Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Proinsias MacCana. "Conservation and Innovation in Early Celtic Literature." Etudes celtiques, 13:61-119.

Explores the limited definition of literature as a written medium and charts the simultaneous development of both oral and written traditions of literature in Ireland, emphasizing the impact of oral transmission on the development of early Irish literary history.
Area: OI

Proinsias MacCana. "Mythology in Early Irish Literature." In The Celtic Consciousness. Ed. Robert O'Driscoll. New York: Braziller and Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. pp. 143-54.

Provides a brief introduction to the historical context of early Irish written literature and its development from oral traditional sources from the viewpoint that "oral literature did not cease with the coming of writing; on the contrary, it continued as abundant as ever, independent of the written literature although not necessarily unaffected by it. In the nature of things, however, we can know it only in so far as it is reflected in the written texts" (145). Compares and contrasts the Noinden Ulad (The Debility of the Ulstermen) with an early version of the Deirdre story, demonstrating that "while immersed in native tradition, the author is also able to exploit it for his own literary ends, so that in the finished composition mythological concept and literary artifice combine and fuse in an indissoluble unity" (148), and goes on to discuss the relationship of Christianity to the pagan myth, citing Caillech Bhérri (The Hag of Beare) as an example of the literary fusing of the two systems. Concludes that the clerical authors were men who were "admirably equipped by instinct and training to approach the orally transmitted mythology with a combination of sympathy and sophistication" (154).
Area: OI

C.W. MacLeod, ed. Homer: Iliad: Book XXIV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

In that section of the introduction dealing with "Language and Style" (pp. 35-53), he briefly reviews Parry's original work and offers examples of formulaic language. Emphasis on the creative, aesthetic effect of oral traditional style.
Area: AG

David Madden. "Let Me Tell You the Story: Transforming Oral Tradition." Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, 7:210-29.

A novelist and writer of short stories explains, with respect to his own works, the operative force of oral storytelling in the creation of his fiction.
Area: CN

C. Faïk-Nuji Madiya. "Le kasala et ses traits essentiels dans la littérature orale traditionnelle luba." Cahiers d'études africaines, 15:457-80.

Analysis of an oral genre, a type of brief heroic song, in terms of its formal linguistic features, characteristic narrative patterns, and sociocultural context.
Area: AF

H. Maehler. Die Auffassung des Dichterberufs im frühen Griechentum bis zur Zeit Pindars. Hypomnemata 3. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

Examines the concept of the poet in Greek antiquity, with consideration of his social position, relationship to his public, and internal and external motives, along with discussion of the effect of the work and artistic intention. Includes comments on Homer, Hesiod, Archilochos, Alkaios, Sappho, Pindar, and others.
Area: AG

Archie Mafeje. "The Role of the Bard in a Contemporary African Community." Journal of African Languages, 6:193-223.

Disagrees with the usual characterization of the Xhosa tribal bard as simply a "praise-poet," pointing out his social function as mediator between the chief and the people and between society and the individual. Compares the situation in South Africa to that involving the medieval European bards, especially in the OE tradition. Includes a large number of examples from the author's fieldwork.
Area: AF, OI, CP

M. Magnotta. "Sobre la critica del Mio Cid: Problemas en torno al autor (1750-1970)." Annuario de Letras (México), 9:51-98.

A bibliographical essay on the various treatments of five aspects of the authorship of the Cid: (1) anonymous or known, (2) Castilian, French, or other, (3) cleric or troubadour, (4) single or multiple, and (5) creator or transformer. Assumes written rather than oral nature of the poem. Includes a bibliography of more than 200 items and detailed notes.
Area: HI, BB

M. Magnotta. "Per Abat y la tradición oral o escrita en el Poema del Cid: Un ensayo histórico-crítico. Hispanic Review, 43:293-309.

A critical and bibliographical essay on the authorship and composition of the Cid. Concludes that the poem developed from factual accounts of the Cid's victories transmitted orally by contemporary troubadours up to the end of the ninth century, then was expanded and retransmitted until the twelfth century when it was further expanded by the poets of San Esteban de Gormaz and Medinaceli. The transcription at the end of that century and a rewriting in the fourteenth complete the hypothesized development. Argues for parallels between the Cid and SC epics, especially in the relationship between singer and audience.
Area: HI, SC, CP, BB

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Recurring First Elements in Different Nominal Compounds in Beowulf and in the Elder Edda." In Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber. Ed. Kemp Malone and Martin B. Ruud. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 73-78.

In an important article that presages oral-formulaic theory as presented in his classic 1953a, he studies the role of alliterating first elements of compounds in the structure of OE and ON poetry. Suggests that a thorough investigation of this technique could lead to a better understanding of compositional practice.
Area: OE, ON, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "A Note on Old West Germanic Poetic Unity." Modern Philology, 43:77-82.

In discussing the similarities among and possible mutual intelligibility of Old West Germanic language traditions, he observes that "beyond a large common stock-in-trade of traditional story, the accumulations of parallel phrases and locations that are sprinkled through the commentaries of this poetry in whatever language, even in that of the Waltharii poësis, afford striking testimony to a basic, persistent community of diction" (78).
Area: OE, OHG, OSX, GM, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Danes, North, South, East, and West, in Beowulf." In Philologica: The Malone Anniversary Studies. Ed. Thomas A. Kirby and Henry B. Woolf. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 20-24.

Argues that although there is historical reason to believe that the Danes identified themselves with respect to compass points, the Beowulf poet seems to have chosen the various compounds at random in accord with the alliterative constraint on poetic composition.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry." Speculum, 28:446-67. Rpt. in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism. Ed. Lewis E. Nicholson. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 3rd printing 1966. pp. 189-221. Rpt. in The Beowulf Poet: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Donald K. Fry, Jr. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968. pp. 83-113.

Argues a direct, one-to-one correspondence between formulas and orality. Analyzes Beowulf 1-25 for formulas and formulaic systems, claiming that over 70% of the diction occurs elsewhere in the OE corpus. Bases methodology and interpretation directly on the work of Parry, transferring all definitions and concepts from Homer to OE poetry without allowing for tradition-dependent characteristics. Although his assertions are too broad (he remarks, e.g., that "the recurrence in a given poem of an appreciable number of formulas or formulaic phrases brands the latter as oral, just as a lack of such repetitions marks a poem as composed in a lettered tradition" and that "oral poetry, it may be safely said, is composed entirely of formulas, large and small, while lettered poetry is never formulaic" [BP, p. 84]), his ideas are at the root of a great deal of scholarship and cannot be overestimated (see Foley 1980b).
Area: OE, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Inwlatide > onfunde?" Modern Language Notes, 68:540-41.

Points out that Dobbie's emendation of Beowulf 2226b to sona onfunde brings the disputed line into agreement with a formula and formulaic system used both by this poet and by other OE singers.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Béowulf and King Hygelác in the Netherlands: Lost Anglo-Saxon Verse-Stories about this Event." English Studies, 35:193-204.

Examines four versions of the story of Hygelac's and Beowulf's raid on the Rhine delta, three in Latin prose (Gregory of Tours' Historia Francorum, an anonymous Liber Historiae Francorum, and another anonymous Liber Monstrorum de Diversis Generibus) and one OE poetic text (Beowulf). By collating tale features, he concludes that the story must have circulated in oral tradition and posits that the Sutton Hoo ship-burial provides evidence of a "gateway between East Anglia and the Uppland district of Sweden" (203) that may well have served to promote circulation across tribal and national borders.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Bede's Story of Caedmon: The Case History of an Anglo-Saxon Oral Singer." Speculum, 30:49-63.

Explains Bede's famous account of the "miracle" of the cowherd Caedmon's learning to compose Christian poetry as a description of a traditional oral singer coming of age in his craft. Sees the phenomenon as quite unmiraculous, for "whatever he did hear would have been composed in the traditional manner out of the standing reservoir of formulas and themes and in conformity with the traditional metrical patterns according to which alone the singers could have sung" (57). Having internalized the poetic idiom of the OE heroic narrative tradition, Caedmon simply applied it to a new purpose: the composition of Christian poems.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "The Theme of the Beasts of Battle in Anglo-Saxon Poetry." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 56:81-90.

