Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Proinsias MacCana. "Conservation and Innovation in Early Celtic Literature." Etudes celtiques, 13:61-119.

Explores the limited definition of literature as a written medium and charts the simultaneous development of both oral and written traditions of literature in Ireland, emphasizing the impact of oral transmission on the development of early Irish literary history.
Area: OI

Proinsias MacCana. "Mythology in Early Irish Literature." In The Celtic Consciousness. Ed. Robert O'Driscoll. New York: Braziller and Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. pp. 143-54.

Provides a brief introduction to the historical context of early Irish written literature and its development from oral traditional sources from the viewpoint that "oral literature did not cease with the coming of writing; on the contrary, it continued as abundant as ever, independent of the written literature although not necessarily unaffected by it. In the nature of things, however, we can know it only in so far as it is reflected in the written texts" (145). Compares and contrasts the Noinden Ulad (The Debility of the Ulstermen) with an early version of the Deirdre story, demonstrating that "while immersed in native tradition, the author is also able to exploit it for his own literary ends, so that in the finished composition mythological concept and literary artifice combine and fuse in an indissoluble unity" (148), and goes on to discuss the relationship of Christianity to the pagan myth, citing Caillech Bhérri (The Hag of Beare) as an example of the literary fusing of the two systems. Concludes that the clerical authors were men who were "admirably equipped by instinct and training to approach the orally transmitted mythology with a combination of sympathy and sophistication" (154).
Area: OI

C.W. MacLeod, ed. Homer: Iliad: Book XXIV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

In that section of the introduction dealing with "Language and Style" (pp. 35-53), he briefly reviews Parry's original work and offers examples of formulaic language. Emphasis on the creative, aesthetic effect of oral traditional style.
Area: AG

David Madden. "Let Me Tell You the Story: Transforming Oral Tradition." Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, 7:210-29.

A novelist and writer of short stories explains, with respect to his own works, the operative force of oral storytelling in the creation of his fiction.
Area: CN

C. Faïk-Nuji Madiya. "Le kasala et ses traits essentiels dans la littérature orale traditionnelle luba." Cahiers d'études africaines, 15:457-80.

Analysis of an oral genre, a type of brief heroic song, in terms of its formal linguistic features, characteristic narrative patterns, and sociocultural context.
Area: AF

H. Maehler. Die Auffassung des Dichterberufs im frühen Griechentum bis zur Zeit Pindars. Hypomnemata 3. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

Examines the concept of the poet in Greek antiquity, with consideration of his social position, relationship to his public, and internal and external motives, along with discussion of the effect of the work and artistic intention. Includes comments on Homer, Hesiod, Archilochos, Alkaios, Sappho, Pindar, and others.
Area: AG

Archie Mafeje. "The Role of the Bard in a Contemporary African Community." Journal of African Languages, 6:193-223.

Disagrees with the usual characterization of the Xhosa tribal bard as simply a "praise-poet," pointing out his social function as mediator between the chief and the people and between society and the individual. Compares the situation in South Africa to that involving the medieval European bards, especially in the OE tradition. Includes a large number of examples from the author's fieldwork.
Area: AF, OI, CP

M. Magnotta. "Sobre la critica del Mio Cid: Problemas en torno al autor (1750-1970)." Annuario de Letras (México), 9:51-98.

A bibliographical essay on the various treatments of five aspects of the authorship of the Cid: (1) anonymous or known, (2) Castilian, French, or other, (3) cleric or troubadour, (4) single or multiple, and (5) creator or transformer. Assumes written rather than oral nature of the poem. Includes a bibliography of more than 200 items and detailed notes.
Area: HI, BB

M. Magnotta. "Per Abat y la tradición oral o escrita en el Poema del Cid: Un ensayo histórico-crítico. Hispanic Review, 43:293-309.

A critical and bibliographical essay on the authorship and composition of the Cid. Concludes that the poem developed from factual accounts of the Cid's victories transmitted orally by contemporary troubadours up to the end of the ninth century, then was expanded and retransmitted until the twelfth century when it was further expanded by the poets of San Esteban de Gormaz and Medinaceli. The transcription at the end of that century and a rewriting in the fourteenth complete the hypothesized development. Argues for parallels between the Cid and SC epics, especially in the relationship between singer and audience.
Area: HI, SC, CP, BB

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Recurring First Elements in Different Nominal Compounds in Beowulf and in the Elder Edda." In Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber. Ed. Kemp Malone and Martin B. Ruud. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 73-78.

In an important article that presages oral-formulaic theory as presented in his classic 1953a, he studies the role of alliterating first elements of compounds in the structure of OE and ON poetry. Suggests that a thorough investigation of this technique could lead to a better understanding of compositional practice.
Area: OE, ON, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "A Note on Old West Germanic Poetic Unity." Modern Philology, 43:77-82.

In discussing the similarities among and possible mutual intelligibility of Old West Germanic language traditions, he observes that "beyond a large common stock-in-trade of traditional story, the accumulations of parallel phrases and locations that are sprinkled through the commentaries of this poetry in whatever language, even in that of the Waltharii poësis, afford striking testimony to a basic, persistent community of diction" (78).
Area: OE, OHG, OSX, GM, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Danes, North, South, East, and West, in Beowulf." In Philologica: The Malone Anniversary Studies. Ed. Thomas A. Kirby and Henry B. Woolf. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 20-24.

Argues that although there is historical reason to believe that the Danes identified themselves with respect to compass points, the Beowulf poet seems to have chosen the various compounds at random in accord with the alliterative constraint on poetic composition.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry." Speculum, 28:446-67. Rpt. in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism. Ed. Lewis E. Nicholson. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 3rd printing 1966. pp. 189-221. Rpt. in The Beowulf Poet: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Donald K. Fry, Jr. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968. pp. 83-113.

Argues a direct, one-to-one correspondence between formulas and orality. Analyzes Beowulf 1-25 for formulas and formulaic systems, claiming that over 70% of the diction occurs elsewhere in the OE corpus. Bases methodology and interpretation directly on the work of Parry, transferring all definitions and concepts from Homer to OE poetry without allowing for tradition-dependent characteristics. Although his assertions are too broad (he remarks, e.g., that "the recurrence in a given poem of an appreciable number of formulas or formulaic phrases brands the latter as oral, just as a lack of such repetitions marks a poem as composed in a lettered tradition" and that "oral poetry, it may be safely said, is composed entirely of formulas, large and small, while lettered poetry is never formulaic" [BP, p. 84]), his ideas are at the root of a great deal of scholarship and cannot be overestimated (see Foley 1980b).
Area: OE, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Inwlatide > onfunde?" Modern Language Notes, 68:540-41.

Points out that Dobbie's emendation of Beowulf 2226b to sona onfunde brings the disputed line into agreement with a formula and formulaic system used both by this poet and by other OE singers.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Béowulf and King Hygelác in the Netherlands: Lost Anglo-Saxon Verse-Stories about this Event." English Studies, 35:193-204.

Examines four versions of the story of Hygelac's and Beowulf's raid on the Rhine delta, three in Latin prose (Gregory of Tours' Historia Francorum, an anonymous Liber Historiae Francorum, and another anonymous Liber Monstrorum de Diversis Generibus) and one OE poetic text (Beowulf). By collating tale features, he concludes that the story must have circulated in oral tradition and posits that the Sutton Hoo ship-burial provides evidence of a "gateway between East Anglia and the Uppland district of Sweden" (203) that may well have served to promote circulation across tribal and national borders.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Bede's Story of Caedmon: The Case History of an Anglo-Saxon Oral Singer." Speculum, 30:49-63.

Explains Bede's famous account of the "miracle" of the cowherd Caedmon's learning to compose Christian poetry as a description of a traditional oral singer coming of age in his craft. Sees the phenomenon as quite unmiraculous, for "whatever he did hear would have been composed in the traditional manner out of the standing reservoir of formulas and themes and in conformity with the traditional metrical patterns according to which alone the singers could have sung" (57). Having internalized the poetic idiom of the OE heroic narrative tradition, Caedmon simply applied it to a new purpose: the composition of Christian poems.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "The Theme of the Beasts of Battle in Anglo-Saxon Poetry." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 56:81-90.

Along with Greenfield 1955, the opening statement on the theme in OE scholarship. Identifies a pervasive scene in OE poetry_"the mention of the wolf, eagle, and/or raven as beasts attendant on a scene of carnage" (83), isolates its twelve occurrences in the poetic corpus, and studies the morphology of the multiform. Compare Bonjour 1957a.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Two Verses in the Old English Waldere Characteristic of Oral Poetry." Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 80:214-18.

Shows that OE wine Burgenda and ON vin Borgunda ("friend ofthe Burgundians") exemplify cognate formulas, indicating a common Germanic oral poetic tradition.
Area: OE, ON, GM, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Béowulf A': A Folk-Variant." Arv: A Journal of Scandinavian Folklore, 14:95-101.

Dealing with the discrepancies in detail between the story told in Beowulf A (1-2009a) and again in A' (2009b-2176), he postulates, in addition to the A-singer, an anthologizing scribe who had "presumably to some extent mastered the technique of oral singing and hence was able to compose authentically in his own words neatly soldered joints" (101). Compare Creed's response (1966) as well as Magoun 1963.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Some Notes on Anglo-Saxon Poetry." In Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor Albert Croll Baugh. Ed. MacEdward Leach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 272-83.

Identifies two themes ("the grateful recipient" and "the gesture of the raised shield and/or brandished spear") in OE verse. Also comments on thematic structure in the Kalevala and traditional diction in The Battle of Maldon.
Area: OE, FN, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Béowulf B: A Folk-Poem on Beowulf's Death." In Early English and Norse Studies Presented to Hugh Smith in Honor of His Sixtieth Birthday. Ed. Arthur Brown and Peter Foote. London: Methuen. pp. 127-40.

Departing from Magoun 1958b, he argues for multiple authorship of Beowulf (song A = 1-2009a, A' = 2009b-2176, B = 2200-3182). As evidence he notes that cyclic poems are unusual in oral traditions, that certain narrative details differentiate the work of the two hypothetical singers A and B, and that Beowulf's consistency of character and Hrothgar's prophecy are traditional ideas and thus no proof against multiple authorship.
Area: OE, SC, FN, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr., trans. The Old Kalevala and Certain Antecedents. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

In his "Foreword" (pp. xiii-xix) the translator discusses the oral traditional context of Lönnrot's compilation: a "vast corpus of Finnish traditional or oral poetry" that "was the work of countless generations of unlettered singers composing in an ancient tradition without benefit of a fixed text, singers whose creations were never recorded and thus can never be known" (p. xiii). Volume includes translations of the Old Kalevala, the Proto-Kalevala, and various appendices.
Area: FN

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Arhippa Perttunen, Elias Lönnrot, and Gallen-Kallela." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 73:209-13.

Excerpts from Lönnrot's description of the singer Arhippa and of oral performance involving either one or two singers.
Area: FN

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Lord Macaulay, A Singer of Tales." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 73:686-89.

Sees Thomas Macaulay's four Lays of Ancient Rome, an attempt at reconstituting lost Roman poetry, as "oral" in their use of stock epithets.
Area: BR

Paul Mai. "The Time of Darkness' of Yuu Kuia." 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. 125-40.

Describes the oral evidence surrounding the Yuu Kuia period of relative darkness resulting from volcanic eruptions, among the highland peoples of New Guinea, suggesting that evidence from the oral tradition, while differing somewhat from tribe to tribe, is no less accurate than accounts from geological surveys of the area, which differ significantly depending upon the research methodology employed. See Blong 1981.
Area: ML

John R. Maier. "The Truth' of a Most Ancient Work: Interpreting a Poem Addressed to a Holy Place." Centrum, 2, i:27-44.

Describes a Sumerian cuneiform text composed by Priestess Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon, containing a temple hymn and suggests hermeneutical approaches toward its interpretation.
Area: SU

Victor H. Mair, ed. and trans. Tun-huang Popular Narratives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A translation of four vernacular Chinese stories from the seventh through tenth centuries that stand at the intersection of popular storytelling and the beginnings of fiction and drama. Introduction includes comments on the oral storytelling tradition.
Area: CH

Lars Malmberg. "Poetic Originality in The Wanderer and The Seafarer." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 74:220-23.

Interprets these two poems as examples of a poet's manipulation of the inherited formulaic diction in an original and artistic manner. Makes the case for poetic originality within a traditional medium.
Area: OE

Kemp Malone. Review of Storms 1957. English Studies, 41:200-5.

Denies Storms' assumption of Beowulf's orality, affirming that the poem is too sophisticated to be the product of a "minstrel" (204) and that traditional diction may be employed without entailing improvisation. One of the early objections to oral-formulaic theory as presented by Magoun (espec. 1953a) and his followers.
Area: OE

Kemp Malone. "Caedmon and English Poetry." Modern Language Notes, 76:193-95.

Another negative response to Magoun 1953a. Contends that OE Christian poetry cannot answer Magoun's dicta because formulas would have to be invented as the singer went along, whereas Magoun theorizes that phraseology is built up over long periods of time. Not a clever argument, especially for a scholar who knew OE diction so thoroughly.
Area: OE

Kemp Malone. "Part I. The Old English Period (to 1100)." In A Literary History of England. Ed. Albert C. Baugh, 2nd ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

In "The Old Tradition," further subdivided into "Poetic Form" (pp. 20-31), "Popular Poetry" (pp. 32-44), and "Courtly Poetry" (pp. 45-59), he offers examples to buttress his contention that we must look to poets' individual elaboration of traditional structures: "A given poet was reckoned worthy if he handled with skill the stuff of which, by convention, poems must be made" (p. 31). Finds in the so-called Caedmonian and Cynewulfian poems a learned poet who "adapted the technic [sic] of the scops to his own purposes" (p. 60).
Area: OE

Jean M. Mandler and Nancy S. Johnson. "Remembrance of Things Parsed: Story Structure and Recall." Cognitive Psychology, 9:111-51.

Describes the structure of both single- and multi-episode stories in terms of tree structures containing basic units and their connections, analyzing the underlying structures of simple stories and examining the implications such structures have for recall.
Area: TH

Jill Mann. "Proverbial Wisdom in the Ysengrimus." New Literary History, 16:93-109.

Describes traditional wisdom in the Ysengrimus, which is often pessimistic in its cautions against the efficacy of its own genre, samples of which "seem to claim validation through the seriousness of their surroundings. But in fact the context in which they are set [the epic], so far from validating them, cynically demonstrates their complete lack of connection with any experience that would give them true force" (106).
Area: ON

Elli Köngäs Maranda. "Individual and Tradition." In Folk Narrative Research: Some Papers Presented at the VI Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. Ed. Juha Pentikäinen and Tuula Juurikka. Studia Fennica: Review of Finnish Linguistics and Anthropology, 20. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. pp. 252-61.

After a brief review of scholarship on oral narrative, especially with respect to the role of the individual, she describes her own fieldwork and analysis among the Lau, a Melanesian group in Malaita, in the Solomon Islands. Couching her presentation in an ethnographic context, she offers a grid summary of storytelling modes or genres, including for each a category of ritual state, occasion, performer, audience, and intent. Goes on to compare performance and training to Lord's description of the Yugoslav guslar, to note the importance of a "supple" narrator who can mold the tradition, and to claim that oral tradition among the Lau is not fundamentally based on oral-formulaic technique.
Area: ML

Pierre Maranda and Elli Köngäs Maranda, eds. Structural Analysis of Oral Tradition. University of Pennsylvania Publications in Folklore and Folklife, no. 3. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

A group of eleven papers treating different aspects of oral tradition (myth, ritual, folk drama, riddle, folk song, and myth in culture contact) from a structuralist perspective, principally along the lines of studies by Propp and Levi-Strauss. While all essays run parallel to oral theory, only Lomax and Halifax (separately annotated) confront directly the work of Parry and Lord.
Area: AI, SAI, AND, AF, JV, FN, US, HW, JP, SC, FB, TH, CP

Joseph Margolis. "The Emergence of Philosophy." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. Ed. by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy/The Hegeler Institute, pp. 228-43.

Disagrees with Havelock's (1983) view about the conceptual capacity of members of an oral culture inasmuch as such a culture, while lacking an alphabet, "is bound to produce either a philosophical practice or an alternative but equally abstractive practice" (234). Disputes the view that philosophy had to await the Ionians in the sixth century because there is no reason that a non-democratized philosophical tradition could not have existed co-extensively with a general popular oral culture. Supports his own view by pointing to the verse philosophy of Parmenides and the Epicheirêmata of Zeno, and holds that such an impulse could well have begun with the Milesian school.
Area: AG

Manfred Markus. "The Language and Style: The Paradox of Heroic Poetry." In The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem. Ed. Karl H. Goller, Arthurian Studies, 3. London and Totowa: D.S. Brewer and Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 57-69, 164-67.

In the course of a discussion of diction and narrative technique in the Alliterative Morte Arthure, he argues for the special expressiveness of formulas: "Here the frame of reference is not the unit of the line anticipated by the audience, but the listeners' or readers' associations rendered possible through a treasury of common literary experience and of conventional verbal collocations" (p. 63). Emphasizes the ambivalence of formulas and larger units as both stereotyped and connotative foci, seeing an aesthetic dimension in this functional ambivalence (espec. pp. 62-66).
Area: ME

Richard P. Martin. "Hesiod, Odysseus, and the Instruction of Princes." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 114:29-48.

Reinterprets the crux involving the two related passages at Theogony 79-93 and Odyssey 8.166-77 as parallel elements that "can be said to share a commen genre, which generates the similar phrases in each place" (30). By comparaing the Old Irish genre of tecosc ("instruction"), he argues that both the Hesiodic and the Homeric passages are instances of Prince-Instruction and that this generic matrix serves as a kind of deep structure for the common phraseology.
Area: AG, LT, OI, CP

Benedetto Marzullo. Il Problema omerico. Milan and Napoli: Riccardo Ricciardi. 2nd ed. with revs., 1970.

Essentially a Neoanalytic exposition, with specific commentary on Parry (responding to reviews of the 1952 ed. by Chantraine and others) on pp. 417-56.
Area: AG

Svetozar Mati. Nas narodni ep i nas stih: Ogledi i studije. Novi Sad: Matica Srpska.

A collection of the author's reprinted essays under four headings: (1) "Critical Contributions on the Vuk Texts," (2) "Epic Singing in Srem," (3) "Contributions on the Style of the Epic Song," and (4) "Essays on the History of Our Epic." The subjects of the papers vary a great deal, from an examination of Kosovo songs in the Vojvodina to a study of Vuk's Pjesnica. Of particular interest are his comments on models and narrative commonplaces in epic poetry (pp. 181-88). An example of native scholarship on the SC oral tradition.
Area: SC

A.T.E. Matonis. "Traditions of Panegyric in Welsh Poetry: The Heroic and the Chivalric." Speculum, 53:667-87.

A history of the development of Welsh panegyric in three stages of bards: (a) the Cynfeirdd of the sixth century, (b) the Gogynfeirdd (ca. 1100-1350), and (c) the Cywyddwyr of the fourteenth century. Argues that it is likely that the first were oral poets, that the second carried on the traditions of eulogy and elegy, and that the third group "incorporated courtly and heraldic features" (667) that greatly changed the genres.
Area: WL

John Mavrogordato. "Introduction" to his ed., Digenes Akrites. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rpt. 1963, 1970.

In the section on "Versions" (pp. xv-xxix), he discusses the possible role of oral transmission in the various surviving manuscripts. Also included is an appendix, "Conspectus of Versions and Episodes" (pp. 257-59).
Area: BG

Kevin B. Maxwell. Bemba Myth and Ritual: The Impact of Literacy on an Oral Culture. American University Series, XI, 2. New York and Berne: Peter Lang.

Basing his analysis on the orality-literacy studies of Walter J. Ong and his own fieldwork among the Bemba in 1978-79 and 1981, Maxwell treats the implications of orality for this people's belief-system and the changes wrought by the onset of literacy. Sophisticated consideration of hermeneutical realities includes observations such as the following on intelligence: "A proverb expresses the idea: Mano nambulwa wisdom consists in being told'" (12).
Area: AF

H.S. McAllister. "`The Language of Shamans': Jerome Rothenberg's Contribution to American Indian Literature." Western American Literature, 10:293-309.

An assessment of the contribution of the publication of Jerome Rothenberg's Shaking the Pumpkin (1972), an anthology of North American Indian traditional poetry, to the field of American Indian studies. Explicates the nature of the "aural word" (297) and the aesthetic differences in reading, as opposed to hearing, poetry. Praises Rothenberg's success at communicating a "non-European sense of man's relationship to his language" (309).
Area: AI, CN, CP

M.V. McDonald. "Orally Transmitted Poetry in Pre-Islamic Arabia and Other Pre-literate Societies." Journal of Arabic Literature, 9:14-31.

Argues that the compilation of fifth-century Jahiliyya poetry by eighth-century Arab anthologists has tended to obscure its oral origins. Reexamines and subdivides this "haphazard selection" of verse according to its social function, genre, and typical content. Notes the distinctively oral stylistic features characteristic of this tradition. Comparisons with OE, ON, OI, and other traditions show this "type of poetry attributed to Jahiliyya poets [to be] absolutely typical of the poetry of preliterate societies in general" (30-31).
Area: AR, OE, ON, OI, CP

James T. McDonough. "Homer, the Humanities, and IBM." In Literary Data Processing Conference Proceedings (September 9, 10, 11 - 1964). Ed. Jess B. Bessinger, Stephen M. Parrish, and Harry F. Arader. New York: IBM. pp. 25-36.

A report on a project to document Homer's employment of various metrical word-types in oral-formulaic composition, with suggestions for future analyses.
Area: AG

John H. McDowell. "The Mexican Corrido: Formula and Theme in a Ballad Tradition." Journal of American Folklore, 85:205-20.

Employs Parry-Lord theory to study this ballad tradition, with adjustments made for (1) shift in genre, (2) the nature of the ballad formula, and (3) the range of the corpus. Notes the role of memorization in this shorter form and describes the shape and flexibility of the formula and theme. Compares compositional units to those of epic and delineates a story-pattern for a typical corrido.
Area: HI, FB

Davis D. McElroy. "England's First Poet-Critic?" Notes & Queries, n.s. 6, 204:305-6.

Recasts the description of oral performance at lines 867ff. of Beowulf through application of oral-formulaic theory, interpreting the passage as a comment on the Danish thane's dexterous deployment of formulas and themes and thus as the first instance of literary criticism in England.
Area: OE

G.R. McLennan. "Enjambement in the Hymns of Callimachus." Hermes, 102:200-6.

Using Parry's categories of periodic and unperiodic enjambement (1929), he explains the large amount of enjambement in Callimachus as a function of the poet's tendency to place a noun and modifying adjective in contiguous lines and of his habit of "overrunning the sense from one line to the first foot of the next" (205). Argues against Parry's assumption of a correlation between infrequent necessary enjambement and oral poetry. Notes that Callimachus' Hymns reveal a low formulaic density.
Area: AG

Wallace E. McLeod. "Oral Bards at Delphi." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 92:317-25.

Contends that the presence of heavily formulaic language in the Delphic oracles indicates the existence of an oral bard in the service of the sanctuary. Extemporized hexametric answers for various occasions draw from an encyclopedic store of knowledge and utilize the traditional oral-formulaic technique. Feels that this practice survived from about 750 until after 400 B.C.
Area: AG

Wallace E. McLeod. "Studies on Panyassis_An Heroic Poet of the Fifth Century." Phoenix, 20:95-110.

