Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Theodore M. Andersson. The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins. Yale Germanic Studies, 1. New Haven: Yale University Press.

After a review of the history of relevant scholarship, he reconstrues the evidence, adding a substantial appendix on variants (pp. 129-82) to illustrate the multiformity typical of oral tradition. Rejects the idea of a completely fixed, memorized oral version, maintaining that the narrative framework rather than its details is fixed: "The writer undoubtedly could and did use written sources, supplementary oral sources, his own imagination, and above all his own words, but his art and presumably the framework of his story were given him by tradition. The inspiration of the sagas is ultimately oral" (p. 119).
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