Along with Greenfield 1955, the opening statement on the theme in OE scholarship. Identifies a pervasive scene in OE poetry_"the mention of the wolf, eagle, and/or raven as beasts attendant on a scene of carnage" (83), isolates its twelve occurrences in the poetic corpus, and studies the morphology of the multiform. Compare Bonjour 1957a.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Two Verses in the Old English Waldere Characteristic of Oral Poetry." Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 80:214-18.

Shows that OE wine Burgenda and ON vin Borgunda ("friend ofthe Burgundians") exemplify cognate formulas, indicating a common Germanic oral poetic tradition.
Area: OE, ON, GM, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Béowulf A': A Folk-Variant." Arv: A Journal of Scandinavian Folklore, 14:95-101.

Dealing with the discrepancies in detail between the story told in Beowulf A (1-2009a) and again in A' (2009b-2176), he postulates, in addition to the A-singer, an anthologizing scribe who had "presumably to some extent mastered the technique of oral singing and hence was able to compose authentically in his own words neatly soldered joints" (101). Compare Creed's response (1966) as well as Magoun 1963.
Area: OE

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Some Notes on Anglo-Saxon Poetry." In Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor Albert Croll Baugh. Ed. MacEdward Leach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 272-83.

Identifies two themes ("the grateful recipient" and "the gesture of the raised shield and/or brandished spear") in OE verse. Also comments on thematic structure in the Kalevala and traditional diction in The Battle of Maldon.
Area: OE, FN, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Béowulf B: A Folk-Poem on Beowulf's Death." In Early English and Norse Studies Presented to Hugh Smith in Honor of His Sixtieth Birthday. Ed. Arthur Brown and Peter Foote. London: Methuen. pp. 127-40.

Departing from Magoun 1958b, he argues for multiple authorship of Beowulf (song A = 1-2009a, A' = 2009b-2176, B = 2200-3182). As evidence he notes that cyclic poems are unusual in oral traditions, that certain narrative details differentiate the work of the two hypothetical singers A and B, and that Beowulf's consistency of character and Hrothgar's prophecy are traditional ideas and thus no proof against multiple authorship.
Area: OE, SC, FN, CP

Francis P. Magoun, Jr., trans. The Old Kalevala and Certain Antecedents. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

In his "Foreword" (pp. xiii-xix) the translator discusses the oral traditional context of Lönnrot's compilation: a "vast corpus of Finnish traditional or oral poetry" that "was the work of countless generations of unlettered singers composing in an ancient tradition without benefit of a fixed text, singers whose creations were never recorded and thus can never be known" (p. xiii). Volume includes translations of the Old Kalevala, the Proto-Kalevala, and various appendices.
Area: FN

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Arhippa Perttunen, Elias Lönnrot, and Gallen-Kallela." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 73:209-13.

Excerpts from Lönnrot's description of the singer Arhippa and of oral performance involving either one or two singers.
Area: FN

Francis P. Magoun, Jr. "Lord Macaulay, A Singer of Tales." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 73:686-89.

Sees Thomas Macaulay's four Lays of Ancient Rome, an attempt at reconstituting lost Roman poetry, as "oral" in their use of stock epithets.
Area: BR

Paul Mai. "The Time of Darkness' of Yuu Kuia." In Oral Tradition in Melanesia. Ed. by Donald Denoon. Port Moresby, New Guinea: University of Papua, New Guinea and Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies. pp. 125-40.

Describes the oral evidence surrounding the Yuu Kuia period of relative darkness resulting from volcanic eruptions, among the highland peoples of New Guinea, suggesting that evidence from the oral tradition, while differing somewhat from tribe to tribe, is no less accurate than accounts from geological surveys of the area, which differ significantly depending upon the research methodology employed. See Blong 1981.
Area: ML

John R. Maier. "The Truth' of a Most Ancient Work: Interpreting a Poem Addressed to a Holy Place." Centrum, 2, i:27-44.

Describes a Sumerian cuneiform text composed by Priestess Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon, containing a temple hymn and suggests hermeneutical approaches toward its interpretation.
Area: SU

Victor H. Mair, ed. and trans. Tun-huang Popular Narratives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A translation of four vernacular Chinese stories from the seventh through tenth centuries that stand at the intersection of popular storytelling and the beginnings of fiction and drama. Introduction includes comments on the oral storytelling tradition.
Area: CH

Lars Malmberg. "Poetic Originality in The Wanderer and The Seafarer." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 74:220-23.

Interprets these two poems as examples of a poet's manipulation of the inherited formulaic diction in an original and artistic manner. Makes the case for poetic originality within a traditional medium.
Area: OE

Kemp Malone. Review of Storms 1957. English Studies, 41:200-5.

Denies Storms' assumption of Beowulf's orality, affirming that the poem is too sophisticated to be the product of a "minstrel" (204) and that traditional diction may be employed without entailing improvisation. One of the early objections to oral-formulaic theory as presented by Magoun (espec. 1953a) and his followers.
Area: OE

Kemp Malone. "Caedmon and English Poetry." Modern Language Notes, 76:193-95.

Another negative response to Magoun 1953a. Contends that OE Christian poetry cannot answer Magoun's dicta because formulas would have to be invented as the singer went along, whereas Magoun theorizes that phraseology is built up over long periods of time. Not a clever argument, especially for a scholar who knew OE diction so thoroughly.
Area: OE

Kemp Malone. "Part I. The Old English Period (to 1100)." In A Literary History of England. Ed. Albert C. Baugh, 2nd ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

In "The Old Tradition," further subdivided into "Poetic Form" (pp. 20-31), "Popular Poetry" (pp. 32-44), and "Courtly Poetry" (pp. 45-59), he offers examples to buttress his contention that we must look to poets' individual elaboration of traditional structures: "A given poet was reckoned worthy if he handled with skill the stuff of which, by convention, poems must be made" (p. 31). Finds in the so-called Caedmonian and Cynewulfian poems a learned poet who "adapted the technic [sic] of the scops to his own purposes" (p. 60).
Area: OE

Jean M. Mandler and Nancy S. Johnson. "Remembrance of Things Parsed: Story Structure and Recall." Cognitive Psychology, 9:111-51.

Describes the structure of both single- and multi-episode stories in terms of tree structures containing basic units and their connections, analyzing the underlying structures of simple stories and examining the implications such structures have for recall.
Area: TH

Jill Mann. "Proverbial Wisdom in the Ysengrimus." New Literary History, 16:93-109.

Describes traditional wisdom in the Ysengrimus, which is often pessimistic in its cautions against the efficacy of its own genre, samples of which "seem to claim validation through the seriousness of their surroundings. But in fact the context in which they are set [the epic], so far from validating them, cynically demonstrates their complete lack of connection with any experience that would give them true force" (106).
Area: ON

Elli Köngäs Maranda. "Individual and Tradition." In Folk Narrative Research: Some Papers Presented at the VI Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. Ed. Juha Pentikäinen and Tuula Juurikka. Studia Fennica: Review of Finnish Linguistics and Anthropology, 20. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. pp. 252-61.

After a brief review of scholarship on oral narrative, especially with respect to the role of the individual, she describes her own fieldwork and analysis among the Lau, a Melanesian group in Malaita, in the Solomon Islands. Couching her presentation in an ethnographic context, she offers a grid summary of storytelling modes or genres, including for each a category of ritual state, occasion, performer, audience, and intent. Goes on to compare performance and training to Lord's description of the Yugoslav guslar, to note the importance of a "supple" narrator who can mold the tradition, and to claim that oral tradition among the Lau is not fundamentally based on oral-formulaic technique.
Area: ML

Pierre Maranda and Elli Köngäs Maranda, eds. Structural Analysis of Oral Tradition. University of Pennsylvania Publications in Folklore and Folklife, no. 3. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

A group of eleven papers treating different aspects of oral tradition (myth, ritual, folk drama, riddle, folk song, and myth in culture contact) from a structuralist perspective, principally along the lines of studies by Propp and Levi-Strauss. While all essays run parallel to oral theory, only Lomax and Halifax (separately annotated) confront directly the work of Parry and Lord.
Area: AI, SAI, AND, AF, JV, FN, US, HW, JP, SC, FB, TH, CP

Joseph Margolis. "The Emergence of Philosophy." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. Ed. by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy/The Hegeler Institute, pp. 228-43.