The sixty lines of epic poetry by Panyassis (d. 460-450 B.C.) surviving in fragments exhibit an "all-pervasive" traditional diction, despite former scholarly claims for the poet's freedom from Homeric phraseology. Lists the "borrowings" from Homer and performs a formulaic analysis on a sample passage, concluding that Panyassis and Homer were equally oral composers.
Area: AG

Herbert Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, et seq.

Emphasis on the consequences of interiorizing the alphabet and on the shift from a primarily oral to a primarily visual set of perceptions. Argues that the new, secondary oralism of the electronic age marks a return to some earlier modes of thought. Sees this book as "in many respects complementary to The Singer of Tales by Albert B. Lord" (p. 1).
Area: TH

Duncan McMillan. "A propos de traditions orales." Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 3:67-71.

On the basis of comparison with Gaelic oral tradition, and in particular with memorizing oral singers who place great value on the accurate preservation of a poem, he dismisses both the idea of a jongleur's manuscript and the theory of an evolving oral tradition of composition in performance for the OF romance. Envisions instead consciously conceived and executed OF poems which existed for a time without written records.
Area: OF, MI, CP

Duncan McMillan. "A propos d'un travail de M. Delbouille sur Les chansons de geste et le livre'." Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 4:47-54.

A review essay in vigorous support of Delbouille's (1959) attempted refutation of oral traditional theory. Feels that the oral theorists assume too much in trying to fit all of the chansons de geste_ which he sees as individual, complex creations dependent on many and various sources_into a single category. Suggests that "si les romanistes avaient compris ce qu'est la poésie orale traditionnelle, ils cesseraient d'aller répétant que les textes manuscrits des chansons de geste relèvent des principes de la transmission orale et de l'improvisation" (54).
Area: OF, HI, CP

Duncan McMillan. "Notes sur quelques clichés formulaires dans les chansons de geste de Guillaume d'Orange." In Mélanges de línguistique romane et de philologie médiévale offerts à M. Maurice Delbouille, 2 vols. Ed. Jean Renson. Gembloux: Duculot. Vol. 2, pp. 477-93.

Assumes written transmission of these chansons de geste, denying both oral provenance and the statistical method for determining orality. His study of phraseology treats questions of authorship and text, much in the manner of the Higher Criticism of the nineteenth century.
Area: OF

Douglas J. McMillan. "A Survey of Theories Concerning the Oral Transmission of the Traditional Ballad." Southern Folklore Quarterly, 28:229-309.

A historical survey of four basic trends, with oral transmission seen as (1) primarily a deteriorating process, (2) primarily a re-creating process, (3) both a deteriorating and a re-creating process, with neither aspect predominant, and (4) a phenomenon receptive to special studies of various kinds. Under the fourth category he includes the work of J.H. Jones (1961), who applies the scholarship of Parry and Lord to the ballad tradition.
Area: FB, BR

I. McNeill. "The Metre of the Hittite Epic." Anatolian Studies, 13:237-42.

Exemplifies formulaic structure in the Hittite Song of Ullikummi, with comparisons in ancient Greek, as a way of determining the nature of the meter which shapes phraseology. Includes tradition-dependent characterizations of AG and HT noun-epithet structure in metrical context.
Area: HT, AG, CP

Antoine Meillet. Les Origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

In the course of positing an "Aegean" origin for the Homeric hexameter, Parry's mentor Meillet pronounces Homer's diction entirely traditional: "L'épopée homérique est toute faite de formules que se transmettaient les poètes. Qu'on prenne un morceau quelconque, on reconnait vite qu'il se compose de vers ou de fragments de vers qui se retrouvent textuellement dans un ou plusieurs passages. Et même les vers dont on ne retrouve pas les morceaux dans un autre passage ont aussi le caractère de formules, et ce n'est sans doute que par hasard qu'ils ne sont pas conservés ailleurs." (p. 61). It would be hard to overestimate the impact of Meillet's work on Parry's theses (1928a, b) and later writings.
Area: AG, SK, CP, IE

Karl Meister. Die Homerische Kunstsprache. Leipzig: Jablonowski. Rpt. Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1966.

The classic statement of the Kunstsprache (or "art-language") theory: that Homeric phraseology_under the influence of meter and linguistic constraints_was a fully developed, specialized language in its own right. Influential on and often quoted by Parry.
Area: AG

Daniel F. Melia. "Parallel Versions of The Boyhood Deeds of Cuchulainn'." In Oral Literature: Seven Essays. Ed. Joseph J. Duggan. Edinburgh and New York: Scottish Academic Press and Barnes and Noble, 1975. [= Forum for Modern Language Studies, 10, iii:25-40.

Shows that versions of the "Boyhood Deeds" within the Cattle Raid of Cooley provide evidence of oral transmission and illustrate that the narrative structure of the "Ulster Cycle" tales as a whole descends from oral tradition. Concentrates on the multiformity of story-patterns in these prose texts, using Georges Dumezil's observations on comparative IE mythic structures to illuminate the Irish tales.
Area: OI, IE, CP

James Mellard. "Prolegomena to a Study of the Popular Mode in Narrative." Journal of Popular Culture, 6:1-19.

Popular narrative, a bridge between oral and written modes, depends upon formulaic structures (narrative and phraseological both) for its audience appeal. While these formulaic structures, endemic to oral traditions, may be imitated and adapted to various effects in written narrative, the popular mode is ultimately universal.
Area: TH, CN

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Los Romances de América: y otros Estudios. Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe.

A collection of five essays, one on language and the other four on the romancero. The title essay studies traditional romances in America, establishing their existence and relation to the native Spanish tradition. Another defines "poesía tradicional" and "poesía popular" in terms suggestive of elements of modern oralist theory. Another argues against R. Foulché-Delbosc's Essai sur les origines du Romancero (Paris, 1912) and in favor of the greater age and diversity as well as oral character and continuity of the romance.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Poesía juglaresca y juglares: Aspectos de la Historia Literaria y Cultural de España. Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe.

Discusses the juglar, his audience, and his place in the medieval world from about 1130-1480. In the final chapter he looks at the juglar as poet and as a source of modern European literature who worked both in intimate relation to his audience and in a tradition which both permitted and controlled spontaneity.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "La Epica medieval en España y en Francia." Comparative Literature, 4:97-117. Rpt. in his En torno al Poema del Cid. Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana, 1963. pp. 67-94.

A study of the differences between Spanish and French medieval epic in terms of (1) modes of preserving and using history, (2) versification, and (3) the ephemeral nature of Spanish epic as opposed to the more permanent literary nature of OF. Finds that the Spanish epic emphasizes historical accuracy at the expense of literary verisimilitude but remains alive longer in oral tradition than the French.
Area: HI, OF, CP

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "Fórmulas épicas en el Poema del Cid: Cuestión metodica." Romance Philology, 7:261-67. Rpt. in Los godos y la epopeya española: "chansons de geste" y baladas nórdicas. Colección Austral, 1275. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1956, pp. 241-55. Rpt. in his En torno al Poema del Cid. Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana, 1963, pp. 95-105.

Ostensibly a response to E.R. Curtius' Antike Rhetorik und vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, this article finds Curtius guilty of failing to distinguish between "tópicos vulgares," which belong equally to all of the members of a culture, and "tópicos literarios," which are the singular creation of individual literary artists. Demonstrates the formulaic nature of commonplaces that Curtius sees as literary tropes.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. La Chanson de Roland y el neotradicionalismo (orígines de la épica románica). Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. 2nd ed., La Chanson de Roland et la tradition épique des Francs. Trans. I.-M. Cluzel and rev. with René Louis. Paris: A. and J. Picard, 1960.

In "Principes fondamentaux du traditionalisme moderne" (pp. 451-517), he attempts to restore complexity and art to traditional oeuvres presented against a full historical, paleographical, and critical summary. A work often referenced in the individualism-traditionalism controversy.
Area: OF

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "Dos poetas en el Cantar de Mío Cid." Romania, 82:145-200. Rpt. in his En torno al Poema del Cid. Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana, 1963. pp. 107-62.

Assumes two poets behind the making of the Cid, the earlier from San Esteban de Gormaz and the later from Medinaceli. Argues that the former, composing near the time of the historical Cid, was better able to preserve facts, while the latter did not know the historical background and so filled in with his imagination.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "Sobre las variantes del códice rolandiano V4 de Venecia." In Atti del 2deg. Congresso Internazionale della "Societe Rencesvals." Vol. 21 of Cultura Neolatina, pp. 10-19.

During a discussion of editorial difficulties in the Venetian codex of the Roland in which he champions a traditional heritage for medieval French chansons de geste and Spanish cantares de gesta, he observes four classes of variants: (1) whole-verse "variantes de expresión," typical of and essential to oral transmission; (2) modifications resulting from failure or inexactitude of memory; (3) more subtle changes of the "sentido de un verso" by elaboration; and (4) "variantes de refundición," major editorial alterations that affect the overall structure of the poem and produce a new version. Argues for an oral basis with written overlays, and specifically against individualist theory (espec. contra D. McMillan 1961).
Area: OF, HI, CP

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. En Torno al Poema del Cid. Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana.

Reprints earlier and later essays (including 1952 and 1961a) as well as adds a final selection outlining his ideas on the oral versus written issue and the Cid, in which he accepts the probable oral origins of the poem.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "Los cantores épicos yugoeslavos y los occidentales. El Mio Cid y dos refundidores primitivos." Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 31:195-225.

A defense of his theory of oral literature as "fenómeno de colaboración, con trasmisión de tema versificado y con trasfusión de numen" (225) in the light of studies of living oral epic traditions in Yugoslavia and central Asia. Takes issue with Lord in arguing that SC epic practice is a craft sui generis with limited application for understanding medieval poetry. Discriminates between "eastern" and "western" traditions and suggests that SC improvisation in transmission may derive from contact with the Turks of central Asia.
Area: HI, SC, TK, CP

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Romancero hispánico, 2 vols. 2nd ed. Vols. 9-10 of Obras completas de R. Menéndez Pidal. Ed. Diego Catalán Menéndez Pidal. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.

A general study of the romancero, with respect to form, themes, origins, and history. Volume 1 defines the genre in terms of subject, audience, authorship, and cultural roots, with emphasis on origins in national epic, Carolingian borrowings, and fiction. Volume 2 presents the history from before the fourteenth century to the present, making the case for the unity of ancient Iberian and modern traditions.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Estudios sobre el romancero. Vol. II of Obras completas de R. Menéndez Pidal. Ed. Diego Catalán Menéndez Pidal. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.

Collects Menéndez Pidal's general and theoretical writings on the romancero in eight studies from 1909 to 1961. Looks at various roots and influences on the early history of the genre. His study of branches, forms, and themes anticipates later oralist writings. Also treats the living oral tradition and establishes a geography of the romancero.
Area: HI

Paula Mertens-Fonck. "Structure des passages introduisant le discours direct dans Beowulf." In Mélanges de philologie et de littératures romanes offerts à Jeanne Wathelet-Willem. Liège: Marche Romane. pp. 433-45.

Assembles a taxonomy for introductions to direct discourse which consists of four basic structures and numerous variations on those fundamental forms: "l'expression de ces concepts se caracterise par une variete et une souplesse pratiquement illimitées" (444). Conceives of a group of formulas that corresponds to the basic ideas of speech introduction.
Area: OE

Gordon M. Messing. "On Weighing Achilles' Wingèd Words." Language, 57: 888-900.

In disagreement with P. Friedrich and Redfield 1978, he argues that Homeric heroes do not have their own idiolects, that the oral traditional origin of the epics and the doctrine of ethos preclude that possibility. Also criticizes their sampling technique, reliance on an uncertain textual tradition, and correlation of stylistic criteria. See further P. Friedrich and Redfield 1981.
Area: AG

Allan A. Metcalf. "Ten Natural Animals in Beowulf." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 64:378-89.

Treats the animals in the Beowulf text from an oral-formulaic perspective (382), with special reference to the three beasts of battle (see Magoun 1955b and Bonjour 1957a)_the raven, eagle, and wolf_as prefigurative of doom.
Area: OE

Allan A. Metcalf. Poetic Diction in the Old English Meters of Boethius. De Proprietatibus Litterarum, Series Practica, 50. The Hague: Mouton.

Describes the Meters poet as working from prose to poetic versions on the basis of a study of formulaic density and "exclusively" poetic words.
Area: OE

H.J. Mette. "Homer 1930-1956." Lustrum, 1:7-86, 319-20. With "Nachträge" in 2 (1957), 294-97, 307f., 4 (1959), 309-16, 5 (1960), 649-56. "Homer 1956-66," 11 (1966), 33-69. "Homer 1966-1971," 15 (1970), 99-129. "Homer 1971-1977," 19 (1976), 5-64.

The continuing Lustrum bibliography on general Homeric studies lists German and many other works with annotations of varying length and specificity.
Area: AG, BB

Richard M. Meyer. Die altgermanische Poesie nach ihren formelhaften Elementen beschrieben. Berlin: W. Hertz.

Examines repetition in the diction of OE and MHG poems at the levels of word, verse, line, and group of lines. Offers definitions of his various types of repetition in a comparative context. An important step in the evolution of formulaic theory in OE and Germanic.
Area: OE, MHG, GM, CP

Ian Michael. "A Comparison of the Use of Epic Epithets in the Poema de mio Cid and the Libro de Alexandre." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 38:32-41.

By comparing the density and function of epithets in the two poems, he argues for an Alexandre not intended for public performance. Sees the epithet used well in many ways in the Cid (filler, variety of phrasing, added adulation, leitmotif, cross-reference, dramatic effect) as opposed to the pedestrian usage in the literate Alexandre. Accepts the idea of oral-formulaic phraseology as active and shaping.
Area: HI

Ian Michael. "Introducción" to his ed., Poema de Mio Cid. Madrid: Clasicos Castalia. pp. 11-64.

In the sections on literary form and poetic language, he describes the Cid as a type of poetry composed only in oral performance. Also notes the presence of formulas, defined according to Parry-Lord orthodoxy, and discusses their connection to orality.
Area: HI

André Michalopoulos. Homer. New York: Twayne Publishers.

In a brief commentary on the Homeric Question (pp. 32-37), he mentions and then dismisses Parry-Lord theory because of the differences in prosody between SC meter and the AG hexameter.
Area: AG

Wolfgang Mieder, ed. International Proverb Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland.

A thoroughly annotated listing of international scholarship from 1800. Contains 2142 entries, together with name, subject, and proverb indexes.
Area: BB, FK

Wolfgang Mieder and Alan Dundes, eds. The Wisdom of Many: Essays on the Proverb. New York: Garland.

Reprinted essays on the proverb, providing overviews and discussions of definitions and of function and meaning in social context, examples of proverbs in literary milieus, individual proverbs, and other subjects, such as the use of proverbs in psychological testing and in modern media.
Area: FK

Franz Miklosich. "Die Darstellung im slavischen Volksepos." Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, 38, Abhandlung 3:1-51.

An early tract on typical structures in folk-poetry: repetitions of all sorts (Wiederholungen), parallelism, and other structures in the Serbo-Croatian, Russian, and Bulgarian traditions.
Area: SC, RU, BU, CP

John S. Miletich. "Narrative Style in Spanish and Slavic Traditional Narrative Poetry: Implications for the Study of the Romance Epic." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 2:109-28.

Reports his analysis of a 4108-line sample taken from traditional texts in Spanish, SC, and Russian and measured against a six-part scheme of categories. Concludes that all texts are 60-75% "essential" or rapid style but that there is also a pronounced "elaborate" or retarding style. Suggests this kind of analysis for determining orality.
Area: HI, RU, SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "The South Slavic Bugarstica and the Spanish Romance: A New Approach to Typology." International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 21:51-69.

Using a six-part stylistic analysis, he examines the SC and Spanish genres for evidence of "elaborate" (anaphoric, parallel, nonessential) versus "essential" repetition. This taxonomy leads to generic distinctions between epic and ballad. Includes a survey of criticism on traditional verse in SC and Spanish.
Area: SC, HI, CP

John S. Miletich. "The Quest for the Formula': A Comparative Reappraisal." Modern Philology, 74:111-23.

Surveys and evaluates studies of formulaic structure and density in a number of poetic traditions, concluding that critics must take more care to maintain a differentiation between formula and formulaic expression, and to allow for the differences among meters in various poetries. Feels that certifiably oral texts collected in the field must be exhaustively analyzed to provide data for judging the orality of medieval and ancient texts of uncertain provenance.
Area: SC, HI, OE, OF, RU, AG, CP

John S. Miletich. "The Poetics of Variation in Oral-Traditional Narrative." Forum at Iowa on Russian Literature, 1:57-69.

Explores repetitive sequences in Serbo-Croatian, Russian, and medieval Spanish narrative, distinguishing a taxonomy of (1) speech repeated as action, (2) action repeated as speech, (3) speech repeated as speech, and (4) action repeated as action. Emphasizes metalinguistic factors in oral narrative and modes of variation possible within oral tradition.
Area: SC, RU, HI, CP

John S. Miletich. "Stilisticke razlike izmedju usmene i pisane knjizevnosti: Savremeni metodoloski pristupi." In Nauni sastanak slavista u Vukove dane: Referati i saopstenja, 13-19. IX 1976. Belgrade: Medjunarodni Slavistiki Centar SR Srbije, 6. Vol. 2 (1977), pp. 117-28. With English summary, p. 128.

A brief review of Parry-Lord oral theory and extensions into Romance literatures. Includes a description of his own analytical method involving the density of "elaborate" (retarding) style as a hallmark of oral style.
Area: SC, OF, HI, CP

John S. Miletich. "Medieval Spanish Epic and European Narrative Traditions." La Corónica, 6:90-96.

Distinguishes between two types of repetitive sequences, the "elaborate" (in which the same idea recurs) and the "essential" (in which it does not). Through a statistical study of over 14,000 lines of medieval Spanish and SC poetry of various genres, he finds that "traditional texts average approximately 33% elaborate style' while the puka texts [in this case, Spanish epics putatively written in imitation of genuine oral style] show an average of about 16%" (93). See further Miletich 1974 etc.
Area: HI, SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "Elaborate Style in South Slavic Oral Narrative and in Kacic-Miosic's Razgovor." In American Contributions to the Eighth International Congress of Slavists (Zagreb and Ljubljana, September 3-9, 1978), vol. 1: Linguistics and Poetics. Ed. Henrik Birnbaum. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. pp. 522-31.

Compares twelve oral heroic songs from a Zagreb archive with twenty poems from the literate and learned Kacic Miosic, the latter written in imitation of oral style. Finds the authentically oral material has more "repetitive groups" and "similar initial-internal-end" repetitions and proposes these characteristics as diagnostic of true oral texts.
Area: SC

John S. Miletich. "Oral-Traditional Style and Learned Literature: A New Perspective." Poetics and Theory of Literature, 3:345-56.

A comparative analysis of (1) oral, (2) "na narodnu" (imitation oral), and (3) written texts from the SC tradition, the sample amounting to eight poems in the heroic decasyllable totalling 629 lines. Sees "elaborate" style repetition as characteristic of oral texts and responsible for the flavor of orality in the na narodnu material.
Area: SC

John S. Miletich. "Shamanistic Features in Oral-Traditional Narrative." Language & Style, 11:223-25.

Discovers shamanistic elements underlying the representation of mother-figures in a sixteenth-century Spanish romance and an eighteenth-century South Slavic bugarstica.
Area: HI, SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "Etudes formulaires et épopée européenne." In Charlemagne et l'épopée romane: Actes du VIIe Congrès International de la Société Rencesvals. Ed. Madeleine Tyssens and Claude Thiry, vol. 2. Liège: University of Liège. pp. 423-31.

Reviews the basic premises of the Parry-Lord theory of formulaic diction, noting particularly the lack of statistical criteria sufficient to discriminate between Lord's categories of "oral," "conventional," and "imitation oral" texts.
Area: SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "South Slavic and Hispanic Versified Narrative: A Progress Report on One Approach." In El Romancero hoy: Historia, Comparatismo, Bibliografía crítica. Ed. Samuel G. Armistead, Antonio Sánchez Romeralo, and Diego Catalán. Madrid: Gráficas Cóndor. pp. 131-35.

Chronicles the results of an analysis of 14,000 verse lines of Peninsular Spanish romances, Judeo-Spanish romances, South Slavic bugarstica poems, heroic songs in SC (deseterac poems), and Russian byliny: "elaborate" style or retarding repetitions are about twice as frequent in the traditional as in the learned texts.
Area: HI, SC, RU, CP

John S. Miletich. "Hispanic and South Slavic Traditional Narrative Poetry and Related Forms: A Survey of Comparative Studies (1829-1977)." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983, pp. 375-89.

A thorough review of previous research and a summary of the author's own work to date.
Area: HI, SC, CP, BB

John S. Miletich. "Repetition and Aesthetic Function in the Poema de mio Cid and South-Slavic Oral and Literary Epic." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 58:189-96.

Basing his remarks on 15,000 lines of Spanish, SC, and Russian narrative poetry from medieval times to the present, he finds a clear difference in types of recurrent diction between the certainly oral Pjesma od Bagdata from the Parry Collection on the one hand and the literary epic Smrt Smailage engia on the other. Postulates that the Cid is an example of puka knjizevnost, a "text composed in writing in which oral tradition has to some extent played a part, and [which] was destined for oral diffusion" (194).
Area: HI, SC, RU, CP

John S. Miletich. "Oral Literature and Puka knjizevnost': Toward a Generic Description of Medieval Spanish and Other Narrative Traditions." In Folklore and Oral Communication (Folklor und mundliche Kommunikation). Special issue of Narodna umjetnost (Zagreb), 19:155-66.

Proposes a complex model for oral and oral-derived texts in various traditions, with emphasis on SC: "folk-narrative," "literary composition without writing," and "literary composition with writing." Differentiates each of these categories further on the basis of degree and kind of formulaic microstructure. Distinguishes true oral traditional literature or folk narrative (usmena knjizevnost) from pucka knjizevnost, a popular type of folk literature based on oral models but involving writing. Applies this taxonomy to medieval Spanish and other traditions.
Area: HI, SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "Usmena knjizevnost i puka knjizevnost': Prema generikom prikazu srednjevjekovne spanjolske i ostalih narativnih tradicija." Narodna umjetnost (Zagreb), 19:171-83.

A SC version of Miletich 1981b.
Area: HI, SC, CP

Joseph C. Miller, ed. The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Hamden, CN: Archon.

A collection of essays on the interrelationship between oral tradition and history. Separately annotated are Berger, Cohen, Harms, Henige, Miller 1980b, Packard, Schecter, Sigwalt, Vansina, Yoder.
Area: AF

Joseph C. Miller. "Introduction: Listening for the African Past." In his The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Hamden, CN: Archon, pp. 1-60.

Claims that the only real expression of the African past survives in oral, not written, form. Thus, true evidence is often indirect. Particularizes the definition of oral tradition as a narrative intended to describe eras before the time of the person composing or relating it. Offers a background of African oral tradition, defining terms, concepts, and structures.
Area: AF

D. Gary Miller. Homer and the Ionian Epic Tradition: Some Phonic and Phonological Evidence Against an Aeolic "Phase." Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 38. Innsbruck: Universität Innsbruck.

