Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Bruce A. Rosenberg. The Art of the American Folk Preacher. New York: Oxford University Press.

A thorough description and analysis of the oral traditional style of the chanted folk sermon, emphasizing the preacher's dependence on formulaic phrases and on the participation of the congregation or audience. Notes the necessity of tradition-dependence (the redefinition of formulaic units for each tradition), defining formulaic systems as "groups of words, which, when recited, are metrically and semantically consistent, related in form by the repetition and identical relative placement of at least half the words in the group" (p. 53). In addition to the initial study, he includes a large sample of sermons (with some formulaic analysis) and a listing of the formulas of one preacher.
Area: US, FP, AA, CP