Disagrees with Havelock's (1983) view about the conceptual capacity of members of an oral culture inasmuch as such a culture, while lacking an alphabet, "is bound to produce either a philosophical practice or an alternative but equally abstractive practice" (234). Disputes the view that philosophy had to await the Ionians in the sixth century because there is no reason that a non-democratized philosophical tradition could not have existed co-extensively with a general popular oral culture. Supports his own view by pointing to the verse philosophy of Parmenides and the Epicheirêmata of Zeno, and holds that such an impulse could well have begun with the Milesian school.
Area: AG

Manfred Markus. "The Language and Style: The Paradox of Heroic Poetry." In The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem. Ed. Karl H. Goller, Arthurian Studies, 3. London and Totowa: D.S. Brewer and Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 57-69, 164-67.

In the course of a discussion of diction and narrative technique in the Alliterative Morte Arthure, he argues for the special expressiveness of formulas: "Here the frame of reference is not the unit of the line anticipated by the audience, but the listeners' or readers' associations rendered possible through a treasury of common literary experience and of conventional verbal collocations" (p. 63). Emphasizes the ambivalence of formulas and larger units as both stereotyped and connotative foci, seeing an aesthetic dimension in this functional ambivalence (espec. pp. 62-66).
Area: ME

Richard P. Martin. "Hesiod, Odysseus, and the Instruction of Princes." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 114:29-48.

Reinterprets the crux involving the two related passages at Theogony 79-93 and Odyssey 8.166-77 as parallel elements that "can be said to share a commen genre, which generates the similar phrases in each place" (30). By comparaing the Old Irish genre of tecosc ("instruction"), he argues that both the Hesiodic and the Homeric passages are instances of Prince-Instruction and that this generic matrix serves as a kind of deep structure for the common phraseology.
Area: AG, LT, OI, CP

Benedetto Marzullo. Il Problema omerico. Milan and Napoli: Riccardo Ricciardi. 2nd ed. with revs., 1970.

Essentially a Neoanalytic exposition, with specific commentary on Parry (responding to reviews of the 1952 ed. by Chantraine and others) on pp. 417-56.
Area: AG

Svetozar Mati. Nas narodni ep i nas stih: Ogledi i studije. Novi Sad: Matica Srpska.

A collection of the author's reprinted essays under four headings: (1) "Critical Contributions on the Vuk Texts," (2) "Epic Singing in Srem," (3) "Contributions on the Style of the Epic Song," and (4) "Essays on the History of Our Epic." The subjects of the papers vary a great deal, from an examination of Kosovo songs in the Vojvodina to a study of Vuk's Pjesnica. Of particular interest are his comments on models and narrative commonplaces in epic poetry (pp. 181-88). An example of native scholarship on the SC oral tradition.
Area: SC

A.T.E. Matonis. "Traditions of Panegyric in Welsh Poetry: The Heroic and the Chivalric." Speculum, 53:667-87.

A history of the development of Welsh panegyric in three stages of bards: (a) the Cynfeirdd of the sixth century, (b) the Gogynfeirdd (ca. 1100-1350), and (c) the Cywyddwyr of the fourteenth century. Argues that it is likely that the first were oral poets, that the second carried on the traditions of eulogy and elegy, and that the third group "incorporated courtly and heraldic features" (667) that greatly changed the genres.
Area: WL

John Mavrogordato. "Introduction" to his ed., Digenes Akrites. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rpt. 1963, 1970.

In the section on "Versions" (pp. xv-xxix), he discusses the possible role of oral transmission in the various surviving manuscripts. Also included is an appendix, "Conspectus of Versions and Episodes" (pp. 257-59).
Area: BG

Kevin B. Maxwell. Bemba Myth and Ritual: The Impact of Literacy on an Oral Culture. American University Series, XI, 2. New York and Berne: Peter Lang.

Basing his analysis on the orality-literacy studies of Walter J. Ong and his own fieldwork among the Bemba in 1978-79 and 1981, Maxwell treats the implications of orality for this people's belief-system and the changes wrought by the onset of literacy. Sophisticated consideration of hermeneutical realities includes observations such as the following on intelligence: "A proverb expresses the idea: Mano nambulwa wisdom consists in being told'" (12).
Area: AF

H.S. McAllister. "`The Language of Shamans': Jerome Rothenberg's Contribution to American Indian Literature." Western American Literature, 10:293-309.

An assessment of the contribution of the publication of Jerome Rothenberg's Shaking the Pumpkin (1972), an anthology of North American Indian traditional poetry, to the field of American Indian studies. Explicates the nature of the "aural word" (297) and the aesthetic differences in reading, as opposed to hearing, poetry. Praises Rothenberg's success at communicating a "non-European sense of man's relationship to his language" (309).
Area: AI, CN, CP

M.V. McDonald. "Orally Transmitted Poetry in Pre-Islamic Arabia and Other Pre-literate Societies." Journal of Arabic Literature, 9:14-31.

Argues that the compilation of fifth-century Jahiliyya poetry by eighth-century Arab anthologists has tended to obscure its oral origins. Reexamines and subdivides this "haphazard selection" of verse according to its social function, genre, and typical content. Notes the distinctively oral stylistic features characteristic of this tradition. Comparisons with OE, ON, OI, and other traditions show this "type of poetry attributed to Jahiliyya poets [to be] absolutely typical of the poetry of preliterate societies in general" (30-31).
Area: AR, OE, ON, OI, CP

James T. McDonough. "Homer, the Humanities, and IBM." In Literary Data Processing Conference Proceedings (September 9, 10, 11 - 1964). Ed. Jess B. Bessinger, Stephen M. Parrish, and Harry F. Arader. New York: IBM. pp. 25-36.

A report on a project to document Homer's employment of various metrical word-types in oral-formulaic composition, with suggestions for future analyses.
Area: AG

John H. McDowell. "The Mexican Corrido: Formula and Theme in a Ballad Tradition." Journal of American Folklore, 85:205-20.

Employs Parry-Lord theory to study this ballad tradition, with adjustments made for (1) shift in genre, (2) the nature of the ballad formula, and (3) the range of the corpus. Notes the role of memorization in this shorter form and describes the shape and flexibility of the formula and theme. Compares compositional units to those of epic and delineates a story-pattern for a typical corrido.
Area: HI, FB

Davis D. McElroy. "England's First Poet-Critic?" Notes & Queries, n.s. 6, 204:305-6.

Recasts the description of oral performance at lines 867ff. of Beowulf through application of oral-formulaic theory, interpreting the passage as a comment on the Danish thane's dexterous deployment of formulas and themes and thus as the first instance of literary criticism in England.
Area: OE

G.R. McLennan. "Enjambement in the Hymns of Callimachus." Hermes, 102:200-6.

Using Parry's categories of periodic and unperiodic enjambement (1929), he explains the large amount of enjambement in Callimachus as a function of the poet's tendency to place a noun and modifying adjective in contiguous lines and of his habit of "overrunning the sense from one line to the first foot of the next" (205). Argues against Parry's assumption of a correlation between infrequent necessary enjambement and oral poetry. Notes that Callimachus' Hymns reveal a low formulaic density.
Area: AG

Wallace E. McLeod. "Oral Bards at Delphi." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 92:317-25.

Contends that the presence of heavily formulaic language in the Delphic oracles indicates the existence of an oral bard in the service of the sanctuary. Extemporized hexametric answers for various occasions draw from an encyclopedic store of knowledge and utilize the traditional oral-formulaic technique. Feels that this practice survived from about 750 until after 400 B.C.
Area: AG

Wallace E. McLeod. "Studies on Panyassis_An Heroic Poet of the Fifth Century." Phoenix, 20:95-110.