In seeking to prove that Homeric epic is fundamentally Ionic in origin, he argues that "the Aeolic songs and tales were merely input into the epic sagas being developed by the displaced Pylians and Ionians. They all had a formulaic tradition of at least Mycenaean date, and the layers of Ionic forms stretch from that period to the time of Homer, proving that there was no time in which the tradition was exclusively Achaean' or Aeolic. The Ionic tradition was concurrent with the others and it was the blending of the three by the Ionian bards that propagated the multidialectal epic Kunstsprache that culminated in the massive works of Homer and Hesiod." (pp. 147-48). Part I works toward this conclusion by treating the composite nature of epic (with hypotheses on the relation of Gilgamesh to the Iliad), the epic language, the nature of the formula, and acoustic patterning. Part II examines the phonological history of various epic forms. A sizable bibliography (pp. 154-92) is appended.
Area: AG, SU, HT, SC, SK, IE, CP

D. Gary Miller. Improvisation, Typology, Culture, and "The New Orthodoxy": How "Oral" is Homer? Washington, DC: University Press of America.

Although sometimes informally phrased or explained (e.g., he analyzes his own oral-formulaic composition, "The Saga of Bjorn Borg"), the arguments presented here serve as a good introduction to oral theory and Homer, and occasionally go a step beyond prevailing theory to new insights. Includes discussion of formula, theme, and story pattern, improvisation, and specific critical problems in the Iliad and Odyssey. Concludes that "all of the arguments advanced for Homer writing are irrelevant," that "the ancients regarded him as a poet singer among poet singers, and there is no reason to dispute that" (p. 101).
Area: AG, KR, SC, CP

Nada Milosevi-Djordjevi. "Prose Forms of Oral Literature." In The Folk Arts of Yugoslavia: Papers Presented at a Symposium (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 1976). Ed. Walter W. Kolar. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Tamburitzans Institute of Folk Arts. pp. 103-16.

A brief and convenient survey of oral prose forms in SC tradition, written in English by a leading Yugoslav authority.
Area: SC

William W. Minton. "Homer's Invocations of the Muses: Traditional Patterns." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 91:292-309.

Finds the invocations characterized by three features: (1) they are essentially questions expecting an answer; (2) the information requested is in catalog form; and (3) "all the invocations introduce a clearly defined sequence-pattern, beginning with an initial crisis and leading through a period of struggle to final defeat; this defeat, furthermore, always falls on the person or persons in whose behalf the invocation was made, and these are always the protagonists" (293). Shows that the principle is a traditional pattern rather than a conscious artistic design by tracing the placement and logic of the invocations, particularly in the Iliad.
Area: AG

William W. Minton. "Invocation and Catalogue in Hesiod and Homer." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 93:188-212.

Argues for a traditional association of invocation and catalog standing in a question-and-answer relationship, with the more conservative manifestations in Hesiod and comparatively innovative forms in Homer.
Area: AG

William W. Minton. "The Fallacy of the Structural Formula." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 96:241-53.

Contra Russo 1963, he contends that the extension of the term "formula" in Homeric studies to include structural features such as syntactic and metrical preferences for word and phrase elements invalidates much of the statistical work as a test for orality. Substantiates this claim by finding a near-parity in the incidence of various structural features in samplings from the Iliad and Apollonius' Argonautica.
Area: AG

William W. Minton. "The Frequency and Structuring of Traditional Formulas in Hesiod's Theogony." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 79:25-54.

Following the Parry-Lord methodology and introducing certain refinements, he executes a careful statistical study of formulaic density in two 25-line passages from the Theogony. After a further analysis of metrical features, he concludes that "Hesiod was indeed using the traditional language of the hexameter" (51), which he heightened through a unique and individual poetic talent.
Area: AG

William W. Minton. A Concordance to the Hesiodic Corpus. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

A line-context concordance of the Theogony, Works and Days, Shield, and Fragments, modeled on the Prendergast-Marzullo and Dunbar-Marzullo concordances of the Homeric poems.
Area: AG, CC

András Mohay. "Schriftlichkeit und Mündlichkeit in der byzantinischen Literatur." Acta Classica (Debrecen), 10-11:175-81.

Argues that the formulaic character of the phraseology cannot be used as proof of the oral transmission of Byzantine folk literature. Interprets the archaic linguistic character of numerous formulas as a sign of written origin and contends that formulas function to facilitate versification and that they can also be employed by poets who write.
Area: BG

Robert Mondi. "The Homeric Cyclopes: Folktale, Tradition, and Theme." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 113:17-38.

Understanding the sources of the Odyssey to be oral traditional, he argues that the apparent inconsistencies in the characterization of Polyphemos and the Kyklopes are attributable to a diachronic displacement: "the man-eating ogre Polyphemos stems from a folk tradition which is not specifically Greek; but the Kyklopes themselves_the storm-demons who arm Zeus with the thunderbolt_clearly are products of Greek mythological speculation" (22).
Area: AG, FK

Pierre-Eric Monnin. "Poetic Improvements in the Old English Meters of Boethius." English Studies, 60:346-60.

Basing his claim on analysis of formulaic and thematic patterns, he contends that the Meters poet was no mere pedestrian versifier of a prose original but rather a creative poet working within the OE poetic tradition.
Area: OE

James T. Monroe. "Oral Composition in Pre-Islamic Poetry." Journal of Arabic Literature, 3:1-53.

Feels that the long debate over the authenticity of the so-called pre-Islamic poetry has reached an impasse which might be resolved by recognizing the tradition as oral in the Parry-Lord sense. External evidence from the early Islamic period and the known characteristics of more recent but related "popular" verse confirms this view. Internal evidence generated from a statistical study of formulaic density also bears on the problem (differentiates between pure formula, formulaic system, structural formula, and conventionalized language). Finds various phraseological patterns three times more common in pre-Islamic than in subsequent poetry of certainly literary origin. The early poems are short and seem to be fixed texts rather than improvised creations.
Area: AR

James T. Monroe. "Formulaic Diction and the Common Origins of Romance Lyric Traditions." Hispanic Review, 43:341-50.

Argues that verbal repetitions exhibiting formulaic qualities in the Galician canciones de amigo, Castilian villancicos, Mozarabic .ar>>gas, and OF refrains mark these popular lyrics as traditional. While formulaic flexibility in the love lyric genre and the ubiquity of literary pastiches make a determination of orality for extant texts impossible, the four poetic traditions must have originated in a common and genuinely oral Vulgate Latin tradition.
Area: HI, OF, LT, CP

William L. Montell. The Saga of Coe Ridge: A Study in Oral History. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Rpt. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.

A study of oral history in a small black colony in Cumberland County, Kentucky, this volume also contains an interesting discussion of the interrelation of oral tradition and historical fact (espec. pp. vii-xxi). Parallel to works on oral theory, it resembles in methodology the investigations of Vansina (e.g. 1965).
Area: AA, US, FK

Thomas Montgomery. "Grammatical Causality and Formulism in the PMC." In Studies in Honor of Lloyd A. Kasten. Ed. Theodore S. Beardsley, Jr. et al. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. pp. 185-98.

Enlarges the concept of the epic formula from lexical to grammatical frames, finding many more instances of patterned thought than are usually acknowledged. Offers subordinating or relational words as an example of the larger formulaic consciousness evident in the Cid. Assumes a tradition of composing oral poets and audiences.
Area: HI

Thomas Montgomery. "The Poema de Mío Cid': Oral Art in Transition." In Mio Cid Studies. Ed. Alan D. Deyermond. London: Tamesis. pp. 91-112.

Argues that oral tradition, which grows out of the essentially mythic mode of perception typical of preliterate man, informs various aspects and passages of the Cid, a work he views as transitional between oral and literary art.
Area: HI

Willard B. Moore. Molokan Oral Tradition: Legends and Memorates of an Ethnic Sect. University of California Publications: Folklore Studies, 28. Berkeley: University of California Press.

A historical and anthropological study of the Molokans, "an outgrowth of the Sectarian movement in Russia which arose in the fifteenth century" (p. 5) and which spread eventually to Canada and then to California. Surveys the various genres of oral prose narrative from a structural and functional point of view.
Area: MK

Charles Moorman. "The Origins of the Alliterative Revival." Southern Quarterly, 7:345-71.

His case for a genetic connection between OE and the fourteenth-century Alliterative Revival involves the hypothesis of an OE oral tradition surfacing in an early ME popular tradition (epitomized by Layamon), and that intermediate step giving way eventually to the Revival poetry.
Area: OE, ME, CP

Shelomo Morag. "Oral Tradition as a Source of Linguistic Information." In Substance and Structure of Language. Ed. Jaan Puhvel. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 127-46.

Categorizes oral language traditions, here conceived as the transmission of essentially fixed texts with distortions accumulating from various causes, and establishes parameters for "the evaluation of orally transmitted linguistic information relating to a past stage in the history of the language" (129). Draws examples from a variety of Asian, African, and European language traditions, with concentration on Hebrew and Arabic.
Area: HB, AR, CP

Maria Moranti. "Formule metriche nelle iscrizioni greche arcaiche." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 13:7-23.

Studies the AG votive and sepulchral inscriptions to demonstrate the presence of typical hexameter formulas whose metrical scheme is coincident with meters in lyric poetry.
Area: AG

J. Morawski. "Les Formules rimées de la langue espagnole." Revista de filología española, 14:113-33.

Includes a listing of Spanish phrases with phonological and syntactic patterns, with a brief consideration of their effect. See further Morawski 1937.
Area: HI

J. Morawski. "Les Formules allitérées de la langue espagnole." Revista de filología española, 24:121-61.

A continuation of Morawski 1927, with stress on alliterative formulas, using the same three categories: (1) les mots composés, (2) les formules proprement dites, and (3) les formules mixtes.
Area: HI

Gareth Morgan. "Cretan Poetry: Sources and Inspiration." Kretika Chronika, 14:7-68.

In Chapter 2 (pp. 44-68), he discusses the oral transmission of the Digenis Akritas epic, noting the existence of a performance text (or one very near an original performance), episodic structure, narrative inconsistencies, and the analogy with the Yugoslav guslar.
Area: BG, SC, CP

H.F. Morris. The Heroic Recitations of the Bahima of Ankole. Pref. by A.T. Hatto. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Contains examples of the two types of heroic recitation among this Ugandan people: the ekyevugo, a poem on one's own exploits in battle or those of one's countrymen, and the ekirahiro, praising one's cattle. Includes a chapter on structure (mainly phraseological) and performance characteristics by the author, as well as a comparatively based introduction by Hatto.
Area: AF

H.F. Morris. "East African: The Bahima Praise Poems." 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. 345-76.

A five-part overview of the traditions surrounding the praise poem genre of the Bahima tribes of Uganda and Tanzania. The first part, "The Background," provides information regarding Bahima political, religious, social, and linguistic characteristics in the kingdom of Ankole. The second part, "The Literary Tradition of the Bahima," discusses the oral literary tradition and its mode of performance. The third part, "The Nature of the Praise Poems," describes the two categories of the genre_those composed by men and those composed by women_and delineates their characteristics, providing numerous examples in translation. The fourth part, "The Development of the Tradition of Praise Poetry," discusses the creation and transmission of the oral literature of the Bahima and the adaptation of its traditional patterns to contemporary material. Part V, "An Appreciation of Some Examples," presents three examples of Bahina praise poetry (one a 76-line ekyevugo on the Second World War) with annotations and critical commentary.
Area:

James F. Morris. "`Dream Scenes' in Homer, A Study in Variation." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 113:39-54.

In answer to Arend's (1933) and Gunn's (1971) charges of Homer's clumsiness or lack of pattern in the "dream scenes," he attempts "to show that Homer's variation of the description, likeness, and standing elements in these scenes is typologically meaningful and consistent" (40). The conclusion reached is that Homer is a skillful literary craftsman "firmly in control of his traditional forms" (53).
Area: AG

Dietz-Rüdiger Moser. "Kritik der oralen Tradition: Bemerkungen zum Problem der Lied- und Erzählungspopularisierung." In Folk Narrative Research: Some Papers Presented at the VI Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. Ed. Juha Pentikäinen and Tuula Juurikka. Studia Fennica: Review of Finnish Linguistics and Anthropology, 20. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. pp. 209-21.

In addition to a brief review of oral theory, he presents several criticisms of the concept of oral tradition. For example, he asks whether oral transmission is really a generic feature, since it has been demonstrated in folk prose as well as folk poetry, and also whether one can seriously consider oral tradition a significant avenue for probing historical realities.
Area: TH, FK

Dietz-Rüdiger Moser. "Die Homerische Frage und das Problem der mündlichen Überlieferung aus volkskundlicher Sicht." Fabula, 20:116-36.

Applies a folkloristic perspective to Homer's Odyssey by reference to the international tale-type, recorded for example in the United States in 1956, of "The Sailor Who Went Inland." Suggests that the ubiquitousness of such traditional patterns offers an insight into the Homeric Question and Parry-Lord theory (espec. 123-29).
Area: AG, US, FK, CP

Carroll Moulton. "Similes in the Iliad." Hermes, 102:381-97.

Finds the Iliadic similes to be of about the same chronological period as the rest of the poem (in contrast to the many scholars who argue that the similes are later) and also able to furnish evidence of how a great poet may contribute "from his own genius to his traditional inheritance" (396). Feels that the juxtaposition of certain similes may not be incompatible with oral tradition, but that "there is too little evidence to prove the oral nature of the similes along these lines" (397).
Area: AG

Carroll Moulton. Similes in the Homeric Poems. Hypomnemata: Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu ihrem Nachleben, Heft 49. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

Understands an oral tradition behind the Homeric poems and therefore the similes within them, but stresses the need to recognize the poet's sophistication in composition (pp. 11-17). Discusses the portrait of the oral bard in "The Singer and the Hero" (pp. 145-53).
Area: AG

Carroll Moulton. "Homeric Metaphor." Classical Philology, 74:279-93.

Through a study of sample metaphors in context, he emphasizes their variety and then disputes Parry's (1931) general dismissal of Homeric metaphor as (1) usually restricted to a single word, (2) a "casual poetic device," (3) often vague or problematic in meaning, and (4) often fixed and therefore semantically vacuous.
Area: AG

Isidoro Muñoz Valle. Investigaciones sobre el estilo formular epico y sobre la lengua de Homero. Valencia: Editorial Bello.

A study of formulaic language in the AG epic, with emphasis on specific Homeric formulas, similes, synonyms, and metrical matters.
Area: AG

Leonard C. Muellner. The Meaning of Homeric eIxomai through its Formulas. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Band 13. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Innsbruck.

After a review of contemporary debate over the meaning(s) of eIxomai in Homer and a sketch of the methodology he proposes, Muellner presents a stylistic analysis of all Homeric instances of the word, establishing separate sacral ("pray") and secular ("say [proudly, accurately, contentiously]") denotations. Distinguishes the two on the basic of formulas, contexts, morphology, and function. A third legal context is described more briefly. Final chapter demonstrates the Indo-European origin of all three meanings, that the word first meant "say to win out over the speech of a competitor" (p. 140), and that the three descendant concepts are preserved by the traditional formulaic medium of Homeric diction.
Area: AG, IE

Matija Murko. "Die Volksepik der bosnischen Mohammedaner." Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, 19:13-30. Rpt. in Europaische Heldendichtung. Ed. Klaus von See. Wege der Forschung, Band 500. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978. pp. 385-98.

In addition to discussing the origin and history of contemporary Slavic epic in Bosnia and Hercegovina, he suggests that this oral tradition of epic presents interesting possibilities for the comparative study of Homeric and other epic traditions. An extremely early insight into a comparative approach that will develop fully only twenty years later.
Area: SC, AG, CP

Matija Murko. Bericht über phonografische Aufnahmen epischer, meist mohammedanischer Volkslieder im nordwestlichen Bosnien im Sommer 1912. Berichte der Phonogramm-Archivs- Kommission der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 30. Vienna: Alfred Hölder. Rpt. in Anzeiger derphilosophisch-historischen Klasse, 8:58-75.

A report on, with individual descriptions of, 46 recordings of oral folk songs by 20 singers made by the author during the summer of 1912 in northwest Bosnia. Notes the limitations on the length of recorded material because of the equipment and remarks the dialectal idiosyncrasies among the singers. Regions covered include Cazin, Biha, Kulen Vakuf, Krupa, Petrovac, and Prijedor.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. Bericht über eine Bereisung von Nordwestbosnien und der angrenzenden Gebiete von Kroatien und Dalmatien behufs Erforschung der Volksepik der bosnischen Mohammedaner. Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch- historische Klasse, Band 173, Abhandlung 3. Vienna: Alfred Hölder.

A summary of an expedition to northwest Bosnia and the bordering regions of Croatia and Dalmatia regarding the oral folk epic of the Bosnian Moslems. Maintains that there exist two types of epic among this group: the old heroic songs and songs about important events in Bosnian history. Also reports on the age range of guslari, the locales for performance, the instruments employed for accompaniment, the audience, and the poetic language.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. Bericht über eine Reise zum Studium der Volksepik in Bosnien und Herzegowina im Jahre 1913. Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch-historische Klasse, Band 176, Abhandlung 2. Vienna: Alfred Holder.

Reports on a trip intended to determine the eastern boundaries of the Krajina (border) type of Moslem oral folk epic but cut short by an outbreak of cholera. Finds Hercegovina the classical heartland of epic song, with the tradition strongly continued by Moslems, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholics. Relates his surprise over the intermixing of Christian and Moslem singers in performance and describes their instruments. Notes that the Catholic songs come largely from books, while those by Eastern Orthodox guslari deal with very recent topics (such as the Russo-Japanese War and even the Balkan wars). Singers come from all walks of life, although most were agricultural workers of some kind; some Moslem singers were gypsies. Includes detailed descriptions of the contemporary state of oral epic in Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. Bericht über phonografische Aufnahmen epischer Volkslieder im mittleren Bosnien und in der Herzegowina im Sommer 1913. Mitteilung der Phonogramm-Archivs-Kommission, 37. Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch- historische Klasse, Band 179, Abhandlung 1. Vienna: Alfred Hölder.

Reports on his August-September 1913 trip to record oral folk songs in the areas of Sarajevo, Mostar,
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "Neues über südslavische Volksepik." Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur, 22:273-96. Rpt. in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 118-52.

A condensation of his earlier accounts of his fieldwork. Among other matters he concludes that all SC oral epic songs were in reality sung or dictated only once, an opinion he bases on variation in performance.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "L'Etat actuel de la poésie populaire épique yougoslave." Le Monde Slave, 5:321-51.

After a history of references to and collections of SC oral epic that includes mention of Hektorovi, Kacic-Miosic, Fortis, Kopitar, Karadzic, Gesemann, Marjanovic, and Hormann (as well as Bajamonti and Feri, who made comparisons with Homer as early as the eighteenth century), he focuses on his main subject: "de me rendre compte de la manière dont vit la poésie épique populaire, de voir qui sont les chanteurs, pour qui, quand et comment ils chantent, s'il nait encore des chants populaires et pourquoi la poesie populaire disparaît et meurt" (328-39). Notes the common store of oral narrative among the many ethnic groups; describes his field trips through 1924; reports that the tradition survives best in Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro; discusses the professional and amateur singers and their instruments (if any); disputes the romantic conception of the blind singer and notes the existence of female guslari; and comments on the singer's learning process, the role of printed versions of songs, and the process of acquiring new material. Reports on the usual occasions for oral performance, the singer's ability to shorten or lengthen a song at will depending on the nature of his audience, the variables associated with performance (such as pauses), and the role of repetition. Describes the typical sequence of instrumental flourish, prelude, and the beginning of the narrative; the pace of composition (16-20 verses per minute); recomposition rather than memorization (341); pressure toward modernization; combination of poems (345); the question of historical truth; and the reasons for the death of oral tradition (chiefly that the content of the songs is no longer meaningful and that modern instruction has intervened). An important historical note: this paper is the "texte amplifié et complété des conférences faites à la Sorbonne le 23, 24, et 25 mai [1928] (321, n.1); those lectures provided an important stimulus for Parry as he finished his theses (1928a, b) and began to make the step from a demonstrably traditional Homeric poetry to an oral epic tradition.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. La Poésie populaire épique en Yougoslavie an début du XXe siècle. Travaux publies par l'Institut d'Etudes Slaves, 10. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion.

First section appeared as Murko 1928. Starts with a brief history of references to and collections of SC oral epic, the former as early as the seventh century, and notes that "cette poésie épique, qui, avant même d'etre universellement connue, était comparée a celle d'Ossian et d'Homère, offre des analogies avec les oeuvres antiques et jette quelque lumière sur la poésie épique populaire grecque et sur celle des peuples romanes et germaniques" (p. 5). Includes a geography of epic singing in the region, discussion of Christian and Moslem traditions and their intermixing, and extended comments on the nature of oral performance, the singers, their repertoires, and the disappearance of epic singing. Observes that the singers numbered, among many amateurs, "de vrais professionels qui voyageaient de l'une à l'autre des cours de la noblesse musulmane, y restant des semaines et des mois pour en divertir le maître et les hôtes (p. 11). Also covers the learning process undergone by guslari, the most common occasions for oral performance (fêtes rituelles et familiales among the Christians, Ramazan among Moslems), usual length of songs, relationships between singer and audience, and traditional structure: "Les chanteurs retiennent ces chants si longs grâce aux répétitions épiques bien connues, utilisées par exemple pour les messages, et à divers clichés destinés à célébrer les beautés féminines, les héros, les costumes, les chevaux, les armes, les duels, etc." (p. 18). Distinguishes between memorization and re-creation (p. 21). Offers various sociohistorical reasons for the demise of oral epic singing, none of which explicitly includes writing and reading. Part II (pp. 34-52) is comprised of plates and brief descriptions of guslari from all parts of Yugoslavia, Part III of guslari from the Sandzak of Novi Pazar. An extremely important early work and a pillar of oral theory. Very frequently quoted by Parry.
Area: SC, CP

Matija Murko. "Auf den Spuren der Volksepik durch Jugoslavien." Slavische Rundschau, 3:173-83.

A valuable summary covering his fieldwork on oral folk epic throughout Yugoslavia. Began in 1909, 1912, and 1913 to study SC tradition as a living phenomenon in southwestern Croatia, the mountain area of Dalmatia, western and central Bosnia, and all of Hercegovina. World War I prevented further expeditions until 1924, when he journeyed through the Sandzak of Novi Pazar, and 1927, when he worked mostly in Dalmatia. His best results were in Montenegro and Hercegovina, and his longest songs (several hundred to 1000 verses) were collected from Moslem singers during the winter season when the demands of farming had slackened. Discusses the various terms for "singer" and the process of oral performance (176), reports encountering two female singers, and notes the age range of guslari as 12 to 89 (although boys from 6-10 were already learning the craft). Observes that some singers learned to read by themselves, and that those who preserve the oral tradition in a pure state are in the minority. Sees the influences of modern media as detrimental to the tradition of oral epic.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "Nouvelles observations sur l'état actuel de la poésie épique en Yougoslavie." Revue des études slaves, 13:16-50.

