useful function in the study of oral-formulaic poetry by simplifying the calculation of formulaic density, but stresses the need for a qualitative as well as quantitative statistical analysis. Illustrates his point by conducting a formulaic search of Novalis' novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802). Includes a summary of Parry's work and references to oral-formulaic scholarship on the Nibelungenlied.Area: AG, MHG, CP
Otto Holzapfel. "Scandinavian Folk Ballad Symbols, Epic Formulas, and Verbal Traditions." 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. 113-21.
Focuses on "the significance, meaning, and importance of the special formulaic structure which constitutes the ballad plot" (113) in folk ballads such as "Angelfyr and Helmer Kamp." Distinguishes between epic formulas, which function as "characterizing signs and dramatic signals for the audience" (120) and ornamental formulas, which are merely stereotypical phrases.Area: SCN, FB
Otto Holzapfel. "Skandinavische Volksballadformeln: Merkmal traditioneller Improvisation oder literarischer/verbaler Tradierung?" In Sumlen: Årsbok for vis- och folkmusikforskning [for 1978]:102-21.
Discusses the question of improvisation and variability in texts of Skandinavian folk ballads; delineates strophic, "typische," narrative, and epic structures in the ballad "Stolt Ellensborg."Area: FB
Holger Homann. "Die Heldenkataloge in der historischen Dietrichsepik und die Theorie des mündlichen Dichtung." Modern Language Notes, 92:415-35.
Argues that the "lists" of heroes presented in the Dietrich epic are elements of oral-formulaic diction.Area: MHG
R. Hope Simpson and J.F. Lazenby. The Catalogue of Ships in Homer's Iliad. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
Argues that the Catalogue was originally composed by oral poets in the Mycenaean era and was transmitted, with additions and mutations, through the Dark Ages to Homer (see espec. pp. 153-75).Area: AG
Lillian H. Hornstein. "Middle English Romances." In Recent Middle English Scholarship and Criticism: Survey and Desiderata. Ed. J. Burke Severs. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. pp. 55-95.
A bibliographical essay on various aspects of the romances, including the application of oral- formulaic theory. Notes that lettered poets could apparently write formulaic verse and calls for a reexamination of the poems to assess the usage of traditional compositional elements and for a reconsideration of the audience.Area: ME, BB
Jules Horrent. "Tradition poétique du Cantar de mio Cid au XII siècle." Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 7:451-77.
Reconstructs a hypothetical textual history for the poem over the course of the twelfth century, postulating successive stages beginning with a version composed twenty years after the hero's death that introduced nonhistorical elements into the tale and concluding with a text of 1207 that was eventually transcribed by the fourteenth-century scribe Per Abbat. Cautions that "la tradition épique du poème peut donc etre considerée comme continue au cours du XIIe siécle, car les versions que quelques rares indices permettent de repérer ne sont pas les seules a avoir existé" (477).Area: HI
Jules Horrent. Historia y poesía en torno al `Cantar del Cid.' Barcelona: Editorial Ariel.
A close critical study that tests aspects of the Cid against history. Disagrees pointedly and repeatedly with Menéndez Pidal: argues for one rather than two authors, for the conceptual and artistic unity of the poem (and therefore against dividing the work into three parts), for a date of composition between 1150 and 1160 (as opposed to M.-P.'s 1140), and so on. Concludes that the initial version of the Cid appeared about twenty years after the hero's death. Allows for an oral troubadour tradition in the background of the work but treats the surviving text as written.Area: HI
Helmut Hucke. "Der Übergang von mündlicher zu schriftlicher Musiküberlieferung im Mittelalter." In Transmission and Form in Oral Traditions. Ed. Leo Treitler et al. In International Musicological Society: Report of the Thirteenth Congress (Berkeley 1977). Kassel: Bärenreiter. pp. 180-91.
Taking Treitler 1974 and 1975 as cues, he studies the manuscripts of Gregorian Chant as written documentation of an oral enterprise, contending that Chant can be understood only as an oral tradition. Brief comparison with the tradition of the medieval troubadours and trouvères.Area: MU, LT, CP
Lee Hudson. "Between Singer and Rhapsode." Literature in Performance: A Journal of the Literary and Performing Arts, 1, i:33-44.
Sees the much-discussed Homeridae as intermediate between the oral bard who (re-)created in performance and the rhapsode who worked from a fixed text: "From occasional composer-performers to performer-scholars, the literate Homeridae simultaneously represented the arts of both the singer and the rhapsode. No longer part of a true oral tradition, they became the dual reflectors of what was and what was forthcoming." (42). Uses standard Parry-Lord theory on formula, theme, and enjambement criteria and assigns the Homeric Hymns and the Epigrams to the Homeridae.Area: AG, CP
Judith Huntsman. "Butterfly Collecting in a Swamp: Suggestions for Studying Oral Narratives as Creative Art." Journal of the Polynesian Society, 90:209-18.