The sixty lines of epic poetry by Panyassis (d. 460-450 B.C.) surviving in fragments exhibit an "all-pervasive" traditional diction, despite former scholarly claims for the poet's freedom from Homeric phraseology. Lists the "borrowings" from Homer and performs a formulaic analysis on a sample passage, concluding that Panyassis and Homer were equally oral composers.
Area: AG

Herbert Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, et seq.

Emphasis on the consequences of interiorizing the alphabet and on the shift from a primarily oral to a primarily visual set of perceptions. Argues that the new, secondary oralism of the electronic age marks a return to some earlier modes of thought. Sees this book as "in many respects complementary to The Singer of Tales by Albert B. Lord" (p. 1).
Area: TH

Duncan McMillan. "A propos de traditions orales." Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 3:67-71.

On the basis of comparison with Gaelic oral tradition, and in particular with memorizing oral singers who place great value on the accurate preservation of a poem, he dismisses both the idea of a jongleur's manuscript and the theory of an evolving oral tradition of composition in performance for the OF romance. Envisions instead consciously conceived and executed OF poems which existed for a time without written records.
Area: OF, MI, CP

Duncan McMillan. "A propos d'un travail de M. Delbouille sur Les chansons de geste et le livre'." Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 4:47-54.

A review essay in vigorous support of Delbouille's (1959) attempted refutation of oral traditional theory. Feels that the oral theorists assume too much in trying to fit all of the chansons de geste_ which he sees as individual, complex creations dependent on many and various sources_into a single category. Suggests that "si les romanistes avaient compris ce qu'est la poésie orale traditionnelle, ils cesseraient d'aller répétant que les textes manuscrits des chansons de geste relèvent des principes de la transmission orale et de l'improvisation" (54).
Area: OF, HI, CP

Duncan McMillan. "Notes sur quelques clichés formulaires dans les chansons de geste de Guillaume d'Orange." In Mélanges de línguistique romane et de philologie médiévale offerts à M. Maurice Delbouille, 2 vols. Ed. Jean Renson. Gembloux: Duculot. Vol. 2, pp. 477-93.

Assumes written transmission of these chansons de geste, denying both oral provenance and the statistical method for determining orality. His study of phraseology treats questions of authorship and text, much in the manner of the Higher Criticism of the nineteenth century.
Area: OF

Douglas J. McMillan. "A Survey of Theories Concerning the Oral Transmission of the Traditional Ballad." Southern Folklore Quarterly, 28:229-309.

A historical survey of four basic trends, with oral transmission seen as (1) primarily a deteriorating process, (2) primarily a re-creating process, (3) both a deteriorating and a re-creating process, with neither aspect predominant, and (4) a phenomenon receptive to special studies of various kinds. Under the fourth category he includes the work of J.H. Jones (1961), who applies the scholarship of Parry and Lord to the ballad tradition.
Area: FB, BR

I. McNeill. "The Metre of the Hittite Epic." Anatolian Studies, 13:237-42.

Exemplifies formulaic structure in the Hittite Song of Ullikummi, with comparisons in ancient Greek, as a way of determining the nature of the meter which shapes phraseology. Includes tradition-dependent characterizations of AG and HT noun-epithet structure in metrical context.
Area: HT, AG, CP

Antoine Meillet. Les Origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

In the course of positing an "Aegean" origin for the Homeric hexameter, Parry's mentor Meillet pronounces Homer's diction entirely traditional: "L'épopée homérique est toute faite de formules que se transmettaient les poètes. Qu'on prenne un morceau quelconque, on reconnait vite qu'il se compose de vers ou de fragments de vers qui se retrouvent textuellement dans un ou plusieurs passages. Et même les vers dont on ne retrouve pas les morceaux dans un autre passage ont aussi le caractère de formules, et ce n'est sans doute que par hasard qu'ils ne sont pas conservés ailleurs." (p. 61). It would be hard to overestimate the impact of Meillet's work on Parry's theses (1928a, b) and later writings.
Area: AG, SK, CP, IE

Karl Meister. Die Homerische Kunstsprache. Leipzig: Jablonowski. Rpt. Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1966.

The classic statement of the Kunstsprache (or "art-language") theory: that Homeric phraseology_under the influence of meter and linguistic constraints_was a fully developed, specialized language in its own right. Influential on and often quoted by Parry.
Area: AG

Daniel F. Melia. "Parallel Versions of The Boyhood Deeds of Cuchulainn'." In Oral Literature: Seven Essays. Ed. Joseph J. Duggan. Edinburgh and New York: Scottish Academic Press and Barnes and Noble, 1975. [= Forum for Modern Language Studies, 10, iii:25-40.

Shows that versions of the "Boyhood Deeds" within the Cattle Raid of Cooley provide evidence of oral transmission and illustrate that the narrative structure of the "Ulster Cycle" tales as a whole descends from oral tradition. Concentrates on the multiformity of story-patterns in these prose texts, using Georges Dumezil's observations on comparative IE mythic structures to illuminate the Irish tales.
Area: OI, IE, CP

James Mellard. "Prolegomena to a Study of the Popular Mode in Narrative." Journal of Popular Culture, 6:1-19.

Popular narrative, a bridge between oral and written modes, depends upon formulaic structures (narrative and phraseological both) for its audience appeal. While these formulaic structures, endemic to oral traditions, may be imitated and adapted to various effects in written narrative, the popular mode is ultimately universal.
Area: TH, CN

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Los Romances de América: y otros Estudios. Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe.

A collection of five essays, one on language and the other four on the romancero. The title essay studies traditional romances in America, establishing their existence and relation to the native Spanish tradition. Another defines "poesía tradicional" and "poesía popular" in terms suggestive of elements of modern oralist theory. Another argues against R. Foulché-Delbosc's Essai sur les origines du Romancero (Paris, 1912) and in favor of the greater age and diversity as well as oral character and continuity of the romance.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Poesía juglaresca y juglares: Aspectos de la Historia Literaria y Cultural de España. Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe.

Discusses the juglar, his audience, and his place in the medieval world from about 1130-1480. In the final chapter he looks at the juglar as poet and as a source of modern European literature who worked both in intimate relation to his audience and in a tradition which both permitted and controlled spontaneity.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "La Epica medieval en España y en Francia." Comparative Literature, 4:97-117. Rpt. in his En torno al Poema del Cid. Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana, 1963. pp. 67-94.

A study of the differences between Spanish and French medieval epic in terms of (1) modes of preserving and using history, (2) versification, and (3) the ephemeral nature of Spanish epic as opposed to the more permanent literary nature of OF. Finds that the Spanish epic emphasizes historical accuracy at the expense of literary verisimilitude but remains alive longer in oral tradition than the French.
Area: HI, OF, CP

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "Fórmulas épicas en el Poema del Cid: Cuestión metodica." Romance Philology, 7:261-67. Rpt. in Los godos y la epopeya española: "chansons de geste" y baladas nórdicas. Colección Austral, 1275. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1956, pp. 241-55. Rpt. in his En torno al Poema del Cid. Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana, 1963, pp. 95-105.

Ostensibly a response to E.R. Curtius' Antike Rhetorik und vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, this article finds Curtius guilty of failing to distinguish between "tópicos vulgares," which belong equally to all of the members of a culture, and "tópicos literarios," which are the singular creation of individual literary artists. Demonstrates the formulaic nature of commonplaces that Curtius sees as literary tropes.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. La Chanson de Roland y el neotradicionalismo (orígines de la épica románica). Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. 2nd ed., La Chanson de Roland et la tradition épique des Francs. Trans. I.-M. Cluzel and rev. with René Louis. Paris: A. and J. Picard, 1960.