Continues the survey in Murko 1929 after a trip undertaken in 1930-31. Notes the influence on SC oral tradition of printed sources, family traditions, the instrument used to accompany the sung poetry, occasions for oral performance, sociolinguistic context, the question of historicity, and the formation of new songs.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "Nekoliko zadaa u prouavanju narodne epike." Prilozi prousavanja narodne poezije, 5:2-5. With German summary, 5.

A brief geographical report on the survival of oral epic singing in SC, with emphasis on the Moslem tradition in Montenegro, Hercegovina, the Sandzak area, and Serbia. Stresses the need for collaborative work among field collectors, metricians, and ethnomusicologists. Suggests comparisons of collected material with the Vuk texts of the nineteenth century, but notes the inherent problem of the lack of information on geography, authorship, and editorial activity in the latter.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "Za narodnom epikom na Kosovu." Prilozi, 18:565-76.

A report on his field trip in 1930 to the Kosovo region. Describes the singers he encountered, the nature of their repertoires, and the predominant use of the gusle as the chosen instrument for accompaniment.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. Tragom srpsko-hrvatske narodne epike: Putovanja u godinama 1930-32, 2 vols. Djela Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti i Umjetnosti, knj. 41-42. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti.

The summary and single most important work in the Czech ethnographer's bibliography. Contains sections on his 1930-32 fieldwork itinerary; an inventory of various areas where oral epic persisted; the conception of folk epic; the singers (by region, both male and female); blind guslari; different kinds of epic songs (including comparison with Albanian and Turkish cycles); manuscript sources for oral material; printed editions; instruments used for accompaniment; a cappella performance; the place, time, and function of epic singing; oral performance, with notes on form and structure; language; geography, history, and international motifs; cultural history; and the origin of folk epic and its present decline. Includes (pp. 381-400) some remarks on the morphology of formulaic diction under performance conditions. A treasury of firsthand observations on the making of oral poetry in an epic tradition.
Area: SC, AB, TK, CP

Gerard Murphy. Saga and Myth in Ancient Ireland. Dublin: Cultural Relations Committee of Ireland.

A brief monograph on Irish oral tradition from early medieval times that includes sections on bards and storytelling (structure, oral performance, manuscript records), mythological tales, tales of the heroic age, tales of kings, and later developments.
Area: OI

Alois Musil. The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins. American Geographical Society, Oriental Explorations and Studies, no. 6. New York: American Geographical Society.

Contains an extensive chapter (10, pp. 283-328) on poetry or kasâjed, which is composed and transmitted orally. Notes that the Bedouins all contribute to this poetic store, and that they have a number of genres: lament, praise-poem, lyric, longer narrative, gnomic poem, and riddle.
Area: AR

Tauno F. Mustanoja. "The Presentation of Ancient Germanic Poetry_Looking for Parallels." Neuphilologus Mitteilungen, 60:1-11.

Reviews three pieces of evidence on the manner of recitation in Finnish runo-singing (popular poetry, possibly "invented" orally). Suggests an analogy with the OE Widsith and early Germanic poetic recitation.
Area: FN, OE, GM, CP

Tauno F. Mustanoja. "The Unnamed Woman's Song of Mourning over Beowulf and the Tradition of Ritual Lamentation." Neuphilologus Mitteilungen, 68:1-27.

Agreeing with Pope's restoration of Geatisc neowle in Beowulf 3150b, he contends that the woman referred to was fulfilling a traditional part of the funerary ritual: a formal lamentation for the dead hero. On analogy with other IE practices, he posits a separate oral tradition of ritual mourning in OE.
Area: OE, CP

Sharon Myers-Ivey. "Repetitive Patterns for Introducing Speech in the Manuscript Tradition of the Prise d'Orange." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 8:51-65.

Undertakes a formulaic analysis of the three versions of the Prise, with special emphasis on the "articulated prolepsis," a network of phraseology involving (1) a perception, (2) a reaction, and (3) speech. Finds partial confirmation of Regnier (1966) that the C-version is a deliberate remaniement and the D-text closest to the oral style in its percentage and texture of formulaic diction, but questions the "literary" status of text AB and the hypothesis of a lost archetype. Views the textual problem as one of oral transmission of multiple texts with no true "original."
Area: OF

John L. Myres. Homer and His Critics. Ed. and cont. D.H.F. Gray. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

A study of the history of Homeric criticism, stressing the archaeological perspective, from antiquity to the current state of affairs. Includes discussion of Parry's work and oral poetry (pp. 239-44).
Area: AG, BB

Michael N. Nagler. "Towards a Generative View of the Oral Formula." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 98:269-311.

Understands verbal formulas as the surface structures generated from traditional, preverbal Gestalten. Thus certain phrases may be related as allomorphs, stemming from a preconscious nexus and looking back to that source for their ultimate meaning, although realized within the synchronic constraints of meter, euphony, and so on. Subsumes the usual polarities by arguing that "all is traditional on the generative level, all unique on the level of performance" (311) and demonstrates that this view of oral-formulaic composition demands that one consider aesthetics alongside structure in studying the traditional character of the Homeric texts. A ground-breaking article and an important development in the history of oral studies. Revised and expanded as Chapters 1-2 of Nagler 1974 (pp. 1-63).
Area: AG

Michael N. Nagler. "Oral Poetry and the Question of Originality in Literature." In Actes du Ve Congrès de l'Association Internationale de Litterature Comparee. Ed. Nikola Banasevic. Belgrade and Amsterdam: Beogradski Grafiki Zavod and Swets & Zeitlinger. pp. 451-59. Rpt. in German in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 387-402.

Finds no generally accepted theory and definition of the oral formula. Proposes the preverbal Gestalt and family of allomorphs (a model developed further in Nagler 1967 and 1974) as a productive way to view the generation of traditional phraseology and to avoid the usual typology that separates the traditional from the original.
Area: AG

Michael N. Nagler. Spontaneity and Tradition: A Study in the Oral Art of Homer. Berkeley: University of California Press.

A full exposition of his generative theory of Homeric oral composition, the first two chapters (on the "traditional phrase") constituting a revision and expansion of Nagler 1967. Extends the concepts of Gestalt and allomorph from phraseology to narrative structure ("motif" and "motif sequence" are the patterns), stressing the aesthetics of oral poetry in its spontaneous rendering of traditional ideas. Explores what Lord identifies as the WDR (Withdrawal-Devastation-Return) story-pattern in the Iliad and the generic/particular relationship in Iliad 24. Argues that "like all spontaneous poetry at its best, repetition is an opportunity for complementary potentialities to be realized and new connections brought to the fore" (p. 194). A short appendix on comparative structures in OE is added.
Area: AG, OE, OF, SK, CP

Michael N. Nagler. "`Dread Goddess Endowed with Speech'." Archeological News, 6:77-85.

Interprets the formula deinO yeUw aEdÆessa, applied in the Odyssey to both Circe and Kalypso, as a generic epithet tying these two figures to the IE dawn-goddess. The last element connotes the ability to prophesy and to aid in the hero's return. Sees Penelope as a domestic hypostasis of the same mythic figure.
Area: AG, SU, IE, CP

Michael N. Nagler. "Entretiens avec Tirésias." Classical World, 74:89-106.

Concentrates on the nekuia episode of Odyssey 11 in demonstrating the necessity of considering the bearing of the traditional IE mythic background on the immediate performance of the Odyssey that survives to us. Sees Teiresias as answering two questions: (1) how to return home and (2) who Odysseus is. Claims the nekuia reveals Odysseus as a hero escaping death goddesses, a mantic prophet escaping a love goddess, and an adventurer now eager to return.
Area: AG, IE, CP

Gregory Nagy. "Phaethon, Sappho's Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 77:137-77.

Applying the diachronic method, he works from a variety of references and allusions in early Greek poetry toward a common mythic form that they figure forth. Sappho's leap from the white rock of Leukas into the sea for the love of Phaon and Phaethon's plunge into Eridanos are shown as sharing a common solar motif associated with themes of death and rebirth.
Area: AG

Gregory Nagy. Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 33. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

By looking back along the evolutionary axis of oral traditional phraseology, from the Homeric formula kldeg.ow êfyiton and its Sanskrit cognate formula ráva(s) áksitam toward a common IE parent phrase, he posits that, originally, traditional diction gave rise to meter, that formula generated meter from a diachronic point of view. Also reverses the usual chronology of AG epic and lyric, assigning historical primacy to the latter, and derives the Homeric hexameter from a pherecratic prototype. Explains kldeg.ow êfyiton as the singer's designation for his own song, the name for heroic deeds memorialized in epic. A very influential monograph.
Area: AG, SK, IE, CP

Gregory Nagy. "The Name of Achilles: Etymology and Epic." 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 Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Band 16. Vienna: Ernst Becvar. pp. 209-37.

A textual examination of traditional thematic correlations and naming in support of Palmer's etymology of Achilles: *Ax-la+/-Wow, from êxow ("woe") and laOw ("people"). Considers formulaic associations of these and other key words in demonstrating the thematic and plot structure of episodes in the Iliad and of the poem as a whole. Understands "the genius behind our Iliad and its artistic unity is in large part the Greek epic tradition itself" (216). Constrasts local cultic and Panhellenic epic traditions, viewing the Homeric epics as the product of a general pan-nationalistic movement in the eighth century B.C.
Area: AG, IE

Gregory Nagy. "Formula and Meter." 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. 239-60.

After a brief review of Parry's thinking, he argues that the formula is not bound by the metrical rules of the hexameter, but that from a diachronic perspective formula generates meter and not vice versa. Goes on to contend that the themes of oral poetry govern the formulas and all other kinds of fixity in oral poetry, defining the formula as "a fixed phrase conditioned by the traditonal themes of oral poetry" (p. 251). Advocates complementing the too prevalent synchronic analysis of oral poetics with a diachronic viewpoint.
Area: AG, SK, IE, CP

Gregory Nagy. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Examines the generic "best of the Achaeans" pattern and relates it to Odysseus and Achilles in the Homeric epics they dominate by making the stories their kléos. Assumes the poetry to be in origin oral traditional and analyzes the narrative in terms of themes named and marked by traditional oppositions of key words. Understands our texts of the Iliad and Odyssey as unified by the genius of the poetic tradition and their heroes as the focus and inheritors of a cluster of Indo-European attributes. Also discusses praise and blame as one of the most ancient features of the poetry. Posits a Panhellenic movement behind the fixation of the Homeric texts. Chapters 5-6 recast from Nagy 1976a.
Area: AG, IE, CP

Gregory Nagy. "On the Origins of the Greek Hexameter: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives." In Festschrift for Oswald Szemerényi on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Ed. Bela Brogyanyi. Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, ser. 4. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, vol. 11:2, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 611-31.

Maintains that we must approach Homeric traditional phraseology and meter from a perspective that combines the diachronic and synchronic views. Defines the formula as "a phrase that is diachronically generated by the theme which it expresses and synchronically regulated by the meter in which it is contained" (p. 617). Since he understands Homeric formulas as containing rhythms that predate the meter which regulates phraseology, he suggests that we can study the evolution of the hexameter by examining that same phraseology.
Area: AG, IE

Gregory Nagy. "An Evolutionary Model for the Text Fixation of Homeric Epos." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983. pp. 390-93.

Suggests the Panhellenic ethos as a context for the recording of our texts of the Iliad and Odyssey. Feels that oral tradition took a fixed form during this nationalistic "movement."
Area: AG

Gregory Nagy. "On the Death of Sarpedon." In Approachers to Homer. Ed. by Carl A. Rubino and Cynthia Shelmerdine. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 189-217.

An etymological investigation into the meaning of tarchuô in Iliad 16.456 based on the premise that both the Greek language and Greek institutions are "cognate with the corresponding institutions of other Indo-European-speaking people" (192). Suggests that the implication of "overcoming the obstacle of death" inherent in the word (evidence is offered that it is derived through Anatolian from the Indo-European) is corroborating evidence for the existence of a cult of heroes ultimately derived from the worship of ancestors.
Area: AG

Joseph F. Nagy. "Close Encounters of the Traditional Kind in Medieval Irish Literature." In Celtic Folklore and Christianity: Studies in Memory of William H. Heist. Ed. by Patrick K. Ford. Santa Barbara: McNally and Loftin, pp. 129-49.

A continuation of the scholarship of Proinsias MacCana, examining such medieval Christian tales as Síaburcharpat Con Culainn and Acallam na Senórach and demonstrating the probability of their origins in the oral tradition.
Area: OI

Joseph Falaky Nagy. "Vengeful Music in Tradition Narrative." Folklore, 95:182-89.

Compares the Scandinavian/English ballad "The Two Sisters," the Hymn to Hermes, and Medieval Irish and Old Norse analogs to the "Singing Bone" narrative pattern, presenting "a structure of narrative motifs and associated ideas that appears in many separate traditions_a structure, or pattern, through the analysis of which we gain insights into the inner meanings of the various sources in which it occurs" (189).
Area: FB, ME, ON, OI, CP

Joseph F. Nagy. The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Argues for the essential consistency of the narratives of the boyhood deeds of Finn in the Gaelic tradition from the twelfth century through recent folktale versions collected in Ireland and Scotland, maintaining that such variations as have occurred have enriched the tradition's ideological significance. Suggests that the tales of Finn's boyhood deeds, while rooted in pre-history, express and preserve fundamental Indo-European and Celtic beliefs regarding passage into adulthood, the relationships between this world and "the other," outlawry, and the institution of the bards which transcend the specific historical situation of any particular audience or performance.
Area: OI, IE, MI

Barbara Nauer. "Soundscript: A Way to Help Black Students to Write Standard English." College English, 36:586-88.

Describes a method by which mistakes made by black students in compositions due to oral residue are rectified by teacher re-dictation to students of their own corrected compositions, so as to facilitate better hearing of the "proper" sounds and thus achieve not only an improved revision of the originally submitted work, but also a realization on the part of the students of the differences between dialectial and standard speech.
Area: AA, US, PT

S. Ju. Nekljudov and Z. Tömörceren. Mongolische Erzählungen über Geser. Asiatische Forschungen, 92. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Text and German translation of Mongolian Geser oral performances collected in 1972.
Area: MN

Bruno Nettl. "Some Notes on the State of Knowledge about Oral Transmission in Music." In Transmission and Form in Oral Traditions. Ed. Leo Treitler et al. In International Musicological Society: Report of the Thirteenth Congress (Berkeley 1977). Kassel: Barenreiter. pp. 139-44.

Discusses the effect of oral transmission and creation on pieces of music (individually) and on repertoires, the kinds of changes that occur in oral transmission, the changes in form from oral to written tradition, the typical history of a piece of music in oral tradition, and other questions associated with oral creation and transmission.
Area: MU

M. Ngal. "Literary Creation in Oral Civilizations." New Literary History, 8:335-44.

Stresses the creativity of the individual within oral tradition in Africa. Understands oral performances as "rereadings" which contain both a fixed and a variable component, so that they are continually adapted to time, place, audience, performer, etc. Thus the ever-changing community can enter into the rereading and inscribe its identity on the ever-malleable text.
Area: AF

Stephen G. Nichols. Formulaic Diction and Thematic Composition in the Chanson de Roland. Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, no. 36. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Studies formula, enjambement, and theme in the OF chanson de geste to demonstrate oral traditional structure. Assumes that the text was composed by a literate singer trained in the tradition. Envisions an individual artist who uses the inherited materials creatively and who occasionally goes beyond conventional limits. Appendices offer examples of formulaic diction (mostly structural rather than phraseological patterns), enjambement statistics, and example themes with occurrences in other chansons de geste.
Area: OF

Stephen G. Nichols. "The Interaction of Life and Literature in the Peregrinationes ad loca sancta and the Chansons de geste." Speculum, 44:51-77.

Views the various versions of a chanson as "a series of drafts in a continually evolving process of creation, a process which strove to present the truth of the past from the perspective of the present" (77). Oral accretions as well as literary composition figure in this ongoing process.
Area: HI, OF, CP

Reynold A. Nicholson. A Literary History of the Arabs. Rev. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930. Rpt. 1969, 1978.

In Chapter 3 ("Pre-islamic Poetry, Manners, and Religion," pp. 71-140), he discusses the flourishing of oral poetry as the sole medium of literature from ca. 500-622 A.D.
Area: AR

Lewis E. Nicholson. "Oral Techniques in the Composition of Expanded Anglo-Saxon Verses." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 78:287-92.

An inventory of modes of formulaic modification in the hypermetric verses.
Area: OE

W.F.H. Nicolaisen. "How Incremental Is Incremental Repetition?" 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. 122-35.

Finds the term "incremental repetition" misleading, since it does not suggest the possibility of mere substitution, accumulation, progression, and intensification in the traditional ballad structure.
Area: FB, CP

Susan Niditch. Chaos to Cosmos: Studies in Biblical Patterns of Creation. Chico: CA: Scholars Press.

Discusses the five creation themes of Genesis chapters 1 through 11 as multiforms and treats the relation of genealogies to creation stories, the creation patterns of prophetic literature, and traditional literary themes.
Area: BI

Eduard Nielsen. Oral Tradition: A Modern Problem in Old Testament Introduction. Studies in Biblical Theology, no. 11. London: SCM Press. 4th printing 1961.

After a brief review of writings on oral tradition and the Bible, he discusses the extent and nature of oral texts of Near Eastern provenance. In Chapter 3 (pp. 39-62) he treats the subordinate role of writing in early Israel, evidence of the oral transmission of the Old Testament, and "the problem [of] how a written canon can come into existence in an age that demonstrably still venerates the spoken word" (p. 39). The final chapter applies the traditio-historical method directly to the Old Testament texts.
Area: BI

John D. Niles. "Ring Composition in La Chanson de Roland and La Chancun de Willame." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 1, ii:4-12.

Accounts for anomalies of place and detail (narrative inconsistencies) by adducing oral theory, arguing that oral literature demands fidelity to the performance. Applies Proppian analysis to explain the otherwise troubling resuscitation of Vivien as demanded by a folkloric pattern. In general, he treats problems of unity and coherence via oral poetics, with reference to SC, AG, and Russian narrative.
Area: OF, SC, AG, RU, CP

John D. Niles. "Patterning in the Wanderings of Odysseus." Ramus, 7:46-60.

Seeks to demonstrate repetitive patterns and their variation in Books 5-12. Also discusses the wanderings as a psychic journey and as a cultural document or "picture of the early Greek view of man and his place in the universe" (59).
Area: AG

John D. Niles. "Narrative Anomalies in La Chançun de Willame." Viator, 9:251-64.

Considers the structure and unity of this chanson de geste from the point of view of oral poetics. Notes relatively high formulaic density, a large number of hypermetric lines, supposed narrative inconsistencies, story-patterns and folktale elements, and the gradually loosening structure of the laisse and diminishing use of the refrain. Favors the theory of a single "author" and single performance over the conventional multiple authorship hypothesis.
Area: OF, CP

John D. Niles. "Ring Composition and the Structure of Beowulf." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 94:924-35.

Though preferring to leave its exact relation to oral tradition unspecified, he illustrates the chiastic design in Beowulf and explains its aesthetic effect both for an aural audience (primarily unconsciously apprehended symmetry) and for the modern reader (conscious appreciation of artistic design). A device also found in AG, BI, OF, and British folk balladry, all of which are oral-derived.
Area: OE, CP

John D. Niles. "Formula and Formulaic System in Beowulf." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983. pp. 394-415.

Argues for flexible formulaic systems as the oral traditional idiom of Beowulf. Modifies the theory proposed by Fry (1967b), emphasizing precision of definition and generativity.
Area: OE, AG, CP

John D. Niles. "Compound Diction and the Style of Beowulf." English Studies, 62:489-503.

Analyzes compounding as an aspect of oral-formulaic verse-making technique, distinguishing the tradition-dependent or idiosyncratic nature of OE poetic composition from other modes. Stresses the utility of flexible formulaic systems to the composing scop. Notes parallels to Beowulf compounds in other Old Germanic poetries. Compares passages from Beowulf and the Meters of Boethius to demonstrate the Beowulf-poet's dependence on flexible systems, denying Benson's (1966) hypothesis of literate formulaic composition.
Area: OE, AG, OSX, ON, OHG, GM, CP

John D. Niles. "The Normans and the Chansons de Geste." In VIII Congreso de la Société Rencesvals. Pamplona: Institucion Principe de Viana, Diputacion Foral de Navarra. pp. 359-66.

In the process of arguing for a Norman patronage of medieval French chansons de geste, he reviews oral-formulaic theory as explaining the mode of transmission of songs before their commission to writing.
Area: OF

John D. Niles. Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

An in-depth analysis of the Old English heroic epic Beowulf which addresses its place in the Old Germanic heroic tradition with special emphasis upon its oral traditional nature. Part I discusses Beowulf in its mythological and Christian contexts with particular attention to the aesthetics of composition and reception in a culture in which Christian and pagan concepts are coexistent. Part II addresses the Old English formulaic system, in which formula, ring composition, and "barbaric style" (a poetics relying primarily upon recognizable contrasts and integrity of familiar episodes) operate together to confer meaning. Taking these aspects of Beowulf into consideration, Part III goes on to discuss at length an interpretation of the poem, addressing in turn the elemtns of the mythic continuum of time in the traditional epic; the voice of the oral poet with respect to traditional knowledge and wisdom and the listening audience's reception of that voice; the concept of reciprocity, a "complex system of exchange that was at the heart of the social order" (p. 213) of which the social hsitory of "heriot," of the bestowing of armor, is an example; thematic unity of the epic in which material that concerns characters and events other than those immediately touched upon by the narrative operates to broaden the poem's scope; and the theme of Beowulf, which he finds to be a contradiction "lodged in the recalcitrant breasts of human beings who in times of crisis find themselves unable to live up to the ideals to which their lips give assent" (p. 226).
Area: OE

Martin P. Nilsson. The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology. Sather Classical Lectures, vol. 8. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rpt. with intro. and bibliography by Emily Vermeule, 1972.

In Chapter 1 ("How Old Is Greek Mythology?" pp. 1-34), he emphasizes the formulaic structure of orally composed traditional epics, citing numerous analogs (especially the Kara-Kirghiz as studied in Radlov 1885 and in more general terms the Teutonic and Hellenic as described in H. Chadwick 1912). Also notes other features characteristic of oral epic: composition in performance, fluency of the traditional idiom as a language, typical descriptions, and elements of widely variant chronology. A very early awareness of oral traditional poetics, without reference to Parry; but see Nilsson 1933 for an explicit citation.
Area: AG, KR, CP

Martin P. Nilsson. Homer and Mycenae. Rpt. New York: Cooper Square, 1968 and Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972.

Chapter 1 (pp. 1-55) gives a summary of the Homeric Question and in particular the Analyst-Unitarian controversy. In Chapter 4 ("Homeric Language and Style," pp. 160-83) he describes the oral-formulaic basis of Homeric phraseology according to the original Parry model. In Chapter 5 ("The Origin and Transmission of Epic Poetry," pp. 184-211) he summons comparanda for Homeric epic from numerous other oral poetic traditions. One of the earliest extensions of Parry's original work.
Area: AG, OE, ON, OF, SC, RU, KR, CP

John A. Nist. The Structure and Texture of Beowulf. Bol. no. 229, Língua e literatura inglése, no. 1. Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências, e Letras. Rpt. Philadelphia: R. West, 1978.

