3. Homer and the Muses: Oral Traditional Poetics, a Mythic Episode, and Arming Scenes in the Iliad Some critics have questioned whether the work of Milman Parry leaves room for an appreciation of the aesthetics of the Homeric epics. There must, of course, always be a place in any approach to Homer for such an appreciation. But an analysis of Homer’s style and aesthetics must also be… Read more
4. Beowulf and Oral Epic Tradition* The Germanic peoples told stories in song from very ancient times. When some of these became known in the Middle Ages the tradition was already very old and in a state of transition from a purely oral to a fully written poetry. One can speak of at least three influences on the oral traditional matrix. One was… Read more
5. The Formula in Anglo-Saxon Poetry* In this chapter I explore the degree to which oral traditional style informs, that is to say, manifests itself in, Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poetry. The adaptation to Anglo-Saxon poetics of Milman Parry’s definition of the formula and the formulaic system, as well as the concept of the “theme” (the latter treated in Chapter 6) have… Read more
6. The Theme in Anglo-Saxon Poetry From my point of view the work on the theme in Anglo-Saxon poetics got off on what I always thought was the wrong foot. What Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr., called a theme was not what either I or Parry meant by the term. His meaning, nevertheless, was to prevail and is found in Riedinger’s Speculum article—not under that name, however, but… Read more
7. The Ballad: Textual Stability, Variation, and Memorization It has become apparent that, because the study of oral traditional literature has so concentrated on epic, the application of the oral theory to other kinds of oral poetry may lead to difficulty. The ballad has presented one thorny problem, and short forms in general another, the one because of its stanzaic form, the other because of its comparative… Read more
3. Book III: Vico’s “Empirical” Homer(s) Again, Book III represents the polemical fulcrum of Vico’s response to The Homeric Question. Its specific raison d’être is the promise he has made (primarily in “The Idea of the Work”) that through the anti-Cartesian method of his “new science” he wil argue that behind the received Homeric icon—the synchronic, historical, majestically authoritative figure depicted throughout the classical corpus—has lain hidden… Read more
4. Evolutionary Models Resist Literary Bias Something that has always struck me as I have studied Nagy’s work is how resistant many of his colleagues have been to what is perhaps the most important aspect of his model: namely, that it is faithful to the theories of his predecessor Albert Lord in treating the transmission of epic as a primarily creative rather than a simply mnemonic tekhnē,… Read more
5. Vico’s Homer Makes the Greco-Roman Continuum Possible If Vico’s program in the Scienza Nuova entails using iconography to divert pan-European discourse away from the Quarrel in order to proceed toward establishing an anti-Cartesian empirical model, what is the immediate target of his resulting new “ray”? Giuseppe Mazzotta gives this answer: “La discoverta del vero Omero” unfolds by telling about a deliberate reversal of the most… Read more
6. Is There a Latent Jurisprudential Paradigm in Vico’s Homer? Much Vico scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing Homer as ancillary to Vico’s larger purpose, and up to this point I have taken this perspective. But why not try a more oblique hermeneutical tack? Why not entertain the idea that Vico’s paradigm for Homer can be fruitfully explicated through his obsession to be recognized as a master-theorist… Read more
7. Two Conclusions Despite being a product of diachronic, Panhellenic dissemination, Homeric Greek, as an artificial literary language, is strikingly complex in the Russian Formalist sense of displaying literatur’nost’ (“literariness”). That is, both epics were “built” over the millennia through such devices as “the epic simile”; formulaic repetition (anaphora); foreshadowing; paranomasia (double entente); and on and on. These elements are normally thought of as applying to written… Read more