In "Principes fondamentaux du traditionalisme moderne" (pp. 451-517), he attempts to restore complexity and art to traditional oeuvres presented against a full historical, paleographical, and critical summary. A work often referenced in the individualism-traditionalism controversy.
Area: OF

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "Dos poetas en el Cantar de Mío Cid." Romania, 82:145-200. Rpt. in his En torno al Poema del Cid. Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana, 1963. pp. 107-62.

Assumes two poets behind the making of the Cid, the earlier from San Esteban de Gormaz and the later from Medinaceli. Argues that the former, composing near the time of the historical Cid, was better able to preserve facts, while the latter did not know the historical background and so filled in with his imagination.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "Sobre las variantes del códice rolandiano V4 de Venecia." In Atti del 2deg. Congresso Internazionale della "Societe Rencesvals." Vol. 21 of Cultura Neolatina, pp. 10-19.

During a discussion of editorial difficulties in the Venetian codex of the Roland in which he champions a traditional heritage for medieval French chansons de geste and Spanish cantares de gesta, he observes four classes of variants: (1) whole-verse "variantes de expresión," typical of and essential to oral transmission; (2) modifications resulting from failure or inexactitude of memory; (3) more subtle changes of the "sentido de un verso" by elaboration; and (4) "variantes de refundición," major editorial alterations that affect the overall structure of the poem and produce a new version. Argues for an oral basis with written overlays, and specifically against individualist theory (espec. contra D. McMillan 1961).
Area: OF, HI, CP

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. En Torno al Poema del Cid. Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana.

Reprints earlier and later essays (including 1952 and 1961a) as well as adds a final selection outlining his ideas on the oral versus written issue and the Cid, in which he accepts the probable oral origins of the poem.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "Los cantores épicos yugoeslavos y los occidentales. El Mio Cid y dos refundidores primitivos." Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 31:195-225.

A defense of his theory of oral literature as "fenómeno de colaboración, con trasmisión de tema versificado y con trasfusión de numen" (225) in the light of studies of living oral epic traditions in Yugoslavia and central Asia. Takes issue with Lord in arguing that SC epic practice is a craft sui generis with limited application for understanding medieval poetry. Discriminates between "eastern" and "western" traditions and suggests that SC improvisation in transmission may derive from contact with the Turks of central Asia.
Area: HI, SC, TK, CP

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Romancero hispánico, 2 vols. 2nd ed. Vols. 9-10 of Obras completas de R. Menéndez Pidal. Ed. Diego Catalán Menéndez Pidal. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.

A general study of the romancero, with respect to form, themes, origins, and history. Volume 1 defines the genre in terms of subject, audience, authorship, and cultural roots, with emphasis on origins in national epic, Carolingian borrowings, and fiction. Volume 2 presents the history from before the fourteenth century to the present, making the case for the unity of ancient Iberian and modern traditions.
Area: HI

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Estudios sobre el romancero. Vol. II of Obras completas de R. Menéndez Pidal. Ed. Diego Catalán Menéndez Pidal. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.

Collects Menéndez Pidal's general and theoretical writings on the romancero in eight studies from 1909 to 1961. Looks at various roots and influences on the early history of the genre. His study of branches, forms, and themes anticipates later oralist writings. Also treats the living oral tradition and establishes a geography of the romancero.
Area: HI

Paula Mertens-Fonck. "Structure des passages introduisant le discours direct dans Beowulf." In Mélanges de philologie et de littératures romanes offerts à Jeanne Wathelet-Willem. Liège: Marche Romane. pp. 433-45.

Assembles a taxonomy for introductions to direct discourse which consists of four basic structures and numerous variations on those fundamental forms: "l'expression de ces concepts se caracterise par une variete et une souplesse pratiquement illimitées" (444). Conceives of a group of formulas that corresponds to the basic ideas of speech introduction.
Area: OE

Gordon M. Messing. "On Weighing Achilles' Wingèd Words." Language, 57: 888-900.

In disagreement with P. Friedrich and Redfield 1978, he argues that Homeric heroes do not have their own idiolects, that the oral traditional origin of the epics and the doctrine of ethos preclude that possibility. Also criticizes their sampling technique, reliance on an uncertain textual tradition, and correlation of stylistic criteria. See further P. Friedrich and Redfield 1981.
Area: AG

Allan A. Metcalf. "Ten Natural Animals in Beowulf." Neophilologische Mitteilungen, 64:378-89.

Treats the animals in the Beowulf text from an oral-formulaic perspective (382), with special reference to the three beasts of battle (see Magoun 1955b and Bonjour 1957a)_the raven, eagle, and wolf_as prefigurative of doom.
Area: OE

Allan A. Metcalf. Poetic Diction in the Old English Meters of Boethius. De Proprietatibus Litterarum, Series Practica, 50. The Hague: Mouton.

Describes the Meters poet as working from prose to poetic versions on the basis of a study of formulaic density and "exclusively" poetic words.
Area: OE

H.J. Mette. "Homer 1930-1956." Lustrum, 1:7-86, 319-20. With "Nachträge" in 2 (1957), 294-97, 307f., 4 (1959), 309-16, 5 (1960), 649-56. "Homer 1956-66," 11 (1966), 33-69. "Homer 1966-1971," 15 (1970), 99-129. "Homer 1971-1977," 19 (1976), 5-64.

The continuing Lustrum bibliography on general Homeric studies lists German and many other works with annotations of varying length and specificity.
Area: AG, BB

Richard M. Meyer. Die altgermanische Poesie nach ihren formelhaften Elementen beschrieben. Berlin: W. Hertz.

Examines repetition in the diction of OE and MHG poems at the levels of word, verse, line, and group of lines. Offers definitions of his various types of repetition in a comparative context. An important step in the evolution of formulaic theory in OE and Germanic.
Area: OE, MHG, GM, CP

Ian Michael. "A Comparison of the Use of Epic Epithets in the Poema de mio Cid and the Libro de Alexandre." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 38:32-41.

By comparing the density and function of epithets in the two poems, he argues for an Alexandre not intended for public performance. Sees the epithet used well in many ways in the Cid (filler, variety of phrasing, added adulation, leitmotif, cross-reference, dramatic effect) as opposed to the pedestrian usage in the literate Alexandre. Accepts the idea of oral-formulaic phraseology as active and shaping.
Area: HI

Ian Michael. "Introducción" to his ed., Poema de Mio Cid. Madrid: Clasicos Castalia. pp. 11-64.

In the sections on literary form and poetic language, he describes the Cid as a type of poetry composed only in oral performance. Also notes the presence of formulas, defined according to Parry-Lord orthodoxy, and discusses their connection to orality.
Area: HI

André Michalopoulos. Homer. New York: Twayne Publishers.

In a brief commentary on the Homeric Question (pp. 32-37), he mentions and then dismisses Parry-Lord theory because of the differences in prosody between SC meter and the AG hexameter.
Area: AG

Wolfgang Mieder, ed. International Proverb Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland.

A thoroughly annotated listing of international scholarship from 1800. Contains 2142 entries, together with name, subject, and proverb indexes.
Area: BB, FK

Wolfgang Mieder and Alan Dundes, eds. The Wisdom of Many: Essays on the Proverb. New York: Garland.

Reprinted essays on the proverb, providing overviews and discussions of definitions and of function and meaning in social context, examples of proverbs in literary milieus, individual proverbs, and other subjects, such as the use of proverbs in psychological testing and in modern media.
Area: FK

Franz Miklosich. "Die Darstellung im slavischen Volksepos." Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, 38, Abhandlung 3:1-51.

An early tract on typical structures in folk-poetry: repetitions of all sorts (Wiederholungen), parallelism, and other structures in the Serbo-Croatian, Russian, and Bulgarian traditions.
Area: SC, RU, BU, CP

John S. Miletich. "Narrative Style in Spanish and Slavic Traditional Narrative Poetry: Implications for the Study of the Romance Epic." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 2:109-28.

Reports his analysis of a 4108-line sample taken from traditional texts in Spanish, SC, and Russian and measured against a six-part scheme of categories. Concludes that all texts are 60-75% "essential" or rapid style but that there is also a pronounced "elaborate" or retarding style. Suggests this kind of analysis for determining orality.
Area: HI, RU, SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "The South Slavic Bugarstica and the Spanish Romance: A New Approach to Typology." International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 21:51-69.