His comments on the structure of the poem (pp. 17-65) assume a poem composed for oral recitation and an audience that responds to the performance out of a knowledge of poetic tradition. Also considers the role of repetition (with comparisons to Homer) and cyclic structure.
Area: OE

John A. Nist. "Metrical Uses of the Harp in Beowulf." In Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays. Ed. Robert P. Creed. Providence: Brown University Press. pp. 27-43.

A survey of metrical verse-types, musical accompaniment, and the instrument's role with respect to formulaic structure.
Area: OE, MU

Barbara Nolan and Morton W. Bloomfield. "Beotword, Gilpcwidas, and the Gilphlaeden Scop of Beowulf." Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 79:499-516.

Interprets the beotword and gilpcwidas (terms for boasting, usually before battle) as speech acts that establish the hero's identity in a formal, ritualistic manner. Relates traditional heroic speech to the making of the poem.
Area: OE

Frederick Norman. "The Germanic Heroic Poet and His Art." In German Studies Presented to Professor H.G. Fiedler, M.V.O. by Pupils, Colleagues, and Friends on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday 28 April 1937. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rpt. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969. pp. 293-322.

An early survey of the terms for and evidence on oral poets in OE and ON, with emphasis on what can be traced to Common Germanic and then forward through individual traditions.
Area: OE, ON, GM, CP

Frederick Norman. "The Early Germanic Background of Old English Verse." In Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory of G.N. Garmonsway. Ed. Derek A. Pearsall and Ronald A. Waldron. London: University of London Press. pp. 3-27.

Attempts to place OE poetry in a wider context with respect to other early Germanic history, verse, and artifacts. Assumes a pan-Germanic oral tradition, with most of OE verse written by clerics sometime after 700.
Area: OE, GM, CP

Martin Noth. Überlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuchs. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Trans. B.W. Anderson as A History of Pentateuchal Traditions. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972. Rpt. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981.

Views the Pentateuch as shaped primarily and decisively in a preliterary stage of oral tradition, with the literary stage only fixing the final form. Develops an analogy with Icelandic sagas to sketch out a "Pentateuchal tradition."
Area: BI, ON, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "Mnemosyne in Oral Literature." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 69:465-93.

Sees the goddess Mnemosyne as "the personification of an important and vital force in oral composition" (465). Connects Parry's exposition on formulaic structure to mention of Mnemosyne. Explores the transition from oral to written, especially in Plato. Calls for the reader's and scholar's awareness of oral style not only in Homer and Hesiod, but also at the foundation of Platonic works. One of the first articles to recognize and use Parry's theories.
Area: AG

James A. Notopoulos. "Parataxis in Homer." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 80:1-23.

Argues that unity in Homer is not the organic, hypotactic design to which we are accustomed in dealing with literary works, but a paratactic and inorganic structure. In selecting his material, the poet is able to assume a larger knowledge on the part of his audience: "The oral recitation thus becomes a selection of parts whose whole is the inexpressed context of the traditional material" (21).
Area: AG

James A. Notopoulos. "The Generic and Oral Composition in Homer." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 81:28-36.

Views Homer and early Greek plastic art as founded on the same principle of generic composition. Sees the generic in formulaic diction, character-types, and mythic paradigms. Geometric art "does not copy nature but refracts it through a formulaic typology" (31). Argues that the genesis of generic structure in Homer may be traced to the process of oral composition.
Area: AG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "Continuity and Interconnexion in Homeric Oral Composition." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 82:81-101.

Explains Homeric devices of prologue, foreshadowing, flashback, and ring-composition as stemming from practical necessities in oral composition, with emphasis on oral performance, the paratactic mentality of poet and audience, and the contextualizing force of tradition. Calls for an oral poetics based on an understanding of formula, theme, and devices such as these.
Area: AG, MG, SC, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "Homer and Cretan Heroic Poetry: A Study in Comparative Oral Poetry." American Journal of Philology, 73:225-50.

Calls for the use of comparative oral theory in studying Homer and illustrates the process with modern Greek oral tradition, in particular The Song of Daskoloyannes. Feels that by comparing the two poetries we can gain insights on (a) the oral poet and his techniques of composition and performance, (b) the role of the audience, and (c) the poet's relationship to his tradition. Goes on to examine formulaic structure, portraits of the orally composing poet, occasions for performance, references to the audience, parataxis, narrative inconsistencies, and similes.
Area: AG, MG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "The Warrior as an Oral Poet: A Case History." Classical World, 46:17-19.

Finds an analog to Homeric tradition in the memoirs of the Modern Greek General Makriyiannis, who fought heroically against the Turks in the revolution of 1821. In addition to the permutations of menis (the Iliadic wrath), paratactic episodes of battle, the love of arms, and events similar to those comprising the battle of Troy, he reports that Makriyiannis was himself an oral poet who composed spontaneously.
Area: MG, AG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "The Introduction of the Alphabet into Oral Societies: Some Case Histories of Conflict between Oral and Written Literature." In Prosphora eis S.P. Kyriakiden (epi tei eikosipentaeteridi tes kathegesias autou). Ed. Iohannes Kakrides. Thessaloniki: Hellenika. pp. 516-24.

Describes the transition from spoken to written literature in ancient and Byzantine Greece, showing how Constantine's tenth-century poem, "Foreword to the Gospels," "is a passionate plea to an oral society to become a literary society so that it can communicate with God through his Logos and be saved" (p. 524).
Area: AG, BG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "Homer as an Oral Poet in the Light of Modern Greek Heroic Oral Poetry." Yearbook of the American Philosophical Society, 1953. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. pp. 249-53.

A report on the author's fieldwork in the Greek islands in 1952-53. Documents a new wave of oral poetry on the events of World War II. Realizes the importance of seeing oral art in its social context and of seeking examples of all available genres. Feels that the oral culture is being eroded by modern media, but that even the most recent poems descend ultimately from a continuous tradition of oral heroic poetry over a thousand years old.
Area: AG, MG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "Homeric Similes in the Light of Oral Poetry." Classical Journal, 52:323-28.

By analogy with D. Petropoulos' La Comparaison dans la chanson populaire grecque (Athens, 1954), he argues for the oral traditional nature of the Homeric simile. Points to Homeric originality in the congruence of the subject and its comparison. Sees the technique of parataxis (cp. Notopoulos 1949), the representation of objects as a string of entities each with a life of its own, at the root of the Homeric simile.
Area: AG

James A. Notopoulos. "Homer and Geometric Art: A Comparative Study in the Formulaic Technique of Composition." Athena, 61:65-93.

After a capsule history of earlier scholarship, he compares Homeric verbal art and the Geometric art of vase-makers in terms of formula, theme, and "filling-ornamentation" (the tendency toward decorative enrichment of a scene). These comparisons illustrated, he then distinguishes between the Geometric artist, who refracts humanity through his patterns to represent only a generic essence, with Homer, for whom humanity is a full-blooded presence founded on the same patterns but far more developed.
Area: AG, MG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "Originality in Homeric and Akritan Formulae." Laographia, 18:423-31.

In advocating comparative oral literature research and fieldwork for studying Homer, he notes (1) that this approach does not preclude originality on the part of the orally composing poet, (2) that it reveals how originality in composition is a matter of variation rather than of wholesale invention, and (3) that it offers us a chance to perceive the oral techniques involving formulas, typical scenes, and compositional themes. Illustrates Homer's more dexterous use of traditional patterns as compared to the Akritan oral poets.
Area: AG, MG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "Modern Greek Heroic Oral Poetry and its Relevance to Homer." Text accompanying Folkways Record FE 4468, Modern Greek Heroic Oral Poetry. New York: Folkways.

Introduces and contextualizes recordings of oral heroic poetry made in 1952-53 in the Greek villages of the mainland, the islands, and Cyprus. Illustrates formulaic and thematic structure in Homer and in the modern Greek songs; describes the Akritan heroic cycle, the klephtic ballads, and the historical narrative poems of Crete and Cyprus. Also includes some musical and verbal transcriptions, with translations, from the selections in the album, and interesting accounts of the confrontation of oral and written traditions.
Area: AG, MG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "Homer, Hesiod, and the Achaean Heritage of Oral Poetry." Hesperia, 29:177-97.

Feels that the problem in establishing Homer's relation to Hesiod is to account for the Homeric formulas found in the Hesiodic texts. Using Parry's insights on oral traditional diction and available archaeological evidence, he argues for a common oral tradition from which they both sprang: Homer is the main representative of the Ionian brachiation of this tradition, Hesiod the foremost member of the mainland branch.
Area: AG

James A. Notopoulos. "The Genesis of an Oral Heroic Poem." Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 3:135-44.

A report by example of how an oral heroic poem is born. Uses his bard Andreas Kafkalas, a singer known for his ability to compose spontaneously. Compares an improvised song on the abduction of the German commander General Karl Kreipe by Cretan guerillas during World War II, finding that the singer's version tends away from history toward myth and that the audience rather than historical fact is the shaping force. Discusses the blend of originality and tradition in this "new" work.
Area: MG, AG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "The Homeric Hymns as Oral Poetry: A Study of the Post-Homeric Oral Tradition." American Journal of Philology, 83:337-68.

Application of Parry-Lord theory and of his own comparative work in modern Greece leads him to explain the hymns as another genre of oral traditional poetry. Reinterprets scholia and fragmentary historical evidence to sketch an "oral atlas" of bards composing verse in various parts of ancient Greece about the time of Homer. Includes a contrastive formulaic analysis of four hymns together with passages from Hesiod and Homer, showing a relatively uniform density throughout (although he counts formulas based on analogy, a questionable category). Closes with a review of the implications of orality in the hymns and a call for an oral poetics.
Area: AG, MG, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "The Influence of the Klephtic Ballads on the Heroic Oral Songs of Crete" (in Greek). Kretika Chronika, 15-16:77-91.

Describes four avenues of influence: (1) popular stories, such as those concerning Daskoloyannes, (2) the folk melodies, (3) the heroic code, and (4) genre, prosody, and other formal considerations.
Area: MG

James A. Notopoulos. "Studies in Early Greek Oral Poetry." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 68:1-77.

Constitutes his major contribution to scholarship. Building on Parry's research, he considers (1) the significance of modern Balkan oral heroic poetry on the study of Homer, (2) the influence of the introduction of the alphabet on oral composition in ancient Greece, and (3) the question of a poetics for oral poetry. On the performance of oral poetry, he compares the rate of recitation of modern Greek and calculates approximately 27 hours for the recitation of the Iliad and 21 hours for the Odyssey. On the model of SC epic collected by Parry and Lord, he also explores possible divisions and comments on social context. Rejects the hypothesis of the Panathenaic Festival as the possible locus for the surviving performances of the Homeric poems, postulating instead a noble setting with a professional bard (an aristocratic milieu). The second section deals with early Greek poetry as an oral atlas extending from Mycenae forward for almost 1000 years and over an extensive geographical area. Studies the Cyclic Epics as oral poetry (tests for formula, enjambement, and theme). Argues for an original oral tradition and branches, chiefly in Ionia and the mainland (cp. Notopoulos 1960a). Stresses the traditional society as an oral culture in which oral formulas comprise a natural means of artistic expression. Remarks on audience, recitation, and the principle of parataxis (cp. Notopoulos 1949). Ends with a brief review of Parry-Lord fieldwork and research.
Area: AG, MG, SC, CP

James A. Notopoulos. "Archilochus the Aoidos." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 97:311-15.

Offers supplementary evidence for his (1964) and Page's (1963) demonstration that Archilochus was an oral poet. Argues that "without training and practice in epic poetry Archilochus could not have applied successfully the oral technique to the composition of oral lyric poetry" (315).
Area: AG

Edward Nowacki. "The Syntactical Analysis of Plainchant." In Transmission and Form in Oral Traditions. Ed. Leo Treitler et al. In International Musicological Society: Report of the Thirteenth Congress (Berkeley 1977). Kassel: Barenreiter. pp. 191-201.

Attempts a taxonomy of the Old Roman Office antiphons based on a structural model of syntactic class, melody, and text with intervening transformation rules, a classification which he argues is better able to account for all the texts in the repertoire than conventional formulaic grouping.
Area: MU, LT

Holger O. Nygard. "Mrs. Brown's Recollected Ballads." 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. 68-87.

Examines the recorded repertoire by Mrs. Anna Brown of Falkland, from whom Child collected thirty-three ballads orally transmitted by members of her family from the early eighteenth century. After studying surviving manuscripts and repetitive phraseology, he concludes that she was neither a consciously manipulative literary artist nor a re-composer, but "a transmitter of ballad texts with words not of her own invention, but of the impersonal language of the tradition that she bore" (p. 84).
Area: BR, FB

Séamus O Catháin, trans. and ed. An Hour by the Hearth: Stories Told by Pádraig Eoghain Phádraig Mac an Luain. Folklore Studies, 14. Dublin: University College Press.

A compilation of the oral prose tales of one of Ireland's most noted storytellers collected in 1972 and 1973 and provided with extensive annotations, notes on dialect, and indexes of motif and type. Accompanied by a cassette tape of approximately sixty minues containing the actual performances of Pádraig Eoghain Phádraig Mac an Luain.
Area: MI

Seán O'Coileáin. "Oral or Literary? Some Strands of the Argument." Studia Hibernica, 17/18:7-35.

Discusses various aspects of the application of the Parry-Lord theory of oral-formulaic composition to the extant corpus of Old Irish texts.
Area: OI

Seán O'Coileáin. "Irish Saga Literature." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 172-92.

Discusses the possible role of oral tradition in the composition of the sagas (espec. pp. 174-78). Reviews various opinions and suggests further thematic analysis.
Area: OI

Caoímhin O'Danachair. "Oral Tradition and the Printed Word." Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies, 9:31-41.

Directs attention to the influence of the written (and printed) word upon the oral. Notes the existence of tales transmitted by reading from manuscript. Observes that Christianity and the written word entered Ireland together and have been associated, alongside oral tradition, ever since.
Area: OI, MI, CP

Wayne O'Neil. "Oral-Formulaic Structure in Old English Elegiac Poetry." Unpub. Ph.D. diss. University of Wisconsin. Abstract in DAI, 21:625.

Along with Gattiker 1962, the initial statement of the "syntactic frame" theory of oral composition in OE poetry. Its adherents claimed that the poet manipulated a minimal number of syntactic (rather than verbal) formulas (see further Cassidy 1965). O'Neil defines the syntactic frame as "a recurrent morphemic and relational frame into which the words of a verse fit" (83).
Area: OE

Wayne O'Neil. "Another Look at Oral Poetry in The Seafarer." Speculum, 35:596-600.

Responds to J. Campbell 1960: (1) he doubts the certainty of distinguishing between so-called prose and poetic words, and (2) he suggests considering definable formulaic systems, taking a closer philological look at hypermetric verses, and considering the limited sample available in OE with which to determine the formulaic nature of a phrase.
Area: OE

Wayne O'Neil. "The Oral-Formulaic Structure of the Faroese kvaei." Fróskaparrit, 18:59-68.

After a review of Parry-Lord theory, he applies oral-formulaic analysis to one text of Sjúrar kvaei, an example of the long and orally composed Faroese ballads. Shows that both fixed texts and recomposition exist in the oral tradition. Finds the formulaic unit of the kvaei to be the stanza rather than the line and advocates care in such analysis to take account of tradition-dependence. Hypothesizes that Eddic poetry in ON may be the link from early Germanic poetry to the Faroese ballads.
Area: FA, FB, ON, CP

Eugene O'Neill, Jr. "The Localization of Metrical Word-Types in the Greek Hexameter." Yale Classical Studies, 8 (1942), 105-78.

An often cited statistical study of the Homeric hexameter. Establishes word-types defined by metrical shape and shows how certain types are favored at particular positions in the line. An important contribution to the study of formulaic diction in ancient Greek.
Area: AG

Kevin O'Nolan. "Homer and the Irish Hero Tale." Studia Hibernica, 8:7-20.

After a brief review of Parry-Lord theory on traditional oral phraseology, he examines one version of an Irish folktale, "Tóraíocht an Ghiolla Dheacair," for evidence of similar patterns. Finds noun-epithet formulas, triadic structures, doublets, formulas of convention and transition, as well as more specific repeated phrases.
Area: OI, MI, AG, SC, CP

Kevin O'Nolan. "Homer and Irish Heroic Narrative." Classical Quarterly, n.s. 19:1-19.

Compares formulaic structure in Homer and in the prose hero-tales of Finn. Argues that noun-epithet formulas precede (diachronically and generically) metrical position, accounting for their appearance in prose. Cites instances of context adjustment and elaboration of set themes in both traditions.
Area: AG, OI, SC, CP

Kevin O'Nolan. "The Use of Formula in Storytelling." In Hereditas: Essays and Studies Presented to Professor Séamus O Duilearga. Ed. Bo Almqvist, Breandán Mac Aodha, and Gearóid Mac Eoin. Dublin: Folklore of Ireland Society. pp. 233-50.

A comparative treatment of a modern Gaelic storyteller, Eamonn Burc, inheritor of an oral tradition now over 1000 years old, and Homer. Considers the structure of the formula in oral prose and of formulaic runs typical of Irish tradition. Finds the formula to be basically independent of meter.
Area: OI, MI, AG, CP

Kevin O'Nolan. "Doublets in the Odyssey." Classical Quarterly, n.s. 28:23-37.

Treats the doublet, "a combination of two terms which are to all intents synonymous" (23), as a formulaic element of oral provenance in Homer and in contemporary Irish hero-tales. Also examines the Homeric hexameter and its diction for indications of relatively more fixed patterning in the latter part of the line.
Area: AG, MI, CP

Kevin O'Nolan. "Formula in Oral Tradition." In Approaches to Oral Tradition. Ed. Robin Thelwall. Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning, no. 4. Coleraine: The New University of Ulster. pp. 24-34.

Considers the oral traditional devices of noun-epithet formula and doublet in Homeric epic and the Irish hero-tale, finding the latter tradition less fully formulaic and not as rich in thematic multiforms but still patterned in a way similar to oral traditional structure in Homer.
Area: MI, AG, CP

Cecile O'Rahilly, ed. and trans. Táin Bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster. Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies. Rpt. 1970.

In the introduction (pp. ix-lv), she mentions the formula as a concept covering "not only `tags' and `cliches' but also... any group of words constructed on the same syntactical pattern to express a given idea" (p. xlviii, n. 1).
Area: OI

James P. Oakden. Alliterative Poetry in Middle English: A Survey of the Traditions. Publications of the University of Manchester, no. 236 (English Series, no. 22). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rpt. as The Dialectical and Metrical Survey. Hamden: Archon Books, 1968.

Concerned primarily with the style and diction of ME alliterative poetry, which he sees as the gradually transformed heir of OE poetic style and diction. Understands the penalty of the traditional inheritance as "the forced acceptance of the stock phraseology which in mechanical hands produced work without a seeming spark of originality. The better poets moulded this traditional phraseology to their own ends, but most of the alliterative poets too readily yielded to the temptation to write fluent verse by the aid of all sorts of tags and phrases." (pp. 110-11). Copious illustrations of formulaic diction follow.
Area: ME, OE, CP

E.N. Obiechina. "Transition from Oral to Literary Tradition." Présence africaine, n.s. 63:140-61.

Describes the functionally oral culture in which most West Africans live, with the oral tradition serving as what Havelock (e.g. 1963) calls an "oral encyclopedia" of values, attitudes, history, and ethical models. Notes how literate writers, such as Amos Tutuola, chronicle folktale material in oral circulation and produce written works with a tremendous debt to oral tradition.
Area: AF

E.N. Obiechina. "Amos Tutuola and the Oral Tradition." Présence africaine, n.s. 65:85-106.

In discussing Tutuola's written refashioning of material from oral tradition, he points out that legends differ from folktales in that the former have a "crypto-religious" significance and are therefore more rigid in form. The secular folktale, on the other hand, offers the artist more creative freedom in reshaping traditional material to his own designs. Tutuola characteristically retells folktales but in written form, preserving both the content and the original oral style.
Area: AF

Orest R. Ochrymowycz. Aspects of Oral Style in the Romances Juglarescos of the Carolingian Cycle. Studies in Spanish Language and Literature, 17. Iowa City: State University of Iowa Press.

After a brief survey of the major relevant Hispanic criticism and Parry-Lord theory, he sets out to prove that the Carolingian romances juglarescos are oral poems composed by "polished and mature" artists (p. 20). Performs stylistic analyses of formulaic diction, twinning devices, enjambement, and irregular lines. Feels that the poet who has mastered the traditional formulaic language has the same freedom as the writing poet. While all ballads are judged to be oral compositions on the basis of his analyses, some are hypothesized to have undergone literary influence. Most aesthetic effects are corollaries of Parry's original theories (see pp. 150-51).
Area: HI, FB

Orest R. Ochrymowycz. "Oral Composition and Artistic Freedom in the Traditional Poetry of Spain." 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. 101-12.

Investigates "the esthetic capabilities of formulaic diction" (102) in the epic, the minstrel ballad, and the popular ballad of Spain. Illustrates how oral poets artistically employ formulas, parallelism, repetition, and enjambement. Concludes that the use of highly formalized language by traditional poets does not preclude artistic freedom.
Area: HI, FB

Orest R. Ochrymowycz. "Some Observations on Formulaic Diction, Twinning and Enjambement in the Traditional Poetry of Spain." In El Romancero hoy: Poética, vol. 3. Romancero y poésia oral. Ed. Diego Catalán, Samuel G. Armistead, and Antonio Sánchez Romeralo. 2deg. Coloquio Internacional, University of California, Davis. Madrid: Cátedra Seminario Menéndez Pidal. pp. 155-63.

Defines the formula in Spanish balladry as "any phrase corresponding to at least one octosyllabic line of verse which in its recurring forms is recognizable as the same basic expression" (p. 155) and probes the traditional structure of the poetry to illustrate the poet's individual, aesthetically motivated craftsmanship at the levels of phraseology, the catalog, "twinned" lines, and enjambement. Discovers approximately 50% end-stopped lines, with the remainder divided among two-thirds unperiodic and one-third necessary enjambement, affirming Parry's findings on Homer. Claims that the "[traditional] technique allows the oral poet all the freedom that any artist worthy of the name enjoys" (p. 163).
Area: HI, FB

Victor R.B. Oelschläger, ed. Poema del Cid in Verse and Prose. New Orleans: Tulane University Press.

Along with a prose rendering of the contiguous poetic text and a glossary, he provides a complete concordance (pp. 60-125) of all words in the poem.
Area: HI, CC

Felix J. Oinas. "The Study of Folklore in Yugoslavia." In The Yugoslav-American Folklore Seminar. pp. 398-418 (= Journal of the Folklore Institute, 3, idem).

Includes a summary of native investigators' research on oral narrative tradition and its relation to other epic traditions. The collection to which it serves as a coda illustrates some of those approaches.
Area: SC, CP

Felix J. Oinas. "Folk Epic." In Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction. Ed. Richard M. Dorson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 99-115.

