Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

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