Using a six-part stylistic analysis, he examines the SC and Spanish genres for evidence of "elaborate" (anaphoric, parallel, nonessential) versus "essential" repetition. This taxonomy leads to generic distinctions between epic and ballad. Includes a survey of criticism on traditional verse in SC and Spanish.
Area: SC, HI, CP

John S. Miletich. "The Quest for the Formula': A Comparative Reappraisal." Modern Philology, 74:111-23.

Surveys and evaluates studies of formulaic structure and density in a number of poetic traditions, concluding that critics must take more care to maintain a differentiation between formula and formulaic expression, and to allow for the differences among meters in various poetries. Feels that certifiably oral texts collected in the field must be exhaustively analyzed to provide data for judging the orality of medieval and ancient texts of uncertain provenance.
Area: SC, HI, OE, OF, RU, AG, CP

John S. Miletich. "The Poetics of Variation in Oral-Traditional Narrative." Forum at Iowa on Russian Literature, 1:57-69.

Explores repetitive sequences in Serbo-Croatian, Russian, and medieval Spanish narrative, distinguishing a taxonomy of (1) speech repeated as action, (2) action repeated as speech, (3) speech repeated as speech, and (4) action repeated as action. Emphasizes metalinguistic factors in oral narrative and modes of variation possible within oral tradition.
Area: SC, RU, HI, CP

John S. Miletich. "Stilisticke razlike izmedju usmene i pisane knjizevnosti: Savremeni metodoloski pristupi." In Nauni sastanak slavista u Vukove dane: Referati i saopstenja, 13-19. IX 1976. Belgrade: Medjunarodni Slavistiki Centar SR Srbije, 6. Vol. 2 (1977), pp. 117-28. With English summary, p. 128.

A brief review of Parry-Lord oral theory and extensions into Romance literatures. Includes a description of his own analytical method involving the density of "elaborate" (retarding) style as a hallmark of oral style.
Area: SC, OF, HI, CP

John S. Miletich. "Medieval Spanish Epic and European Narrative Traditions." La Corónica, 6:90-96.

Distinguishes between two types of repetitive sequences, the "elaborate" (in which the same idea recurs) and the "essential" (in which it does not). Through a statistical study of over 14,000 lines of medieval Spanish and SC poetry of various genres, he finds that "traditional texts average approximately 33% elaborate style' while the puka texts [in this case, Spanish epics putatively written in imitation of genuine oral style] show an average of about 16%" (93). See further Miletich 1974 etc.
Area: HI, SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "Elaborate Style in South Slavic Oral Narrative and in Kacic-Miosic's Razgovor." In American Contributions to the Eighth International Congress of Slavists (Zagreb and Ljubljana, September 3-9, 1978), vol. 1: Linguistics and Poetics. Ed. Henrik Birnbaum. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. pp. 522-31.

Compares twelve oral heroic songs from a Zagreb archive with twenty poems from the literate and learned Kacic Miosic, the latter written in imitation of oral style. Finds the authentically oral material has more "repetitive groups" and "similar initial-internal-end" repetitions and proposes these characteristics as diagnostic of true oral texts.
Area: SC

John S. Miletich. "Oral-Traditional Style and Learned Literature: A New Perspective." Poetics and Theory of Literature, 3:345-56.

A comparative analysis of (1) oral, (2) "na narodnu" (imitation oral), and (3) written texts from the SC tradition, the sample amounting to eight poems in the heroic decasyllable totalling 629 lines. Sees "elaborate" style repetition as characteristic of oral texts and responsible for the flavor of orality in the na narodnu material.
Area: SC

John S. Miletich. "Shamanistic Features in Oral-Traditional Narrative." Language & Style, 11:223-25.

Discovers shamanistic elements underlying the representation of mother-figures in a sixteenth-century Spanish romance and an eighteenth-century South Slavic bugarstica.
Area: HI, SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "Etudes formulaires et épopée européenne." In Charlemagne et l'épopée romane: Actes du VIIe Congrès International de la Société Rencesvals. Ed. Madeleine Tyssens and Claude Thiry, vol. 2. Liège: University of Liège. pp. 423-31.

Reviews the basic premises of the Parry-Lord theory of formulaic diction, noting particularly the lack of statistical criteria sufficient to discriminate between Lord's categories of "oral," "conventional," and "imitation oral" texts.
Area: SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "South Slavic and Hispanic Versified Narrative: A Progress Report on One Approach." In El Romancero hoy: Historia, Comparatismo, Bibliografía crítica. Ed. Samuel G. Armistead, Antonio Sánchez Romeralo, and Diego Catalán. Madrid: Gráficas Cóndor. pp. 131-35.

Chronicles the results of an analysis of 14,000 verse lines of Peninsular Spanish romances, Judeo-Spanish romances, South Slavic bugarstica poems, heroic songs in SC (deseterac poems), and Russian byliny: "elaborate" style or retarding repetitions are about twice as frequent in the traditional as in the learned texts.
Area: HI, SC, RU, CP

John S. Miletich. "Hispanic and South Slavic Traditional Narrative Poetry and Related Forms: A Survey of Comparative Studies (1829-1977)." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983, pp. 375-89.

A thorough review of previous research and a summary of the author's own work to date.
Area: HI, SC, CP, BB

John S. Miletich. "Repetition and Aesthetic Function in the Poema de mio Cid and South-Slavic Oral and Literary Epic." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 58:189-96.

Basing his remarks on 15,000 lines of Spanish, SC, and Russian narrative poetry from medieval times to the present, he finds a clear difference in types of recurrent diction between the certainly oral Pjesma od Bagdata from the Parry Collection on the one hand and the literary epic Smrt Smailage engia on the other. Postulates that the Cid is an example of puka knjizevnost, a "text composed in writing in which oral tradition has to some extent played a part, and [which] was destined for oral diffusion" (194).
Area: HI, SC, RU, CP

John S. Miletich. "Oral Literature and Puka knjizevnost': Toward a Generic Description of Medieval Spanish and Other Narrative Traditions." In Folklore and Oral Communication (Folklor und mundliche Kommunikation). Special issue of Narodna umjetnost (Zagreb), 19:155-66.

Proposes a complex model for oral and oral-derived texts in various traditions, with emphasis on SC: "folk-narrative," "literary composition without writing," and "literary composition with writing." Differentiates each of these categories further on the basis of degree and kind of formulaic microstructure. Distinguishes true oral traditional literature or folk narrative (usmena knjizevnost) from pucka knjizevnost, a popular type of folk literature based on oral models but involving writing. Applies this taxonomy to medieval Spanish and other traditions.
Area: HI, SC, CP

John S. Miletich. "Usmena knjizevnost i puka knjizevnost': Prema generikom prikazu srednjevjekovne spanjolske i ostalih narativnih tradicija." Narodna umjetnost (Zagreb), 19:171-83.

A SC version of Miletich 1981b.
Area: HI, SC, CP

Joseph C. Miller, ed. The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Hamden, CN: Archon.

A collection of essays on the interrelationship between oral tradition and history. Separately annotated are Berger, Cohen, Harms, Henige, Miller 1980b, Packard, Schecter, Sigwalt, Vansina, Yoder.
Area: AF

Joseph C. Miller. "Introduction: Listening for the African Past." In his The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Hamden, CN: Archon, pp. 1-60.

Claims that the only real expression of the African past survives in oral, not written, form. Thus, true evidence is often indirect. Particularizes the definition of oral tradition as a narrative intended to describe eras before the time of the person composing or relating it. Offers a background of African oral tradition, defining terms, concepts, and structures.
Area: AF

D. Gary Miller. Homer and the Ionian Epic Tradition: Some Phonic and Phonological Evidence Against an Aeolic "Phase." Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 38. Innsbruck: Universität Innsbruck.