Taking examples primarily from Slavic and Finnish epic (and excluding OE, MGH, and OF material because he feels all three traditions involve literary versions), he sketches various theories of folk epic development, character, and structure. Describes formulas, nucleus and frame repetition, constant epithets, and comparisons typical of oral composition. Also treats the nature of oral performance in the different traditions, mentioning research by Parry and Lord.
Area: RU, SC, BU, FN, CP

Felix J. Oinas. Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk-Epics. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

Fifteen essays intended as a general introduction to folk epics in a variety of literatures; those which in some way treat oral-formulaic theory include: Hansen (AG), Renger (SU), van Nooten (SK), Hanaway (IR), Renoir (OE), Anderson (ON), O'Coileáin (OI), Brault (OF), Simmons (HI), Oinas 1978b (RU), Oinas 1978c (FN), Basgöz (TK), and Biebuyck (AF).
Area: AG, SU, SK, IR, OE, ON, OI, OF, HI, RU, FN, ES, TK, AF, CP

Felix J. Oinas. "Russian Byliny." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 236-56.

Describes collections of byliny since the seventeenth century, with brief mention of commonplaces and formulaic technique.
Area: RU

Felix J. Oinas. "The Balto-Finnic Epics." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 286-309.

Recounts Elias Lönnrot's collection and compilation of the Finnish Kalevala. Describes the oral composition of the songs which were stitched together. General remarks on the nontraditional Estonian epic, the Kalevipoeg.
Area: FN, ES, CP

Felix Oinas. "The Sower." Journal of Folklore Research, 20:83-88.

Describes two recorded versions of the Finnish folksong "The Sower," the first recorded in Ugric in 1883 and the second a defective recording of unknown date from North Karelia. Isolates two themes in the song: the hero's disappearance, which causes grain to stop growing, and his invitation ot return, concluding that "it can be assumed that the Anatolian myth of the temporary disappearance of the fertility divinity migrated to the Greeks and, through several intermediaries, also to the north, reaching the Karelians and Finns via the Russians" (87).
Area: FN, IE

J. Olowo Ojoade. "Hunter and Hunting in Yoruba Folklore." Lore and Language, 4, ii:36-54.

Describes seven themes surrounding the hunter and hunting in the Yoruba oral tradition and provides examples of each. Discusses the future of Yoruba lore and the changing roel of the hunter, and predicts corresponding changes in the folk tradition.
Area: AF

C.A. Okafor. The Banished Child: A Study in Tonga Oral Literature. London: The Folklore Society.

Summarizes and analyzes one hundred oral (spoken and sung) cante-fables collected in southern Zambia among the Tonga peoples as evidence that fables with human characters possess a wider scope of potential action than those with animal characters. Includes chapters on poetics, themes and episodes, multiforms, and the repertoires of individual storytellers.
Area: AF

Isidore Okpewho. "Does the Epic Exist in Africa? Some Formal Considerations." Research in African Literatures, 8:171-200.

Finds the Parry-Lord idea of oral epic exemplified both in the Kambili, from the western African Mande, and the Mwindo Epic, from the Banyanga of Zaire. Describes formulas, themes, ornamental structures, and ring-composition in these works, comparing them to analogs in European oral traditions: "The formula, theme, and the simple repetition are devices that ensure the growth of the song, whether vertically or horizontally; the ring, on the other hand, is a device enabling stabilization and control." (183). Understands the prose/poetry dichotomy advanced by others to be false, since poetic prosody is so flexible and prose recitation takes place against a musical and rhythmic background ("prose propelled by the force of music," 186). Thus formulas can and do exist in the "prose" Mwindo Epic. The last section applies Nagler's (1967, 1974) ideas on traditional composition to African oral epic.
Area: AF, AG, SC, CP

Isidore Okpewho. The Epic in Africa: Toward a Poetics of the Oral Performance. New York: Columbia University Press.

Argues from a literary perspective for the existence of epic in Africa, a vexed issue since Bowra 1952 and especially since Finnegan 1970a (cp. Okpewho 1977). Cites as typical features of orally performed epic (1) variability of story and detail, (2) a combination of "economy and extravagance" (p. 240) in its telling, and (3) certain techniques used to enlist the thoughts and passions of the audience. Makes comparative reference mainly to Homer but also to the SC guslari and to Gilgamesh. Includes frequent recourse to the research of Parry and Lord.
Area: AF, AG, SC, SU, CP

Isidore Okpewho. "The Anthropologist Looks at Epic." Research in African Literatures, 11:429-48.

Essentially a review article on Biebuyck 1978a. He applauds certain aspects of the anthropological approach, such as description of the cultural context of the epic, firsthand experience with oral performance, extent of the collection, and the judgments and analogs made possible by the collection. But he finds that ethnographic data can sometimes enslave and distort the epic texts. Notes that Biebuyck's texts were taken down from dictation and have thus lost significant dimensions of their original form. Also criticizes the translations for lack of clarity and the commentary for shortcomings in distinguishing different genres.
Area: AF

Olátúndé O. Olátúnjí. "The Yoruba Oral Poet and His Society." Research in African Literatures, 10:179-207.

Assuming in large part the Parry-Lord model for the Yoruba oral poet, he describes the various poetic genres (divination poetry, incantations, chant and song, praise-poetry, humorous forms or anecdotes, and festival songs) and discusses the often active role of the immediate audience in each. Also describes the social position of the oral poet and the stylistic or aesthetic aspects of his verse.
Area: AF

Olátúndé O. Olátúnjí. "Issues in the Study of Oral Poetry in Africa." Journal of African Studies, 6:112-19.

Confronts three issues: (1) the process of gaining an oral "text," (2) the importance of comparative oral literature research for African oral poetry, and (3) the social role of the African oral poet. On the first point he examines the multi-media performance of oral poetry and the questions of transcription, lineation, and translation. Second, he argues (after a short summary of Parry-Lord research) that standard oral theory must be modified to suit the African material, and specifically that one must allow for situations other than composition entirely during performance. In the final section he treats the role of the oral poet from a historical point of view.
Area: AF

Axel Olrik. "Epische Gesetze der Volksdichtung." Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 51:1-12. Trans. Jeanne P. Steager in The Study of Folklore. Ed. Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965. pp. 129-41.

A basic study setting out many of Olrik's famous laws of structure in oral folk-narrative in many different traditions. Repetition is tied to laws of three, four, two to a scene, contrast, initial and final position, and concentration on a leading character. Stresses the consistency of occurrence of these patterns.
Area: CP

Alexandra H. Olsen. "Guthlac on the Beach." Neophilologus, 64:290-96.

After noting that Guthlac B was, as a close translation of Felix's Latin prose Vita Sancti Guthlaci, inevitably written and that it nonetheless shows both formulaic and thematic elements typical of oral heroic poetry, she argues for the expression of Christian theological meaning through traditional forms. Finds Crowne's (1960) "Hero on the Beach" theme and suggests that the poem as it stands is, from an oral-formulaic point of view, nearly complete. Claims that "the poet expresses his polemical message through formulaic devices of composition, and his proficiency shows that the two disparate traditions merged in an unusual and exciting literary form" (294).
Area: OE

Alexandra H. Olsen. Guthlac of Croyland: A Study of Heroic Hagiography. Washington, DC: University Press of America.

Views the Guthlac material as three poems (A, B, and the composite) which blend oral-formulaic and patristic traditions and which "use the formulaic elements of Old English heroic poetry effectively to express the religious ideas derived from Latin works" (p. 142). Includes discussion of formulaic diction and thematic background (pp. 25-47).
Area: OE

Poul R. Olsen. "Melodic Structures in Traditional Music." In Transmission and Form in Oral Traditions. Ed. Leo Treitler et al. In International Musicological Society: Report of the Thirteenth Congress (Berkeley 1977). Kassel: Barenreiter. pp. 145-51.

Discusses the role and morphology of basic melodic ideas in the orally transmitted traditions of Middle Eastern, Greenland Eskimo, and North Indian music.
Area: MU, CP

Alexandra H. Olsen. "Inversion and Political Purpose in the Old English Judith." English Studies, 63:289-93.

Contends that Judith's transformation from the passive Biblical figure into an OE warrior, achieved by means of the formulaic and thematic ("Hero on the Beach" type-scene) style of the poet, was politically motivated.
Area: OE

Alexandra H. Olsen. "The Return of the King: A Reconsideration of Robert of Sicily." Folklore, 93:216-19.

Making reference to the oral tradition underlying the certainly written Middle English romance Robert of Sicily, she describes one aspect of the poem's aesthetic effect as deriving from the poet's selective fulfillment of the audience's traditional expectations.
Area: ME

Alexandra Hennessey Olsen. "Old English Poetry and Latin Prose: The Reverse Context." Classica et Mediaevalia, 34:273-82.

Suggests that "Old English poetry composed, copied, and recited in English monasteries affected the Latin prose written therein, providing what might be called a reverse context for the poetry which the Latin thereafter influenced" (273). Based upon the evidence of Old English manuscripts containing works in Latin, Bede's account of Cædmon, and statements by Alcuin regarding Latin and vernacular songs, she argues that "the Latin context of Old English poetry may be one of both direct and of reverse influence" (280).
Area: OE, LT, CP

Alexandra H. Olsen. Speech, Song, and Poetic Craft: The Artistry of the Cynewulf Canon. New York and Berne: Peter Lang.

Analyzes the Cynewulf poems of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records and their poetic tradition with special attention to textual transmission, cultural diglossia, translations of Latin original works, and the reinforcement of legends and hagiographies through poetic language.
Area: OE

Mahmoud Omidsalar. "Storytellers in Classical Persian Tales." Journal of American Folklore, 97:204-12.

Translates six passages from Persian historiographical and theological works which adumbrate the early storytelling tradition in Persia.
Area: PR

Walter J. Ong. "Oral Residue in Tudor Prose Style." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 80:145-54. Rpt. in his Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971. pp. 23-47.

Treats habits of thought and expression which derive from preliterate situations or practice and which survive well into the time when literacy prescribes non-oral media as the dominant forms of thought and expression. Cites the formulaic and episodic structure of Tudor prose narrative as evidence.
Area: BR, TH

Walter J. Ong. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rpt. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970 and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981.

An expansion of the Terry lectures given at Yale (April 27-29, 1964) that deals with the shift of noetics involved in the transformation from primary oral culture to writing or to print. Concerned particularly with the phenomenology of the word as sound in a culture that depends on oral/aural communication and with the potential for information storage and retrieval presented by oral tradition (cp. Havelock 1963). Also correlates cultural development with Freudian psychosexual stages and speaks of the "new orality" of the electronic age (cp. McLuhan 1962). A brilliant and far-reaching study.
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. In the Human Grain: Further Explorations of Contemporary Culture. New York and London: Macmillan.

Discusses the development from "oral-aural culture" to modernity (pp. 14-16) and in particular the contemporary world's insights into the past, e.g. into oral tradition (pp. 24-26, 54-56).
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. "`I See What You Say': Sense Analogues for Intellect." Human Inquiries: Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, 1-3:22-42. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. Rpt. 1982. pp. 121-44.

Examines the visual metaphor for intellect and the aural ability as the "process sense" (rpt., p. 136).
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Concerned throughout with questions bearing on orality. Especially important are Chapters 2 (a rpt. of Ong 1965) and 12 ("The Literate Orality of Popular Culture Today," pp. 284-303.) In the latter he treats the "secondary orality" engendered by electronic media in comparison with the "primary orality" of preliterate cultures.
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. "Media Transformation: The Talked Book." College English, 34:405-10. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 82-91.

Description of a book based on transcribed and edited interviews offers the opportunity to discuss the impact of new upon older media, especially the fixity of the word in writing and then print and the complications which result from the transition from orality to print to secondary orality.
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. "Agonistic Structures in Academia: Past to Present." Interchange, 5:1-12. Abridged version in Daedalus, 103:229-38.

Sees the origins of the agonistic noetic still residual in academia in the thought patterns of primary oral cultures, with learned Latin as the intermediary. These contest rituals are attenuated in the present-day academic environment.
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. "Logic and the Epic Muse: Reflections on Noetic Structures in Milton's Milieu." In Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose of John Milton. Ed. Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 239-68.

Views the Miltonic epic, characterized as it is by the survival of epic form from the oral culture of an earlier age and by the innovation of Ramist logic, as the interface between the old noetic economy of epic as an encyclopedic reference and the new "paradigmatic knowledge-storage device of the post-philosophical rationalist world" (p. 265). Includes a brief account of the function of epic in an oral culture.
Area: BR, TH

Walter J. Ong. "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 90:9-22. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 53-81.

Explains how writing and reading demand role-playing of certain kinds on the part of both writer and reader. The audience is created and creates itself under these rules. Compares the "two-way street" of oral traditional storytelling, in which the audience is directly engaged and persona-making is not as involved an exercise: "No matter what pitch of frankness, directness, or authenticity he may strive for, the writer's mask and the reader's are less removable than those of the oral communicator and his hearer. For writing is itself an indirection." (rpt., p. 80).
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. "Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger, and Shakespeare." In Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500-1700. Ed. R.R. Bolgar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 91-126. Rpt. as "Typographic Rhapsody..." In his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 147-88.

Tracks the development of systems for knowledge storage and retrieval from the oral noetics of preliterate culture through the rhetorical remembrances of primary orality to the Renaissance commonplace collections of Ravisius Textor (Officina and Epitheta) and Theodor Zwinger (Theatrum humanae vitae). Emphasizes the visual encyclopedia of sayings as a Renaissance method of ordering the world and illustrates Shakespeare's position relative to this transitional noetic situation.
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. "Milton's Logical Epic and Evolving Consciousness." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 120:295-305. Rpt. as "From Epithet to Logic: Miltonic Epic and the Closure of Existence." In his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 189-212.

Distinguishes the conventions of Spenser's Faerie Queene, which he identifies as owing a good deal to "oral residue" in its oral-formulaic management of epithets, from those underlying Paradise Lost, which belongs to a logical and bookish noetic economy and therefore reveals an author much more in individual control of his epithets.
Area: BR, TH

Walter J. Ong. "From Rhetorical Culture to New Criticism: The Poem as a Closed Field." In The Possibilities of Order: Cleanth Brooks and His Work. Ed. Lewis P. Simpson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. pp. 150-67. Rpt. as "The Poem as a Closed Field: The Once New Criticism and the Nature of Criticism." In his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. Rpt. 1982. pp. 213-29.

Describes the passage from an oral and agonistic noetics, perceivable after the demise of primary orality in the rhetorical arts and scholarly disputation, to the New Criticism, which focuses entirely on the printed page and replaces context with investigation of the text.
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. "From Mimesis to Irony: Writing and Print as Integuments of Voice." Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 9:1-24. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. Rpt. 1982. pp. 272-302.

Starting with the visual model for literature favored by our literate and typographic age, he describes oral noetics and the evolution from oral mimesis and a participatory poetics to literate irony and increasing distance between voice and work. Understands rhetoric as the residue of the oral world in its keeping the participatory noetics alive in the arts of persuasion.
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982.

Contains, in addition to reprints (1970, 1972, 1975, 1976a, 1976b, 1976c, 1976d, 1977b), three new essays (1977c,d,e). See further individual entries.
Area: TH, CP

Walter J. Ong. "African Talking Drums and Oral Noetics." New Literary History, 8:411-29. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 92-120.

Sees the talking drum as "a kind of paradigm of primary orality" (rpt., p. 97). Explains that drum communication consists of tone sequences set in larger stereotyped expressions, that is, of formulas bearing essential ideas. Discusses oral noetics in drum talk and tale-telling in terms of (1) formulaic language, (2) standard themes, (3) epithetic identification, (4) generation of ceremonial, heroic figures, (5) formulaic appropriation of history, (6) the praise-blame dichotomy (agonistic ethos), and (7) copiousness and repetition. Emphasizes the sharing of traditional information in an oral culture versus the communication of "new" information in print and typographic cultures.
Area: AF, TH, MU

Walter J. Ong. "Transformations of the Word and Alienation." In Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 17-49.

Argues that the transition from orality to writing, print, and electronic verbalization has restructured human consciousness and brought about a kind of alienation. The new media enter the mind, producing new kinds of awareness and making possible new modes of thought. Cites the evolution of learned languages, especially Latin, as indicative of the post-oral development of consciousness.
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. "Maranatha: Death and Life in the Text of the Book." In Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 230-71.

Working within a framework of noetic history and explaining the various oral, chirographic, and typological stages in that history, he associates the written text with death, in that it preserves only the remnants of a speech act whose author may have died long ago. Discussing the concepts of retrospectivity in literature, the nature of narrative, the function of plot, and the latent fecundity of texts, he then describes the Bible, a text with oral roots, as in need of interpretation to fulfill its purpose. Compares the process of revivifying the Word of God to Christ's Resurrection.
Area: BI, TH

Walter J. Ong. "Voice and the Opening of Closed Systems." In Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 305-41.

Treats orality/literacy and structuralism as modes of thinking appropriate to the present noetic climate, and the medium of television as an example of the open/closed model of thought process.
Area: TH

Walter J. Ong. "Literacy and Orality in Our Times." Bulletin of the Association of Departments of English, 58:1-7.

In an attempt to "review the orality in our long cultural past in order to bring an understanding of it to bear on the present literary and para-literary situation" (1), he traces the roots of contemporary "secondary" orality in the "primary" orality of preliterate cultures and explains the very different, interiorized world of writing and literacy. Suggests that sensitizing students and faculty to these differences would improve the teaching of writing.
Area: CP, TH

Walter J. Ong. Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Combining sociobiology, the hermeneutics of consciousness, social anthropology, and oral theory, he probes the historical and present-day role of ritual contest as a means of identification, sexual and otherwise. Of special interest is the connection made between orality and the "agonistic noetic," a link that he explains as diachronic but also illustrates in contemporary culture. Notes that "oral modes of storing and retrieving knowledge have much in common in all cultures," that "they are formulaic in design and... tend to be agonistic in operation" (p. 123). On the continuing role of orality, see espec. pp. 123-29.
Area: CP, TH

Walter J. Ong. "Oral Remembering and Narrative Structures." In Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1981 (Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk). Ed. Deborah Tannen. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. pp. 12-24.

Considers the methods and psychodynamics of the storage of knowledge in oral versus written (and, later, typographic and computer-oriented) cultures. Treats the formulaic and thematic structure of ancient Greek and other oral traditions. Central focus is on the inevitable changes wrought on perception and reflection by the interiorization of writing and its sequels. Notes that in cultures such as our own "writing and print, and now electronic processes, have been interiorized so deeply that without great learning, skill, and labor we cannot identify what in our thought processes depends on our appropriation of writing and the other techniques into our psyche, and what does not" (p. 13).
Area: CP, TH

Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New Accents series. London and New York: Methuen.

This remarkable volume constitutes an expert introduction to the field of oral literature studies, a summary of Ong's own thinking to date, and a comparative evaluation of oral theories. Traces the origins of oral studies in the Homeric Question and Parry's early writings, brilliantly analyzes the psychodynamics of orality, illustrates how writing and print restructure human consciousness, describes the contributions of writing and print to the storage and retrieval of knowledge, and considers the oral story line and its relation to memory. Appends a large, eclectic, and intermittently annotated bibliography.
Area: TH, CP

Walter J. Ong. "Orality, Literacy, and Medieval Textualization." New Literary History, 16:1-12.

Describes the interactions between orality and literacy in the European Middle Ages and discusses primary and academic orality in terms of the cultural diglossia fostered by the compartmentalization of literate and oral facets of the culture. Traces this situation to the use of Latin, which "programmatically fostered orality but at the same time was so textualized that it appeared never to have been a grammatically malleable, unwritten tongue" (11).
Area: LT, TH, PT

Willington Jojoga Opeba. "The Migration Traditions of the Sebaga Andere, Binandere and Jaua Tribes of the Orokaiva: The Need for Attention to Religion and Ideology." 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. 57-70.

Discusses the oral traditions surrounding the migrations of the Orokaiva peoples of Melanesia in terms of the religious and cultural values of the respective tribes and their importance in the understanding and interpretation of evidence gathered through fieldwork.
Area: ML

Jeff Opland. "On the Necessity for Research into the Bantu Oral Tradition." In Papers in African Languages 1969. Cape Town: School of African Studies, University of Cape Town. pp. 79-84.

Reviews the theory of oral-formulaic composition and compares the literary situation among the Bantus, who are undergoing a transition from a primarily oral culture to a literate one, to that of the Anglo-Saxons, suggesting that studies in the Bantu oral tradition may have relevance to the analysis of transitional poetry of Old English manuscripts.
Area: AF, OE, CP

Jeff Opland. "Two Xhosa Oral Poems." In Papers in African Languages 1970. Cape Town: School of African Studies, University of Cape Town. pp. 86-98.

Provides a brief review of oral traditional studies in general and a discussion of the applicability of Lord's work in non-Indo-European cultures before describing the oral praise-poems (izibongo) of the Nguni and the distinction in that tradition between spontaneously composed oral poems and those that are memorized. Demonstrates the difference in roles between the oral poet and the "memorizer" since the former has the ability to comment on current affairs or even on the trend in an important debate. Presents transcripts of and commentary on two Xhosa oral poems as examples of the African oral tradition.
Area: AF

Jeff Opland. "The Oral Origins of Early English Poetry." University of Cape Town Studies in English, 1:40-54.

Largely an early and partial summary of oral-formulaic criticism in OE, with certain objections to the Parry-Lord model. Feels that alongside illiterate singers like the guslari were others who memorized their poems, and that many OE poems were committed to memory for transmission. Notes that the Parry-Lord model is based on epic alone, and that further information is needed for comparative evaluation of OE verse. Sees the fourteenth-century English Alliterative Revival as a continuation of OE oral tradition.
Area: OE, ME, SC, CP

Jeff Opland. "Scop and Imbongi: Anglo-Saxon and Bantu Oral Poets." English Studies in Africa, 14:161-78.

After a short review of Parry-Lord theory, he suggests a comparison of OE with Bantu oral poetry in favor of comparison with SC, principally because of the differences in genre between much OE material and SC epic. On the basis of literate composers of formulaic poetry among the Bantu, he argues that the OE poems "were written by literate people who had grown up and were still living in an oral tradition, a tradition whose influence perforce permeated the poetry they wrote" (178).
Area: AF, OE, CP

Jeff Opland. "African Phenomena Relevant to a Study of the European Middle Ages: Oral Tradition." English Studies in Africa, 16:87-90.

A brief description of his fieldwork among the Xhosa and comparisons with OE. Calls for modifications of Parry-Lord theory to admit the idea of the memorizing oral poet.
Area: AF, OE, SC, CP

Jeff Opland. "Praise Poems as Historical Sources." In Beyond the Cape Frontier: Studies in the History of the Transkei and Ciskei. Ed. Christopher Saunders and Robin Derricourt. London: Longman. pp. 1-37.

Concerned with the problem of whether oral praise-poems are memorized or improvised. Finds that (1) the Zulu tradition and the published Xhosa tradition of the last fifty years are primarily memorial, while (2) the present-day Xhosa tradition, as represented by his own collection, is primarily improvisational. Includes excerpts from songs by and conversations with iimbongi, professional oral improvising poets, which document his typology. Discusses the greater variation in improvised praise-poems and their consequently less historical nature.
Area: AF

Jeff Opland. "Imbongi Nezibongo: The Xhosa Tribal Poet and the Contemporary Poetic Tradition." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 90:185-208.

Describes four distinct and separate activities in Xhosa poetic tradition: (1) general improvising, (2) memorizing (these first two carried on by tribesmen with no special office), (3) the refined improvising of the tribal poet (imbongi), and (4) literate composition. Modifies the Parry-Lord model of the oral poet by noting that the imbongi has no apprenticeship but is "merely a gifted tribesman" (194) and "a conscious verbal artist; his poetry represents the highest form of oral tribal art" (202-3).
Area: AF

Jeff Opland. "Beowulf on the Poet." Mediaeval Studies, 38:442-67.