Describes the oral traditions of Polynesia and emphasizes the contextual and performance aspects of studies in oral tradition. Notes that the views expressed by members of a culture toward their own oral traditions may not reconcile with objective findings by researchers, since many view any deviation from a definitive version of a tale to be a fault; in practice, however, she finds that there is a difference between what these subjects say and the manner in which they resopnd to live oral traditional performances.Area: PL
James R. Hurt. "The Texts of King Horn." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 7:47-59.
After a formulaic and thematic analysis of selected passages from the various texts involved, he concludes that the originally oral King Horn material was worked over by scribes who knew and could use the traditional patterns, although they were themselves quite literate.Area: ME
George L. Huxley. Greek Epic Poetry: From Eumelos to Panyassis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Understands the AG epic tradition as originally oral but integrated more and more with writing from the eighth century BC onward. Feels that Parry's evidence on traditional formulaic diction proves antiquity but not necessarily orality. Offers the medieval Irish fili and bard as a comparison for the AG poets.Area: AG, OI, CP
Charles Hyart. "Srpske narodne pesme i chansons de geste." Narodno stvaralastvo folklor, 13-14:1008-16.
A comparative discussion of SC oral heroic songs and OF chansons de geste on three levels: the shape of the two decasyllable lines, groups of lines forming a whole (in each tradition), and recurrent motifs or themes. Includes consideration of syntactic as well as phraseological patterns. Traces the similarities between the two traditions to an original direct influence of OF on SC heroic tradition through the agency of itinerant jongleurs.Area: SC, OF, CP
Charles Hyart. "Les Analogies de structure entre le décasyllabe épique francais et le deseterac serbe." Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves (Université Libre de Bruxelles) [Mélanges dediés a Boris Unbegaun], 19:669-707.
A comparative analysis of the OF and SC decasyllables that treats lexical, musical, and rhythmic dimensions, along with discussions of caesura and an exhaustive study of the grammatical patterns within hemistichs or cola. Ascribes similarity to French influence on SC epos.Area: OF, SC, CP
Charles Hyart. "Les Groupements de vers dans les pesme yougoslaves et les chansons de geste francaises." In Communications présentées par les slavisants de Belgique au VIe Congrès International de Slavistique (Prague_Août 1968). Brussels: Ministere de l'Education Nationale et de la Culture. pp. 21-65.
Using the Chanson de Roland and heroic songs from the second volume of Vuk St. Karadzic's Srpske narodne pesme, he illustrates formal similarities between the OF laisse and the SC "groupe de vers," the latter a more or less self-contained passage within the longer narrative of the poem. Distinguishing types of groups in both traditions by their content, he argues that the more recent SC songs' tendency toward rhyme at the expense of such narrative units suggests memorization; that "les chanteurs s'adonnent de moins en moins à l'improvisation au profit d'une recitation pure et simple d'un texte mémorisé antérieurement" (29). Notes that the laisse and group both characteristically begin with a typical element that acts as a sort of narrative reprise, and that they both end with a conclusion that determines the mode of continuation. Includes a full description of repeated elements in both traditions (whole passages, motifs, analogous situations, laisses et groupes similaires, typical lines, hemistichs, and words (see espec. 41-52) and of various phraseological patterns that function traditionally. A thorough and significant comparative study.Area: SC, OF, CP
Dell Hymes. "Discovering Oral Performance and Measured Verse in American Indian Narrative." New Literary History, 8:431-57.
Demonstrates in a Clackamas Chinook prose tale collected by Melville Jacobs the presence of a unitary structure of oral performance_an organization that is "measured," or divided into "verses" and "lines" by the recurrent initial elements of sentences. The material does not consistently show a phonological or grammatical ordering, as would poetic material, but repetition within frames helps to characterize its parts. After noting other aspects of structure, he compares his findings to those of others (espec. Tedlock) and recommends that a great deal more attention be devoted to AI oral narratives.Area: AI, TH
Daniel H.H. Ingalls. "Sanskrit Poetry and Sanskrit Poetics." In Indiana University Conference on Oriental-Western Literary Relations. Ed. Horst Frenz and G.L. Anderson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 3-24.
Briefly explains the traditional and artificial character of the poetic language, noting handbooks of synonyms arranged in metrical patterns and multiformity of expressions (espec. pp. 9-11).Area: SK
Wayne B. Ingalls. "The Structure of the Homeric Hexameter: A Review." Phoenix, 24:1-12.