In seeking to prove that Homeric epic is fundamentally Ionic in origin, he argues that "the Aeolic songs and tales were merely input into the epic sagas being developed by the displaced Pylians and Ionians. They all had a formulaic tradition of at least Mycenaean date, and the layers of Ionic forms stretch from that period to the time of Homer, proving that there was no time in which the tradition was exclusively Achaean' or Aeolic. The Ionic tradition was concurrent with the others and it was the blending of the three by the Ionian bards that propagated the multidialectal epic Kunstsprache that culminated in the massive works of Homer and Hesiod." (pp. 147-48). Part I works toward this conclusion by treating the composite nature of epic (with hypotheses on the relation of Gilgamesh to the Iliad), the epic language, the nature of the formula, and acoustic patterning. Part II examines the phonological history of various epic forms. A sizable bibliography (pp. 154-92) is appended.
Area: AG, SU, HT, SC, SK, IE, CP

D. Gary Miller. Improvisation, Typology, Culture, and "The New Orthodoxy": How "Oral" is Homer? Washington, DC: University Press of America.

Although sometimes informally phrased or explained (e.g., he analyzes his own oral-formulaic composition, "The Saga of Bjorn Borg"), the arguments presented here serve as a good introduction to oral theory and Homer, and occasionally go a step beyond prevailing theory to new insights. Includes discussion of formula, theme, and story pattern, improvisation, and specific critical problems in the Iliad and Odyssey. Concludes that "all of the arguments advanced for Homer writing are irrelevant," that "the ancients regarded him as a poet singer among poet singers, and there is no reason to dispute that" (p. 101).
Area: AG, KR, SC, CP

Nada Milosevi-Djordjevi. "Prose Forms of Oral Literature." In The Folk Arts of Yugoslavia: Papers Presented at a Symposium (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 1976). Ed. Walter W. Kolar. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Tamburitzans Institute of Folk Arts. pp. 103-16.

A brief and convenient survey of oral prose forms in SC tradition, written in English by a leading Yugoslav authority.
Area: SC

William W. Minton. "Homer's Invocations of the Muses: Traditional Patterns." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 91:292-309.

Finds the invocations characterized by three features: (1) they are essentially questions expecting an answer; (2) the information requested is in catalog form; and (3) "all the invocations introduce a clearly defined sequence-pattern, beginning with an initial crisis and leading through a period of struggle to final defeat; this defeat, furthermore, always falls on the person or persons in whose behalf the invocation was made, and these are always the protagonists" (293). Shows that the principle is a traditional pattern rather than a conscious artistic design by tracing the placement and logic of the invocations, particularly in the Iliad.
Area: AG

William W. Minton. "Invocation and Catalogue in Hesiod and Homer." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 93:188-212.

Argues for a traditional association of invocation and catalog standing in a question-and-answer relationship, with the more conservative manifestations in Hesiod and comparatively innovative forms in Homer.
Area: AG

William W. Minton. "The Fallacy of the Structural Formula." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 96:241-53.

Contra Russo 1963, he contends that the extension of the term "formula" in Homeric studies to include structural features such as syntactic and metrical preferences for word and phrase elements invalidates much of the statistical work as a test for orality. Substantiates this claim by finding a near-parity in the incidence of various structural features in samplings from the Iliad and Apollonius' Argonautica.
Area: AG

William W. Minton. "The Frequency and Structuring of Traditional Formulas in Hesiod's Theogony." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 79:25-54.

Following the Parry-Lord methodology and introducing certain refinements, he executes a careful statistical study of formulaic density in two 25-line passages from the Theogony. After a further analysis of metrical features, he concludes that "Hesiod was indeed using the traditional language of the hexameter" (51), which he heightened through a unique and individual poetic talent.
Area: AG

William W. Minton. A Concordance to the Hesiodic Corpus. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

A line-context concordance of the Theogony, Works and Days, Shield, and Fragments, modeled on the Prendergast-Marzullo and Dunbar-Marzullo concordances of the Homeric poems.
Area: AG, CC

András Mohay. "Schriftlichkeit und Mündlichkeit in der byzantinischen Literatur." Acta Classica (Debrecen), 10-11:175-81.

Argues that the formulaic character of the phraseology cannot be used as proof of the oral transmission of Byzantine folk literature. Interprets the archaic linguistic character of numerous formulas as a sign of written origin and contends that formulas function to facilitate versification and that they can also be employed by poets who write.
Area: BG

Robert Mondi. "The Homeric Cyclopes: Folktale, Tradition, and Theme." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 113:17-38.

Understanding the sources of the Odyssey to be oral traditional, he argues that the apparent inconsistencies in the characterization of Polyphemos and the Kyklopes are attributable to a diachronic displacement: "the man-eating ogre Polyphemos stems from a folk tradition which is not specifically Greek; but the Kyklopes themselves_the storm-demons who arm Zeus with the thunderbolt_clearly are products of Greek mythological speculation" (22).
Area: AG, FK

Pierre-Eric Monnin. "Poetic Improvements in the Old English Meters of Boethius." English Studies, 60:346-60.

Basing his claim on analysis of formulaic and thematic patterns, he contends that the Meters poet was no mere pedestrian versifier of a prose original but rather a creative poet working within the OE poetic tradition.
Area: OE

James T. Monroe. "Oral Composition in Pre-Islamic Poetry." Journal of Arabic Literature, 3:1-53.

Feels that the long debate over the authenticity of the so-called pre-Islamic poetry has reached an impasse which might be resolved by recognizing the tradition as oral in the Parry-Lord sense. External evidence from the early Islamic period and the known characteristics of more recent but related "popular" verse confirms this view. Internal evidence generated from a statistical study of formulaic density also bears on the problem (differentiates between pure formula, formulaic system, structural formula, and conventionalized language). Finds various phraseological patterns three times more common in pre-Islamic than in subsequent poetry of certainly literary origin. The early poems are short and seem to be fixed texts rather than improvised creations.
Area: AR

James T. Monroe. "Formulaic Diction and the Common Origins of Romance Lyric Traditions." Hispanic Review, 43:341-50.

Argues that verbal repetitions exhibiting formulaic qualities in the Galician canciones de amigo, Castilian villancicos, Mozarabic .ar>>gas, and OF refrains mark these popular lyrics as traditional. While formulaic flexibility in the love lyric genre and the ubiquity of literary pastiches make a determination of orality for extant texts impossible, the four poetic traditions must have originated in a common and genuinely oral Vulgate Latin tradition.
Area: HI, OF, LT, CP

William L. Montell. The Saga of Coe Ridge: A Study in Oral History. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Rpt. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.

A study of oral history in a small black colony in Cumberland County, Kentucky, this volume also contains an interesting discussion of the interrelation of oral tradition and historical fact (espec. pp. vii-xxi). Parallel to works on oral theory, it resembles in methodology the investigations of Vansina (e.g. 1965).
Area: AA, US, FK

Thomas Montgomery. "Grammatical Causality and Formulism in the PMC." In Studies in Honor of Lloyd A. Kasten. Ed. Theodore S. Beardsley, Jr. et al. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. pp. 185-98.

Enlarges the concept of the epic formula from lexical to grammatical frames, finding many more instances of patterned thought than are usually acknowledged. Offers subordinating or relational words as an example of the larger formulaic consciousness evident in the Cid. Assumes a tradition of composing oral poets and audiences.
Area: HI

Thomas Montgomery. "The Poema de Mío Cid': Oral Art in Transition." In Mio Cid Studies. Ed. Alan D. Deyermond. London: Tamesis. pp. 91-112.

Argues that oral tradition, which grows out of the essentially mythic mode of perception typical of preliterate man, informs various aspects and passages of the Cid, a work he views as transitional between oral and literary art.
Area: HI

Willard B. Moore. Molokan Oral Tradition: Legends and Memorates of an Ethnic Sect. University of California Publications: Folklore Studies, 28. Berkeley: University of California Press.

A historical and anthropological study of the Molokans, "an outgrowth of the Sectarian movement in Russia which arose in the fifteenth century" (p. 5) and which spread eventually to Canada and then to California. Surveys the various genres of oral prose narrative from a structural and functional point of view.
Area: MK

Charles Moorman. "The Origins of the Alliterative Revival." Southern Quarterly, 7:345-71.

