Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

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

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