Examines the "joy in the hall" theme in Beowulf, defining it in terms of repeated single words and elements within compounds. Cautions that all information available from OE and Anglo-Latin sources, from the comparative study of Germanic and Indo-European literatures, and from analogous non-IE literatures should be evaluated before accepting the evidence on oral performance found in the text of Beowulf. See further Creed 1962, Opland 1980a, and Renoir 1980.
Area: OE

Jeff Opland. "Huso and Mqhayi: Notes on the Southslavic and Xhosa Traditions of Oral Poetry." 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. 120-24.

A brief description of the Xhosa poetic tradition, denominating four types of composition: general improvisation, memorization, refined improvisation of the tribal poet (imbongi), and writing. Individual poems may involve one or more of these activities. Notes that traditional diction is not necessary to the skilled praise-poet's improvised recitation and contrasts his practice with that of the guslar in SC oral epic.
Area: AF, SC, CP

Jeff Opland. "Caedmon and Ntsikana: Anglo-Saxon and Xhosa Traditional Poets." Annals of the Grahamstown Historical Society (1977). pp56-65.

Compares the two oral poets, the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon Caedmon, who according to Bede "miraculously" used the vernacular tradition to fashion Christian poems, and the Xhosa Ntsikana, also illiterate, who some 1100 years later also composed lasting eulogistic poetry. Suggests that the living Xhosa tradition can shed light on Indo-European oral traditions.
Area: OE, AF, CP

Jeff Opland. "On Anglo-Saxon Poetry and the Comparative Study of Oral Poetic Traditions." Acta Germanica: Jahrbuch des südafrikanischen Germanistenverbands, 10:49-62.

Review and critique of the Parry-Lord and Magoun model of oral-formulaic theory and the singer. Criticizes the exclusive imposition of a single model_the SC epic tradition_on OE poetry. Calls for a sociologically oriented theory of literature which takes account of OE and Anglo-Latin evidence and then turns to living oral traditions as much like OE as possible. Champions the Xhosa tradition on the basis of similar social structure, a variety of types of oral poets, and the existence of memorized oral praise-poetry (izibongo). Goes on to claim that the OE oral poetic tradition is "eulogistic rather than narrative" (62). Taken from Chapter 1 of Opland 1980a (pp. 1-27).
Area: OE, AF, SC, CP

Jeff Opland. "Two Unpublished Poems by S.E.K. Mqhayi." Research in African Literatures, 8:27-53.

Reports the discovery of a 78-rpm recording of Mqhayi, the most important figure in Xhosa literary history (author of poems, novels, essays, and historical studies as well as "oral poetry"), which makes possible the publication of two texts with translation and commentary.
Area: AF

Jeff Opland. Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry: A Study of the Traditions. New Haven: Yale University Press.

In attempting a revision of contemporary assumptions about oral poetry in OE, he examines Anglo-Latin and related evidence on oral performance and adduces the analogy of black South African oral tradition among the Xhosa. Argues for two traditions existing side by side in early medieval England: a memorized group of ritual songs and a poetic tradition whose general character was eulogistic. Contends that "there is no firm reason to believe that the early Germanic people ever sang epics to the accompaniment of a lyre, and there is certainly no evidence that the Anglo-Saxons did so. The extant texts are largely monastic compositions or the dictated compositions of poets like Caedmon...." (p. 256). Chiefly a historical approach, with considerable dependence on comparative sociology.
Area: OE, AF, CP

Jeff Opland. "From Horseback to Monastic Cell: The Impact on English Literature of the Introduction of Writing." In Old English Literature in Context: Ten Essays. Ed. John D. Niles. London and Totowa: D.S. Brewer and Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 30-43.

Taking as the two ends of the poetic spectrum the king's thane in Beowulf, who composes orally on horseback, and the apparently literate poet Cynewulf, he considers the differing social contexts, functions, texts, audiences, and responses associated with these two types of verse composition. Finds the Caedmonian narratives and Beowulf to be "products of the meeting between traditional Anglo-Saxon society and the literacy introduced by the Christian missionaries" (p. 43).
Area: OE, AF, CP

Jeff Opland. "Southeastern Bantu Eulogy and Early Indo-European Poetry." Research in African Literatures, 11:295-307.

A comparative study of the Bantu eulogy or praise-poem and medieval European oral poetry. On the basis of fieldwork among the Xhosa and interpretation of surviving evidence on the poetry preserved in manuscript in other cultures, he concludes that "the Anglo-Saxon scop, like the Norse skald and the Irish fili, was a vatic eulogizer originally serving a sacral ruler" (304).
Area: AF, AG, OE, OI, IE, CP

Jeff Opland. "Written and Unwritten: On Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry." Comparative Criticism (Yearbook of the British Comparative Literature Association), 2:303-11.

Criticizes Finnegan's overconcern with negative conclusions, with undermining hypotheses rather than modifying or substituting for them. Finds her sample of "oral poetry" too various (inclusive of rock songs alongside Homer, for example). Feels the comparative method can be more fruitful than she suggests if judiciously applied. Congratulates her on asking difficult questions.
Area: CP

Jeff Opland. "Scop and Imbongi III: The Exploitation of Tradition." In The Word Singers: The Makers and the Making of Traditional Literatures. Ed. Norman Simms. Hamilton, New Zealand: Outrigger. pp. 44-59.

Finds in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and Xhosa oral poetry an "exploitation" of literary tradition by artists who possess an "objective awareness" of such traditions. Defines exploitation as "the deliberate use of a traditional element in order to extend or deny its relevance in altered circumstances" (45). Cites examples of the Old English Seafarer and the contemporary Xhosa imbongi D.L.P. YaliManisi and discusses the functions of scop and imbongi in their respective societies, concluding that "in the altered social circumstances, Manisi exploits the tradition within which he operates to deliver his modern message. In a similar way, the Anglo-Saxon author of The Seafarer exploits traditional images for his own purposes in the altered conditions in England after its conversion to Christianity" (56).
Area: AF, OE, CP

Jeff Opland. Xhosa Oral Poetry: Aspects of a Black South African Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A study of the history and present character of Xhosa oral poetry from documentary evidence and the author's fieldwork, with special emphasis on the court poet (imbongi).
Area: AF, CP

Nigel Oram. "The History of the Motu-speaking and the Koita-speaking Peoples According to their own Traditions." 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. 207-30.

Reviews evidence from anthropological and historical studies surrounding the histories of the Motu- and Koita-speaking peopels of coastal Central Province and describes the oral traditions of these peoples that he recorded near Port Moresby over a period of ten years, substantiating the general accuracy of the oral tradition in this area.
Area: ML

German Orduna. "El Cantar de las bodas. Las técnicas de estructura y la intervención de los dos juglares en el Poema de Mio Cid." In Studia hispanica in honorem R. Lapesa, II. Madrid: Gredos and Cátedra-Seminario Menéndez Pidal. pp. 411-31.

A structural study of the "Cantar de las bodas" segment of the Cid and of the role of Menéndez Pidal's two poets (1961) in its composition. Finds the structure so sophisticated as to suggest its written composition by the "poeta de Medinaceli" from an earlier oral work by the "juglar de San Esteban." Argues that verses 1085 and 2276-77, which bracket the "Cantar," were written by a third and lesser poet.
Area: HI

Grazia Ortoleva. La Teoria orale formulistica e la sua applicazione alla poesia anglosassone. Istituto di Lingue e Letterature Germaniche, Università di Messina, Schede di Filologia Germanica. Messina: Peloritana Editrice.

A relatively thorough survey of scholarship on formula and theme in OE poetry through 1970, with illustrations of various formulaic systems and themes (principally the "animali della battaglia") as well as explanations of different theories. Settles for the view that oral-formulaic structures do not necessarily mean actual orality but certainly do influence notions of poetic composition and therefore of interpretation.
Area: OE, SC, AG, CP

P.R. Orton. "The OE `Soul and Body': A Further Examination." Medium AEvum, 48:173-97.

Contra A. Jones 1969. On the basis of a reconsideration of manuscript variation between the two versions of Soul and Body, he denies Jones' claim of oral-formulaic composition and transmission. Ascribes the manuscript differences to a conscious attempt at change, often under the aegis of rhetorical figures, and posits that "a single written text is the ancestor of both the surviving witnesses" (194).
Area: OE

Gyula Ortutay. "Principles of Oral Transmission in Folk Culture (Variations, Affinity)." Acta Ethnographica, 8:175-221.

Attempts to derive a "philology of oral tradition" (176) to distinguish between oral and written literature. Surveys various methods of analysis, especially the Finnish tale-type approach, and calls for further study of relationships among variants and of the role of creativity.
Area: HY, TH

David W. Packard. "Sound-Patterns in Homer." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 104:239-60.

Tracks the densities of various sounds through the individual books of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Comments include the suggestion of correlating acoustic and formulaic patterns.
Area: AG

David W. Packard. "Metrical and Grammatical Patterns in the Greek Hexameter." In The Computer in Literary and Linguistic Studies: Proceedings of the Third International Symposium. Ed. Alan Jones and R.F. Churchhouse. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. pp. 85-91.

Following Russo (1966), he analyzes the nature and deployment of "structural formulas" in Quintus of Smyrna's Post-homerica. Finds no clear differences in pattern types between the arguably oral Homeric and the assuredly literate texts of Quintus.
Area: AG

Randall M. Packard. "The Study of Historical Process in African Traditions of Genesis: The Bushu Myth of Mahiyi." In The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Ed. by Joseph C. Miller. Hamden, CN: Archon, pp. 157-77.

Analyzes the historical value of oral myth. Concludes that Bushu traditions in particular suggest that while specific events described in traditions of genesis are often ahistorical, they may in certain cases symbolize historical processes of considerable duration.
Area: AF

David W. Packard and Tania Meyers. A Bibliography of Homeric Scholarship: Preliminary Edition 1930-1970. Malibu: Undena.

An unannotated collation of entries in L'Annee' philologique with subject appendices at the end of the volume.
Area: AG, BB

Denys L. Page. The Homeric Odyssey. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rpt. 1966, 1976.

In Chapter 6 ("The Method, Time, and Place of the Composition of the Odyssey," pp. 137-64), he describes the poem as an oral work which went through an "editorial phase" after its first and authoritative recording. Stresses what he sees as the impossibility of the kinds of artistic design characteristic of literary works.
Area: AG

Denys L. Page. History and the Homeric Iliad. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rpt. 1966, 1972, 1976).

In making his case for Mycenaean survivals (pp. 218-96), he describes the oral-formulaic nature of Homeric diction, emphasizing its traditional nature, internal flexibility, and economy (see espec. pp. 222-25).
Area: AG

Denys L. Page. "Archilochus and the Oral Tradition." Chapter 4 in Archiloque. Entretiens sur l'Antiquité Classique, 10. Geneva: Vandoeuvres. pp. 117-63. "Discussion," pp. 164-79.

A painstaking examination of the language of Archilochus' poetry to determine the extent to which that phraseology derives from the oral traditional diction of Homeric epic. Argues that contemporary evidence points to the introduction of writing having preceded Archilochus by only a decade or two, and that Archilochus was almost certainly brought up in the traditional discipline of poetic composition. Demonstrates that "the traditional formula-language of the Homeric Epic is the principal formative element in the style of Archilochus' non-dactylic verse" (p. 161), as well as the nearly exclusive medium of his dactylic compositions. Believes that the non-dactylic poems "reveal the transition from oral to written verse" (p. 161) and that this transition begins when the poet starts to realize the advantages of written composition. While the analysis and interpretation by Page are careful and modest, the ensuing discussion, including remarks by a number of other scholars, is often vacuous and uninformed.
Area: AG

Antonino Pagliaro. "Origini liriche e formazione agonale dell'epica greca." In Atti del Convegno Internazionale sul Tema: La Poesia epica e la sua formazione. Problemi Attuali di Scienza e di Cultura, no. 139. Ed. Enrico Cerulli et al. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. pp. 31-58. "Discussione," pp. 59-61.

Traces Greek epic to a single tradition of temporally remote origin and sees it as the production of an aristocratic class of poets participating in an "agonistic" competition among themselves. Assigns the earliest poetry to an oral stage but does not rule out later written texts. Cerulli's contribution to the discussion suggests Oriental influence.
Area: AG

Edward M. Palumbo. The Literary Use of Formulas in "Guthlac II" and their Relation to Felix's "Vita Sancti Guthlaci." De Proprietatibus Litterarum, Series Practica, 37. The Hague: Mouton.

Finds Guthlac II more formulaic than Guthlac I. After studying the distribution and use of formulas, he concludes (1) that they can be employed in poems with a literary source, (2) that density is no measure of orality, and (3) that poems close to their source would use formulas as mere line-fillers less frequently than poems closer to oral tradition.
Area: OE

Shyam Manohar Pandey. "The Hindi Oral epic Canaini or Loriki." Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, 2:191-210.

Describes the Hindi oral epic Canaini or Lorika in detail by chapters, and discusses its singers and their background, performance styles, themes, formulae, and metrics.
Area: HN

Shyam Manohar Pandley. The Hindi Oral Epic Loriki. Allahabad: Sahitya Bhavan Pvt.

A complete version of an oral epic long current in North India, as performed by an illiterate Ahir, Pancu Bhayat, from the Benares district. Introduction includes information on the seven other versions recorded by Pandley, the learning of the oral tradition, the lack of a fixed Ur-text, and influences on oral performance. The epic itself stretches to some 40,000 lines in the original.
Area: HN

Eugene E. Pantzer. "Yugoslav Epic Preambles." Slavic and East European Journal, 17:372-81.

Description of proems or pripjevi that typically introduce many SC epic song-performances, with a taxonomy of four aspects: (1) address, (2) gnomon, (3) anecdote, and (4) statement of purpose. Also notes the role of sound-patterns in the structure of these invocations.
Area: SC

G. Papacharalambous. "Akritic and Homeric Poetry." Kupriakai; Spoudaiv, 27:23-65.

A genetic comparison of Homeric and Akritic oral poetry, citing and illustrating structural similarities between the two. On the basis of a version of a song about Digenis Akritas, which is shown to be a composite text made of smaller parts with an overriding unity, he posits an analogous process of accretion for Homer: "Such a process... is neither complete nor perfect, and this explains why there subsist interpolations and inconsequences within the main body of the poems" (33). Also describes other similarities, including repetitions (35-37). Understands the Homeric texts as the products of a long series of rhapsodes/editors who, "following the example of their predecessors, achieved the recasting and recomposition of the existing tradition" (41).
Area: AG, MG, CP

H. Paraskevaides. The Use of Synonyms in the Homeric Formulaic Diction. Amsterdam: Hakkert.

Lists synonymous nouns sharing epithets and those used with different epithets in Homer and discusses the poetic and metrical use of each, concluding that "the terms [epithets] are used without distinction of meaning" (83).
Area: AG

Américo Paredes. "Some Aspects of Folk Poetry." Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 6:213-25.

Stresses the ritualized nature of oral folk poetic language and notes the "conventional diction and a strongly parallelistic design founded on a binary structure give form and an illusion of permanence to a poetry that disappears as each word is spoken or sung" (224). Also emphasizes the role of performance and audience.
Area: BR, US, HI, CP

M.B. Parkes. "The Literacy of the Laity," in Literature and Western Civilization: The Mediaeval World. Ed. David Daiches and Anthony Thorlby. London: Aldus Books. pp. 555-77.

Recounts the history of literacy for (1) the professional (scholarly/clerical) reader, (2) the cultivated reader, and (3) the pragmatic reader. From the sixth through the twelfth centuries literacy was confined mainly to the professionals; from the thirteenth century onward there was a rapid increase in literacy among the latter two groups.
Area: OE, ME, CP

W.W. Parks. "Generic Identity and the Guest-Host Exchange: A Study of Return Songs in the Homeric and Serbo-Croatian Traditions." In Oral Tradition. Ed. John Miles Foley. Special issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 15, i:24-41.

Considering both the Odyssey and a selection of SC oral epic songs in the subgenre of "Return," he describes the progressive establishment of the hero as the focal character in a complex narrative design. Sees the heroic personality growing into his traditional generic identity.
Area: SC, AG, CP

Teresa Paroli. "Gli elementi formulari nelle introduzioni metriche a discorso diretto dell'antica poesia germanica." Ricerche linguistiche, 6:87-230.

Concentrates on formulaic structure in the ON Edda and OE poetic canon, especially on introductions to direct discourse and verbs of speaking. Includes a full review of relevant scholarship on Germanic oral poetry and references to significant writings on AG. Finds strong evidence of formulaic diction but also notes that the poet had freedom to compose individually within the traditional style, particularly in the OE religious poems.
Area: OE, ON, GM, CP

Teresa Paroli. Sull'elemento formulare nella poesia Germanica antica. Biblioteca di ricerche linguistiche e filologiche, no. 4. Rome: Istituto di Glottologia, University of Rome.

An investigation of formulaic structure in the ON Edda, OE poems, OHG Hildebrandslied, OSX Heliand, and MHG Nibelungenlied. Conducts exhaustive analyses of diction and meter in a tradition-dependent context, making distinctions among individual literatures. Concludes in general that we must not confuse the oral origin of phraseological elements with actual oral transmission of the poems as they have reached us in manuscript, and that we should take into account a gradual shift toward the written word which began in medieval Germanic literature.
Area: OE, ON, OHG, MHG, OSX, GM, CP

Teresa Paroli. "Modalità del passaggio dalla tradizione orale alla codificazione nella poesia germanica antica." Annali Istituto Universitario Orientale (Napoli), 18 (ser. germanica, studi nederlandesi/studi nordici), 147-68.

Considers the cultural history of the Germanic area and the possibility of an original oral tradition, concluding that there is evidence of "la vitale persistenza di una cultura di tipo autoctono, che si propagava secondo modalità orali" (154), notwithstanding the heavy Christian Latin influence. Starting from Parry-Lord theory and a brief review of OE oral-formulaic studies, she describes a gradual shift toward conscious deployment of formulas and formulaic systems. Mentions difficulties posed by oral transmission for the establishment of manuscript stemmata and the probability that there were many and various modes of transmission.
Area: OE, ON, OHG, CP

Milman Parry. "A Comparative Study of Diction as One of the Elements of Style in Early Greek Epic Poetry." Unpub. M.A. thesis, University of California/Berkeley. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 421-36.

Parry's earliest discussion of the formulaic quality of Homeric phraseology, a diction that he understood as traditional, as epitomized hexameter language developed over generations. Likens the diction to a school of sculpture which works from fixed pattern to idealization.
Area: AG

Milman Parry L'Epithète traditionnelle dans Homère: Essai sur un problème de style homérique. Paris: Société Editrice "Les Belles Lettres." Trans. by Adam Parry as "The Traditional Epithet in Homer." In The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 1-190.

One of the two requisite theses for the doctorate degree at the University of Paris. Casting aside the contemporary Analyst-Unitarian debate over one or many Homers, and proceeding with the aid of then current linguistic studies (e.g., Duntzer 1864, 1872 and Ellendt 1861), he broaches and painstakingly illustrates his theory of a traditional diction that evolved over hundreds of years of verse-making. First defines the formula as "an expression regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express an essential idea" (MHV, p. 13) and posits the substitutable phrase he names the formulaic system. Also discusses generic and ornamental epithets, the process of analogy in the creation of formulas, thrift in formulaic style, the problem of originality and predetermination, and the use of epithets in poems composed in nontraditional style. His rigorous methodology involves a great many examples. This essay marks the foundation of oral-formulaic theory, although at this point (in 1928) Parry does not make the connection between traditional structure and orality.
Area: AG

Milman Parry. Les Formules et la métrique d'Homère. Paris: Société Editrice "Les Belles Lettres," 1928. Trans. by Adam Parry as "Homeric Formulas and Homeric Metre." In The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 191-239.

The second of the doctoral theses traces certain metrical irregularities in Homeric verse to the juxtaposition of and morphological change within formulas. Argues that the traditional style, consisting as it did of epitomized phrases with limits on their variability, could present the poet with a choice between imperfect expression of his ideas or a metrical flaw effected by the compositional technique itself. In this way the tradition sanctioned occasional cases of hiatus and overlengthening and preserved the minor infelicities as part of the formulaic technique.
Area: AG

Milman Parry. "The Homeric Gloss: A Study in Word-Sense," Transactions of the American Philological Association, 59:233-47. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 240-50.

Starts with the assertion that most Homeric words whose meaning is unclear to us are "ornamental" epithets, that is, epithets whose significance is more attributable to characterization in general than to a particular narrative situation. Goes on to argue that their metrical convenience became their paramount value to the poetic tradition, and that their meaning became remote even to the poets who used them. Herein is found his first mention of orality in connection with the AG traditional singer (MHV, p. 245).
Area: AG

Milman Parry. "The Distinctive Character of Enjambement in Homeric Verse." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 60:200-20. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 251-65.

Sees unperiodic enjambement, the continuation of the sentence beyond the end of the line when the thought is complete in a single verse, as typical of Homer's traditional style and much more frequent than in literary epic. Necessary enjambement, obligatory continuation of the sentence beyond line-end because the thought is incomplete, is correspondingly less frequent then in literary epic. In general, Homer brings his thought to a close in a single line much more frequently than do writers of literary epic. Shows a clear notion of orality in Homer.
Area: AG

Milman Parry. "Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making. I. Homer and Homeric Style." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 41:73-147. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 266-324. Rpt. in German in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 179-266.

The first definitive connective between tradition and orality in Homer. Includes further explanation of formula and formulaic system, a stylistic comparison with later, literate Greek poetry, and the formulaic analysis of lines 1-25 of the Iliad and Odyssey that becomes a locus classicus for myriad imitative exercises in AG and other literatures. Along with the 1928 theses and M. Parry 1932, this is the most far-reaching of his writings.
Area: AG

Milman Parry. "The Homeric Metaphor as a Traditional Poetic Device" (abstract), Transactions of the American Philological Association, 62:xxiv. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. p. 419.

This abstract promises a concern with oral aesthetics, with the need to judge Homeric metaphor in particular and Homeric poetry in general by oral rather than written standards.
Area: AG

Milman Parry. "Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making. II. The Homeric Language as the Language of an Oral Poetry." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 43:1-50. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 325-64.

After a review of earlier theories of Homeric language and a discussion of traditional formulaic diction, he describes Homeric language as an artificial poetic medium assembled over time from various dialects and chronological strata of the AG language. Oral traditional diction tended to appropriate forms from widely diverse times and places and to retain them side by side, even when the forms became outmoded or misunderstood, as part of the traditional poetic language. Thus he accounts for the mix of Arcado-Cyprian, Aeolic, and Ionian forms alongside one another in Homer. The influence of M. Murko is very evident in this study.
Area: AG

Milman Parry. "or Huso: A Study of Southslavic Song. Extracts," complete but unpub. 1933-35. Printed in part in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 437-64.