Reconsiders and champions Hermann Fränkel's colometric theory of the Homer hexameter (as against, e.g., Kirk 1966a) as a preliminary step to understanding formulaic diction.Area: AG
Wayne B. Ingalls. "Another Dimension of the Homeric Formula," Phoenix, 26:111-22.
Feels that Parry's original definition of the formula applies only to the noun-epithet combinations and must be adapted for more general usage. Shows that Parry's and Nagler's (1967) formulaic units coincide regularly with the four metrical cola of the Homeric line and concludes that a more accurate idea of the relationship between linguistic and metrical building blocks must be part of the redefinition of the formula.Area: AG
Wayne B. Ingalls. "The Analogical Formula in Homer." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 106:211-26.
Relates the phenomenon of the "localization" of word-types in the hexameter (after O'Neill 1942) to metrical factors, arguing that repetition in the diction operates on not one but a variety of levels. The colon structure, podic rhythm, and formulaic usage of words and word-types must be studied before analogical formulas, or phrase patterns, can be described and analyzed.Area: AG
Wayne B. Ingalls. "Formular Density in the Similes of the Iliad." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 109:87-109.
Using eleven similes and the first one hundred lines of the Iliad as a control group, he explores the formulaic content of the simile (by percentage of repeated morae). Finds the two bodies of material very nearly equal in density and offers these figures to "be added to the roster of evidence suggesting that the similes, too, were composed orally" (106). Includes a table and extensive supporting data.Area: AG
Wayne B. Ingalls. "Linguistic and Formular Innovation in the Mythological Digressions in the Iliad." Phoenix, 36:201-8.
Proceeding from Willcock 1964, an argument for Homeric innovation in eight mythological paradigms, he shows that all passages exhibit (1) a large number of late linguistic features and (2) "the formular modification necessary to incorporate the new language into the traditional verse" (206). Points to the confluence of these features as proof that Homer acted upon his tradition rather than served as a slave to its constraints.Area: AG
Gordon Innes. "Stability and Change in Griots' Narrations." African Language Studies, 14:105-18.
Finds that the Sunjata legend exists in widely different versions in the Manding area as a whole. As for the individual griot, comparison of actual texts suggests "a pattern of life in which a griot in his younger days travels extensively, listens to other griots and borrows selectively from them... until eventually he arrives at a version which seems to him the most satisfying" (119). This version will then tend toward fixity, but will still be susceptible to the usual performance variables. A study based on fieldwork by the author and by others.Area: AF
Paul Irwin. Liptako Speaks: History from Oral Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
A description of the Liptako oral tradition, containing chapters on lineage, the transmission of the oral tradition through generations of changing political and economic forces, the chronology of the Liptako oral tradition, and the role of the oral tradition in politics and in holy wars.Area: AF
Neil D. Isaacs. "Six Beowulf Cruces." Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 62:119-28.
Describes a poetic convention of personification associated intimately with oral-formulaic structure and composition. Argues that concrete representations and the objects, people, or attitudes they personify are linked not only at the synchronic and denotative level of the passage or poem under examination but also in the diachronic and connotative history of the poetic tradition. Explicates six troublesome passages in Beowulf using this interpretive tool.Area: OE
Neil D. Isaacs. "The Convention of Personification in Beowulf." In Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays. Ed. Robert P. Creed. Providence: Brown University Press. pp. 215-48.
Taking account of the connotative (traditional) and denotative (context-sensitive) meaning of oral-formulaic elements, he explores the OE style of personification in its manipulation of conventional ideas and devices.Area: OE
Neil D. Isaacs. Structural Principles in Old English Poetry. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Notions on formula and theme are prevalent throughout the essays that comprise this volume; separately annotated are Isaacs 1968b and 1968c.Area: OE
Neil D. Isaacs. "Progressive Identifications: The Structural Principle of The Dream of the Rood." In his Structural Principles in Old English Poetry. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. pp. 3-18.
Contends that formula, theme, and other elements participate in a series of identifications crucial to the movement of the poem. An example of aesthetic criticism employing oral-formulaic poetics.Area: OE
Neil D. Isaacs. "Afterword on the Scansion of Old English Poetry." In his Structural Principles in Old English Poetry. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. pp. 167-90.
Discusses Sievers' and Pope's, but most prominently Creed's, systems of scansion. Includes comments on the relationship of meter and formula, and on available evidence for the use of the lyre as accompaniment.Area: OE
Lanae H. Isaacson. "Draumkvaedet_The Structural Study of an Oral Variant." Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung, 25:51-66.
Analyzes the narrative structure of the Ramskeid variant, with special emphasis on the sense of personal progression as perceived by both singer and audience.Area: NW, FB