Chapter 8. The Odyssey In reading the Odyssey or the Iliad we are at a distinct disadvantage because we are reading isolated texts in a tradition. The comparison with other traditions shows us very clearly that songs are not isolated entities, but that they must be understood in terms of other songs that are current. Had we an adequate collection of ancient Greek epic songs, we could… Read more
Chapter 7. Homer The practice of oral narrative poetry makes a certain form necessary; the way in which oral epic songs are composed and transmitted leaves its unmistakable mark on the songs. That mark is apparent in the formulas and in the themes. It is visible in the structure of the songs themselves. In the living laboratory of Yugoslav epic the elements have emerged… Read more
Chapter 6. Writing and Oral Tradition The art of narrative song was perfected, and I use the word advisedly, long before the advent of writing. It had no need of stylus or brush to become a complete artistic and literary medium. Even its geniuses were not straining their bonds, longing to be freed from its captivity, eager for the liberation by writing. When writing was introduced, epic… Read more
Chapter 5. Songs and the Song As long as one thought of the oral poet as a singer who carried in his head a song in more or less the exact form in which he had learned it from another singer, as long as one used for investigation ballads and comparatively short epics, the question of what an oral song is could not arise. It was, we… Read more
Chapter 4. The Theme Formulas and groups of formulas, both large and small, serve only one purpose. They provide a means for telling a story in song and verse. The tale’s the thing. Anyone who reads through a collection of oral epic from any country is soon aware that the same basic incidents and descriptions are met with time and again. This is true in spite… Read more
Chapter 3. The Formula There came a time in Homeric scholarship when it was not sufficient to speak of the “repetitions” in Homer, of the “stock epithets,” of the “epic clichés” and “stereotyped phrases.” Such terms were either too vague or too restricted. Precision was needed, and the work of Milman Parry was the culmination of that need. The result was a definition of the “formula” as… Read more
Chapter 2. Singers: Performance and Training Were we to seek to understand why a literary poet wrote what he did in a particular poem in a particular manner and form, we should not focus our attention on the moment when he or someone else read or recited his poem to a particular audience or even on any moment when we ourselves read the poem in quiet solitude. Read more
Chapter 1. Introduction [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.] In the early thirties of this century, when… Read more
Abbreviations Frequently Used in the Notes AJA: American Journal of Archaeology HSCP: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology AJP: American Journal of Philology Parry: The Milman Parry Collection in the Harvard College Library TAPhA: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association Parry and Lord: Serbocroation Heroic Songs Pauly-Wissowa: Real-Encyclopädie der Classichen Altertumswissenschaft Lord: Serbocroation and Bulgarian texts collected by the… Read more
Foreword This book is about Homer. He is our Singer of Tales. Yet, in a larger sense, he represents all singers of tales from time immemorial and unrecorded to the present. Our book is about these other singers as well. Each of them, even the most mediocre, is as much a part of the tradition of oral epic singing as is Homer, its most talented representative. Among… Read more