The editor has selected from this long work, left unfinished at M. Parry's death, passages which bear directly on Homer as well as on SC oral epic. A great deal of a tantalizing nature is excerpted, including references to formulaic structure, thematic structure, oral performance, unity in oral epic, and so on. It is to be regretted that the entire manuscript could not have been published, since further comments from field notes would have been valuable for slavists and comparatists alike.
Area: SC, AG, CP

Milman Parry. "The Traditional Metaphor in Homer." Classical Philology, 28:30-43. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 365-75.

Explores the fixed character of Homer's traditional diction, finding the meaning of the phraseology incantatory rather than denotative.
Area: AG

Milman Parry. "Whole Formulaic Verses in Greek and Southslavic Heroic Song." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 64:179-97. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 376-90. Rpt. in German in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 267-88.

Begins to explore the SC analogy through formulaic diction and the periodic nature of the line. Gives examples of the "rhythmic mould of the thought" (MHV, p. 387) in both AG and SC. Distinguishes between SC simplicity, as he sees it, and AG fullness of expression. The first flush of his fieldwork in Yugoslavia.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Milman Parry. "The Traces of the Digamma in Ionic and Lesbian Greek." Language, 10:130-44. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 391-403.

The conservatism of traditional diction accounts for the fact that, while the digamma itself did not survive in Homer, its traces remain in the form of apparent metrical flaws. His reasoning is based on the observation that tradition preserves forms within the diction whose currency in the spoken language is long past.
Area: AG

Milman Parry. "Homer and Huso: I. The Singer's Rests in Greek and Southslavic Heroic Song" (abstract). Transactions of the American Philological Association, 66:xlvii. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. p. 420.

Beginnings of the comparative method to be developed by Lord (see espec. Lord 1936 for the full form of these ideas). The abstract describes oral performance in Yugoslavia (occasions, audience, singer's rests) and its application to Homeric epic.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Milman Parry. "On Typical Scenes in Homer" (a review of Walter Arend's Die typischen Scenen bei Homer). Classical Philology, 31:357-60. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 404-7. Rpt. in German in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 289-94.

Applauds Arend's (1933) schematization of typical scenes, but argues that the reason for their existence_oral traditional composition_must be appreciated. Warns against literary criticism of variation and repetition, specifically against finding nuances of meaning which cannot be part of an oral text. The earliest statement of thematic structure, to be fully treated by Lord (1951a and espec. 1960).
Area: AG

Milman Parry. "The Historical Method in Literary Criticism." Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 38:778-82. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 408-13.

A plea for dealing with the past and with the literature of the past on their own terms, leading to a brief discussion of traditional structure in Homer and some comparative remarks.
Area: AG, CP

Milman Parry. "About Winged Words." Classical Philology, 32:59-63. Rpt. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 414-18.

Argues against Calhoun's (1935) claim that the épea pteróenta ("winged words") formula has a particular meaning in each usage which is in some way appropriate to the immediate context. Makes the case for a generic meaning and contends that on such points rests a faithful reading of an oral Homer. See further Fournier 1946 and Combellack 1950b.
Area: AG

Adam Parry. "The Language of Achilles." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 87:1-7. 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. Rpt. 1967. pp. 48-54.

Explains the constant generic meaning of Homeric diction in shifting narrative contexts. Claims that Achilles alone transcends the social and linguistic codes by "misusing" the traditional language. A truly seminal article: see Claus 1975, Donlan 1971, Duban 1981, Friedrich and Redfield 1978, Hogan 1976, Messing 1981, Friedrich and Redfield 1981, and Reeve 1973.
Area: AG

Adam Parry. "Have We Homer's Iliad?" Yale Classical Studies, 20:177-216. Rpt. in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 428-66.

In responding to the works of Lord (espec. 1960) and Kirk (espec. 1962), he is concerned to demonstrate "artistic constructs" in the Iliad, finely fashioned scenes and sequences which seem to be the work of an individual manipulating traditional materials ("creative individuality within the clear framework of the tradition," 202). Sees the SC tradition as markedly inferior to Homer and names it, unfortunately, a "backwoods phenomenon" (212). Feels that M. Parry overlooked such differences in order to emphasize the usefulness of the SC songs for the purposes of comparison. Stresses that Homer must be seen as the grand master, the creative individual who rises above and beyond his oral tradition.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Adam Parry, ed. The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1980.

A complete edition of M. Parry's published and heretofore unpublished works (see the separate entries below), with an introduction by A. Parry (1971b).
Area: AG, SC, CP

Adam Parry. "Introduction," in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1980. pp. ix-lxii. Rpt. in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 499-528.

The fullest available survey to date of M. Parry's writings and their roots in linguistic and ethnographic scholarship conducted by earlier investigators. His treatment of post-Parry contributions is somewhat sketchier and biased in favor of those who search for conscious artistic design in Homer's traditional diction.
Area: AG, BB, SC, CP, TH

Adam Parry. "Language and Characterization in Homer." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 76:1-22.

Insists that M. Parry's research proves only that the style of Homeric epic is oral and traditional, claiming that the hypothesis that the poems were themselves oral cannot be proven. In two sections, "The Meaning of the Fixed Epithet" and "Apostrophe," he struggles to reinvest formulaic diction with context-sensitive meaning. Positing a more complex tradition than is customarily assumed, he argues that "the Iliad and Odyssey that we have, with their splendid coincidence of meaning and form, were the result of generations of selections from this fluid tradition, and of the long years over which Homer himself perfected his songs" (22).
Area: AG

Milman Parry, coll. and Albert B. Lord, ed. Novi Pazar: Serbocroatian Texts (Novi Pazar: Srpskohrvatski tekstovi), vol. 2 of Serbo-Croation Heroic Songs. Belgrade and Cambridge, MA: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Harvard University Press.

Original language texts of 32 oral epic songs from the five guslari whose work is presented in translation in vol. 1 (M. Parry and Lord 1954); many of these same poems are translated therein. Also includes original texts of conversations with the singers and extensive notes. Perhaps the chief asset of this volume is the publication of different versions of the same epic by the same and different singers, a feature that enables analysis of textual variance in separate performances by one individual and within a local tradition. See further M. Parry and Lord 1954.
Area: SC

Milman Parry coll. and Albert B. Lord, ed. and trans. Novi Pazar: English Translations, vol. 1 of Serbo-Croation Heroic Songs, with musical transcriptions by Béla Bartók. Cambridge, MA and Belgrade: Harvard University Press and the Serbian Academy of Sciences.

Twenty-one oral epic songs, along with 10 additional synopses, from five singers recorded in the 1930's and 1950's in the region of Novi Pazar: Salih Ugljanin, Sulejman Forti, Djemail Zogi, Sulejman Maki, and Alija Fjuljanin. Also includes excerpts from conversations with these guslari and Bartók's transcriptions of the vocal and instrumental music of Ugljanin's Ropstvo Djuli Ibrahima (pp. 435-67; song no. 4). See further M. Parry and Lord 1953.
Area: SC, MU

Milman Parry, Albert B. Lord, and David E. Bynum, colls., eds., and trans. Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs (Srpskohrvatske junake pjesme). Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature. Cambridge, MA and Belgrade: Harvard University Press, Center for the Study of Oral Traditions, and the Serbian Academy of Sciences, et seq.

The monumental publication series of texts and translations collected by the investigators during the original field trip in 1933-35 and afterward, and deposited in the Parry archive in Widener Library at Harvard University. The volumes contain oral epic texts recorded and written down via dictation from the singers' sung and recited performances. See further individual entries: M. Parry and Lord 1953 and 1954; Lord and Bynum 1974; Bynum 1974; Bynum 1979; and Bynum 1980.
Area: SC, CP, MU

Robert Pattison. On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock. New York: Oxford University Press.

Through a discussion of the advent of writing in Greece and of oral Christianity in a fully lettered Latin world, he develops a view of literacy as a non-essential feature of human mental and economic development. Suggests also that literacy should not be defined by the technologies of rhetoric and writing, but rather should be viewed as the consciousness of the problems posed by language.
Area: TH

Harald Patzer. Dichterische Kunst und poetisches Handwerk im homerischen Epos. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.

Illustrates how Parry-Lord oral theory has met with considerable resistance from German-speaking scholars, primarily because it threatens their notions about Homeric creativity, originality, and textual unity.
Area: AG

Carlo O. Pavese. Tradizioni e generi poetici della Grecia arcaica. Istituto di Filologia Classica, Filologia e Critica, 12. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

Includes a section on formulaic diction (pp. 111-96) that covers Homeric, Hesiodic, and lyric poetry as well as the formulaic technique. Also treats the "tradizione orale" (pp. 199-215) as a stage in the evolution of AG poetry.
Area: AG

Carlo O. Pavese. "Poesia ellenica e cultura orale (Esiodo gli Inni' e la tradizione orale)." In I poemi epici rapsodici non omerici e la tradizione orale. Ed. by C. Brillante, M. Cantilena, C.O. Paves. Padua: Antenor, pp. 231-59.

In considering the possible oral composition of Hesiod's Theogony and several Homeric Hymns (to the Pythian and Delian Apollo), he reports a comparative analysis of formulas, formulaic expressions, and modified formulas shared between various texts. Also treats economy (or thrift), the systematization of the diction, the testimony of rhapsodes, the history of the uses of writing in ancient Greece, and the question of the independence of the Hymns. Stresses his five-part taxonomy of ancient poetry and the differences between ancient Greek and later comparands (Old English, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Old Norse).
Area: AG, CP

Richard C. Payne. "Formulaic Poetry in Old English and Its Backgrounds." Studies in Medieval Culture, 11:41-49.

After a partial review of oral-formulaic criticism in OE, he argues for the preservation of oral tradition in the monasteries through a hybrid of written composition and oral performance. In this way he explains the production of religious poetry and the maintenance of OE verse in manuscript.
Area: OE

Berkley Peabody. The Winged Word: A Study in the Technique of Ancient Greek Oral Composition as Seen Principally through Hesiod's Works and Days. Albany: State University of New York Press.

An ambitious and learned analysis of the Hesiodic Works and Days from the perspective of oral tradition. Adds the phonemic and song (story-pattern) tests to the three Parry-Lord tests for orality of a given text (formula, enjambement, and theme). Moves from an "etymology" of the hexameter (derived in comparison with Sanskrit and Avestan meters) to a description of composition by cola to the verse and sentence as units to the theme and on to the song as a whole. Especially important are his accounts of the hexametric cola as "words" and of the theme as a system of recurrent phonic cores as well as an underlying narrative idea. A very significant book in the history of oral literature research.
Area: AG, SK, IR, CP

John Peradotto. "Odyssey 8.564-571: Verisimilitude, Narrative Analysis, and Bricolage." Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 15:803-32.

In the course of an argument against rationalistic editing and "improving" the texts of the Homeric poems by emendation, he contends that the oral text is sui generis not as dependent upon verbatim accuracy as its written counterpart. Summons Lévi-Strauss' idea of a mythmaker as bricoleur, one who rearranges known parts into an individual design, as a characterization of the oral poet.
Area: AG

Ben E. Perry. "The Early Greek Capacity for Viewing Things Separately." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 68:403-27.

In regard to Homer, he pronounces the Iliad and Odyssey "oral in origin" (410) and illustrates the typical figures of anacoluthon and various forms of parataxis as examples of the general AG mode of perception. Also mentions that other features of style, composition, and arrangement of episodes proceed from the same principle.
Area: AG

Agostino Pertusi. "La Poesia epica bizantina e la sua formazione: problemi sul fondo storico e la struttura letteraria del Digenis Akritas'." In Atti del Convegno Internazionale sul Tema: La Poesia epica e la sua formazione. Problemi Attuali di Scienza e di Cultura, no. 139. Ed. Enrico Cerulli et al. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. pp. 481-544.

During a chiefly historical consideration of the origins of the Digenis Akritas tale cycle, with special emphasis on the Byzantine Greek manuscripts and a tentative stemma for versions in other literatures, he recapitulates oral theory as detailed in Lord 1960 and rules against an oral provenance for most BG manuscripts. Includes treatment of formulas and enjambement in BG (espec. pp. 526-30).
Area: BG

Leonard J. Peters. "The Relationship of the Old English Andreas to Beowulf." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 66:844-63.

Argues against the popular opinion that the Andreas poet was indebted to Beowulf by (1) showing how all parallel incidents also occur in the ostensible source for Andreas (the Greek prose Práxeis Andréou kaì Mattheía...) and (2) indicating how many of the verbal parallels consist of common phraseology in the traditional wordhoard (using Kail 1889). Amounts to an affirmation of traditional diction in the two poems and in the OE verse canon as a whole.
Area: OE

Suzanne Petersen. "A Computer-Aided Analysis of the Mechanism of Variation in Orally Transmitted Poetry." 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. 88-100.

Demonstrates the potential value of a computer-assisted literary analysis "which was developed to facilitate a systematic description of the language' of the romancero and of the dynamic character of its open-structured narrative models" (89). Among other things, the computerized profile of the 612 versions of the Hispanic ballad "La Condesita" revealed that "rhyme in and of itself does not act as a mnemonic device" (95).
Area: HI, FB

Suzanne Petersen. "Computer-Generated Maps of Narrative Affinity." In El Romancero hoy: Poética, vol. 3 (Romancero y poésia oral). Ed. Diego Catalán, Samuel G. Armistead, and Antonio Sánchez Romeralo. 2deg. Coloquio Internacional, University of California, Davis. Madrid: Cátedra Seminario Menéndez Pidal. pp. 167-228.

Describes and illustrates the heuristic power of a computer program that measures diachronic and synchronic variation in the traditional oral romances. Using cartographic representation, she shows how ballads vary differentially, with certain features and patterns more susceptible to localization than others.
Area: HI, FB

Rudolf Pfeiffer. History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

In Chapter 1 (pp. 1-15), he discusses the poets and their tradition, the rhapsodes, and the early philosophers. Offers an excellent overview of the German position on Homer as an innovator of great genius and of the texts as modified through the ages.
Area: AG

J. Pinsent. "Homer and the Organization of the Iliad." Liverpool Classical Monthly, 3:3-10.

A précis of Parry's main contentions about an oral Homer, with emphasis on the inapplicability of conventional literary criticism. Since the poet of the Iliad is working with traditional materials, which he organizes rather than constructs from nothing, we must not assume his direct and literary control of the epic.
Area: AG

Henryk Podbielski. La Structure de l'Hymne homérique à Aphrodite à la lumière de la tradition littéraire. Warsaw: Polska Akademia Nauk.

Argues for conscious literary composition of the Hymns, recognizing formulaic elements and shared diction with the Homeric epics but understanding these features as elements that participate in the ordered, balanced composition of a literary work.
Area: AG

Elizabeth Wilson Poe. "The Three Modalities of the Old Provençal Dawn Song." Romance Philology, 37, iii:259-72.

Suggests several minor variations to Pierre Bec's scheme of the standard alba or "Dawn Song" and provides modifications of his chart to adapt it to the contre-aube and the Aube Pieuse, or "Religious Alba."
Area: OF

Livia Polanyi. "Literary Complexity in Everyday Storytelling." In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. 9. Norwood: Ablex. pp. 155-70.

Points out that stories circulating in oral form in everyday conversation reveal some of the same features_indirect free style, complexity in viewpoint, and ambiguity_as do those works we understand as most "literary" and furthest removed from oral tradition.
Area: TH

M.W.M. Pope. "Athena's Development in Homeric Epic." American Journal of Philology, 81:113-35.

In positing an evolution in the conception of Athena, he assumes that (1) the Iliad and Odyssey are of separate authorship, (2) the Iliadic Doloneia is intermediate between the two, (3) the time of composition is mid-eighth century, (4) a "certain amount of rigidity" (117) had arisen in the texts before that time, (5) the Iliad was preserved by memory after composition, (6) there was a continuing context of oral composition down through the period of the Homeric Hymns, and (7) the Odyssey was composed in full knowledge of the Iliad, perhaps as a rival. All of these conclusions are simply stated, with no attempt at proof or attestation. Because Homeric epic must have played such a large role in the development of AG theology, he feels that "one cannot suppose that Homeric minstrels are in every respect to be compared with the illiterate bards who survive in the modern world. They must have been intellectuals in their day." (127). Also posits an evolutionary view of epithets in Homer.
Area: AG

M.W.M. Pope. "The Parry-Lord Theory of Homeric Composition." Acta Classica (Proceedings of the Classical Association of South Africa), 6:1-21. Rpt. in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft. pp. 338-67.

Attacks what he sees as three problems in Parry-Lord oral theory: (1) all of Homer is formulaic and could be shown to be repeated verbatim if we had enough material, (2) thrift and extension testify to the great age of formulaic diction, and (3) oral and written poetry are mutually exclusive, with no transitional stage. Seeks to restore Homeric art, which he feels is explained away by the standard version of oral theory.
Area: AG

Maurice Pope. "A Nonce-word in the Iliad." Classical Quarterly, 35:1-8.

Discusses the implications of the translation of panaopios, arguing that Homer's use of repetition is his method of supplying detailed development of the character. Argues against the theory of oral formulation using the number of hapax legomena which appear unique to Homer as evidence of literary composition.
Area: AG

Howard N. Porter. "Repetition in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite." American Journal of Philology, 70:249-72.

Explains the repetition in the Hymn as arising from an oral tradition but used artistically by the poet. Notes various aspects of repetition: (1) its function as recurrent sound, (2) its organizational function, and (3) its role as a bearer of meaning (e.g., participation in a leitmotif). Comparison with Homer reveals a more highly developed aesthetic sense of purpose in the Hymn, in turn to be ascribed to the difference in genre and subject matter.
Area: AG

Howard N. Porter. "The Early Greek Hexameter." Yale Classical Studies, 12:1-63.

Although he seems to dismiss the contribution of comparative oral theory (35), he mentions seminal studies (e.g. Parry 1932) and discusses the relationship between the hexameter and formulaic diction, following O'Neill 1942.
Area: AG

J.R. Porter. "Pre-Islamic Arabic Historical Traditions and the Early Historical Narratives of the Old Testament." Journal of Biblical Literature, 87:17-26.

In the course of his exposition he broaches the possibility of written documents wholly determined by earlier, preliterate conventions from oral tradition as a vehicle for transmission of Arabic materials into Old Testament tradition.
Area: BI, AR, CP

James Porter. "Jennie Robertson's My Son David': A Conceptual Performance Model." Journal of American Folklore, 89:7-26.

In the process of constructing a model based on a single singer within a single tradition and taking into account all apparent characteristics of the song and its performance, he argues against a rigid dichotomy of memorization and improvisation and against the separation of musical and textual aspects of formulaic structure (see espec. 17-18).
Area: BR, FB, MU

James Porter. "The Turriff Family of Fetterangus: Society, Learning, Creation and Recreation of Traditional Song." Folk Life, 16:5-26.

Founds this study of traditional folksong in northeast Scotland on a particular family, illustrating his claim that oral song must be approached through the individual. Employs Lord's notions of song and performance (1960) to describe the re-creative process of traditional singing. Feels that classification must proceed from consideration of all variables, including musical tunes and the performer's attitudes and outlook.
Area: BR, FB, MU

James Porter. "Principles of Ballad Classification: A Suggestion for Regional Catalogues of Ballad Style." Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung, 25:11-26.

After reviewing the principal modes of classification and the assumptions behind them, he argues for an approach to orally transmitted balladry first through the individual singer, seeing thematic commonplaces in the light of that specificity. Also advocates multilevel analysis of products, producers, and environment on the way to formulating catalogs of regional ballad style.
Area: FB, TH

James Porter, ed. The Ballad Image: Essays Presented to Bertrand Harris Bronson. Forward by Wayland D. Hand. Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology.

A collection of essays on the ballad. Separately annotated are Buchan, Friedman, and Shields.
Area: FB

N. Postlethwaite. "Formula and Formulaic: Some Evidence from the Homeric Hymns." Phoenix, 33:1-18.

Views formulaic modification rather than verbatim repetition as the hallmark of oral composition, since the former can be imitated by literate composers and the latter cannot. Examines quantity, mobility, separation, and expansion of common noun-epithet word-groups in samples drawn from the Iliad, Odyssey, and certain of the Hymns. Argues for the orality of all concerned texts and for the "personal tradition" within the general formulaic style.
Area: AG

N. Postlethwaite. "The Continuation of the Odyssey: Some Formulaic Evidence." Classical Philology, 76:177-87.

Following his 1979 methodology, he conducts an analysis of the "continuation" of the Odyssey in comparison to other passages in the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Homeric Hymns. Employs the criteria of formulaic quality, mobility, separation, and expansion (in part after Hainsworth 1968) to argue for the orality of the continuation and its composition by a single poet in imitation of Homer. Interesting ideas on the flexibility of formulaic diction and the possibilities for imitation.
Area: AG

Barry B. Powell. "Narrative Pattern in the Homeric Tale of Menelaus." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 101:419-31.

From the perspective of oral traditional poetry, he compares the morphology of the Menelaus tale in the Odyssey with the structure of the epic as a whole, with special attention to the problem of death and rebirth in both.
Area: AG

Barry B. Powell. Composition by Theme in the Odyssey. Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie, 81. Meisenheim am Glan: Hain.

A brief study that sees the Odyssey as a series of 34 instances of a single thematic pattern "identical to that which supports the grand narrative: Odysseus, held by a deathly antagonist, returns to life and is recognized'" (p. 1). Accepts oral theory and oral-formulaic composition as described by Parry and Lord, understanding the theme as an unconscious narrative structure, and posits an original religious significance preserved as myth and possibly correlative to the Hesiodic Theogony.
Area: AG

Barry B. Powell. "Word Patterns in the Catalogue of Ships (B 494-709): A Structural Analysis of Homeric Language." Hermes, 106:255-64.

Shows that all entries in the Catalog, with the exception of the questionable Athenian entry, follow one of three patterns of diction, idea, and syntax. Contends that the Catalog was taken up by the tradition in fixed form.
Area: AG

Guy L. Prendergast. A Complete Concordance to the Iliad of Homer. Rev. and enl. by Benedetto Marzullo. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Orig. ed. by Prendergast. London, 1875.

A single-word, alphabetical listing with lines and line numbers. An appendix records revisions and additions.
Area: AG, CC

Michael J. Preston. "The British Folk Plays and Thomas Hardy: A Computer-Aided Study." Southern Folklore Quarterly, 40:159-82.

Illustrates a method for evaluating the reliability of oral dramatic texts through computerized measurement and demonstrates that Hardy's St. George's Play "is not traditional in any strict sense of the term" (169).
Area: BR, FK

Patricia G. Preziosi. "The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: An Oral Analysis." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 71:171-204.

Systematically applies Parry's technique of formulaic analysis to the Hymn, seeking (1) to supplement other such studies of AG poems, (2) to affirm Notopoulos' (1962) judgment that the Hymn was orally composed and to stress the need for something more than a literary-critical approach, and (3) to provide a basis for comparative studies. Compares the Hymn to the Iliad and Odyssey, finding similar percentages of formulas and systems as well as frequent repetition and schematization of diction.
Area: AG

Pietro Pucci. Hesiod and the Language of Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

In the "Appendix: Writing" (pp. 138-42), he considers the truth value of oral traditional diction and posits a Hesiod able to read and reword his poems in writing.
Area: AG

Jaan Puhvel. "Response" to Nagy 1976b. 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. 261-63.

Argues with Nagy's description of formula generating meter from a diachronic point of view and asks for a definition of the theme in Nagy's scheme for oral tradition.
Area: AG, IE