Preface* This is Albert B. Lord’s book. It is not quite the same book that would have resulted had he lived to crown it with his finishing touches, but it comes as close to that book as I could help to make it. He had completed almost all the chapters, to which I have added two, “Beowulf and Oral Epic Tradition” and “Rebuttal,”… Read more
1. The Nature and Kinds of Oral Literature [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] Epics, ballads, prose… Read more
2. Oral Traditional Lyric Poetry In this chapter we seek to understand the composition and transmission of some oral traditional nonnarrative songs, which would be classed as lyrics. They are generally short and could be easily memorized. I should like to stress that what I am using is primary material from “pure” tradition, from living tradition, untouched, or comparatively untouched, by “outside” influences. Such material is not… Read more
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