His case for a genetic connection between OE and the fourteenth-century Alliterative Revival involves the hypothesis of an OE oral tradition surfacing in an early ME popular tradition (epitomized by Layamon), and that intermediate step giving way eventually to the Revival poetry.
Area: OE, ME, CP

Shelomo Morag. "Oral Tradition as a Source of Linguistic Information." In Substance and Structure of Language. Ed. Jaan Puhvel. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 127-46.

Categorizes oral language traditions, here conceived as the transmission of essentially fixed texts with distortions accumulating from various causes, and establishes parameters for "the evaluation of orally transmitted linguistic information relating to a past stage in the history of the language" (129). Draws examples from a variety of Asian, African, and European language traditions, with concentration on Hebrew and Arabic.
Area: HB, AR, CP

Maria Moranti. "Formule metriche nelle iscrizioni greche arcaiche." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 13:7-23.

Studies the AG votive and sepulchral inscriptions to demonstrate the presence of typical hexameter formulas whose metrical scheme is coincident with meters in lyric poetry.
Area: AG

J. Morawski. "Les Formules rimées de la langue espagnole." Revista de filología española, 14:113-33.

Includes a listing of Spanish phrases with phonological and syntactic patterns, with a brief consideration of their effect. See further Morawski 1937.
Area: HI

J. Morawski. "Les Formules allitérées de la langue espagnole." Revista de filología española, 24:121-61.

A continuation of Morawski 1927, with stress on alliterative formulas, using the same three categories: (1) les mots composés, (2) les formules proprement dites, and (3) les formules mixtes.
Area: HI

Gareth Morgan. "Cretan Poetry: Sources and Inspiration." Kretika Chronika, 14:7-68.

In Chapter 2 (pp. 44-68), he discusses the oral transmission of the Digenis Akritas epic, noting the existence of a performance text (or one very near an original performance), episodic structure, narrative inconsistencies, and the analogy with the Yugoslav guslar.
Area: BG, SC, CP

H.F. Morris. The Heroic Recitations of the Bahima of Ankole. Pref. by A.T. Hatto. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Contains examples of the two types of heroic recitation among this Ugandan people: the ekyevugo, a poem on one's own exploits in battle or those of one's countrymen, and the ekirahiro, praising one's cattle. Includes a chapter on structure (mainly phraseological) and performance characteristics by the author, as well as a comparatively based introduction by Hatto.
Area: AF

H.F. Morris. "East African: The Bahima Praise Poems." In Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Volume One: The Traditions. Ed. by A.T. Hatto. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 9. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, pp. 345-76.

A five-part overview of the traditions surrounding the praise poem genre of the Bahima tribes of Uganda and Tanzania. The first part, "The Background," provides information regarding Bahima political, religious, social, and linguistic characteristics in the kingdom of Ankole. The second part, "The Literary Tradition of the Bahima," discusses the oral literary tradition and its mode of performance. The third part, "The Nature of the Praise Poems," describes the two categories of the genre_those composed by men and those composed by women_and delineates their characteristics, providing numerous examples in translation. The fourth part, "The Development of the Tradition of Praise Poetry," discusses the creation and transmission of the oral literature of the Bahima and the adaptation of its traditional patterns to contemporary material. Part V, "An Appreciation of Some Examples," presents three examples of Bahina praise poetry (one a 76-line ekyevugo on the Second World War) with annotations and critical commentary.
Area:

James F. Morris. "`Dream Scenes' in Homer, A Study in Variation." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 113:39-54.

In answer to Arend's (1933) and Gunn's (1971) charges of Homer's clumsiness or lack of pattern in the "dream scenes," he attempts "to show that Homer's variation of the description, likeness, and standing elements in these scenes is typologically meaningful and consistent" (40). The conclusion reached is that Homer is a skillful literary craftsman "firmly in control of his traditional forms" (53).
Area: AG

Dietz-Rüdiger Moser. "Kritik der oralen Tradition: Bemerkungen zum Problem der Lied- und Erzählungspopularisierung." In Folk Narrative Research: Some Papers Presented at the VI Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. Ed. Juha Pentikäinen and Tuula Juurikka. Studia Fennica: Review of Finnish Linguistics and Anthropology, 20. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. pp. 209-21.

In addition to a brief review of oral theory, he presents several criticisms of the concept of oral tradition. For example, he asks whether oral transmission is really a generic feature, since it has been demonstrated in folk prose as well as folk poetry, and also whether one can seriously consider oral tradition a significant avenue for probing historical realities.
Area: TH, FK

Dietz-Rüdiger Moser. "Die Homerische Frage und das Problem der mündlichen Überlieferung aus volkskundlicher Sicht." Fabula, 20:116-36.

Applies a folkloristic perspective to Homer's Odyssey by reference to the international tale-type, recorded for example in the United States in 1956, of "The Sailor Who Went Inland." Suggests that the ubiquitousness of such traditional patterns offers an insight into the Homeric Question and Parry-Lord theory (espec. 123-29).
Area: AG, US, FK, CP

Carroll Moulton. "Similes in the Iliad." Hermes, 102:381-97.

Finds the Iliadic similes to be of about the same chronological period as the rest of the poem (in contrast to the many scholars who argue that the similes are later) and also able to furnish evidence of how a great poet may contribute "from his own genius to his traditional inheritance" (396). Feels that the juxtaposition of certain similes may not be incompatible with oral tradition, but that "there is too little evidence to prove the oral nature of the similes along these lines" (397).
Area: AG

Carroll Moulton. Similes in the Homeric Poems. Hypomnemata: Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu ihrem Nachleben, Heft 49. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

Understands an oral tradition behind the Homeric poems and therefore the similes within them, but stresses the need to recognize the poet's sophistication in composition (pp. 11-17). Discusses the portrait of the oral bard in "The Singer and the Hero" (pp. 145-53).
Area: AG

Carroll Moulton. "Homeric Metaphor." Classical Philology, 74:279-93.

Through a study of sample metaphors in context, he emphasizes their variety and then disputes Parry's (1931) general dismissal of Homeric metaphor as (1) usually restricted to a single word, (2) a "casual poetic device," (3) often vague or problematic in meaning, and (4) often fixed and therefore semantically vacuous.
Area: AG

Isidoro Muñoz Valle. Investigaciones sobre el estilo formular epico y sobre la lengua de Homero. Valencia: Editorial Bello.

A study of formulaic language in the AG epic, with emphasis on specific Homeric formulas, similes, synonyms, and metrical matters.
Area: AG

Leonard C. Muellner. The Meaning of Homeric eIxomai through its Formulas. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Band 13. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Innsbruck.

After a review of contemporary debate over the meaning(s) of eIxomai in Homer and a sketch of the methodology he proposes, Muellner presents a stylistic analysis of all Homeric instances of the word, establishing separate sacral ("pray") and secular ("say [proudly, accurately, contentiously]") denotations. Distinguishes the two on the basic of formulas, contexts, morphology, and function. A third legal context is described more briefly. Final chapter demonstrates the Indo-European origin of all three meanings, that the word first meant "say to win out over the speech of a competitor" (p. 140), and that the three descendant concepts are preserved by the traditional formulaic medium of Homeric diction.
Area: AG, IE

Matija Murko. "Die Volksepik der bosnischen Mohammedaner." Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, 19:13-30. Rpt. in Europaische Heldendichtung. Ed. Klaus von See. Wege der Forschung, Band 500. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978. pp. 385-98.

In addition to discussing the origin and history of contemporary Slavic epic in Bosnia and Hercegovina, he suggests that this oral tradition of epic presents interesting possibilities for the comparative study of Homeric and other epic traditions. An extremely early insight into a comparative approach that will develop fully only twenty years later.
Area: SC, AG, CP

Matija Murko. Bericht über phonografische Aufnahmen epischer, meist mohammedanischer Volkslieder im nordwestlichen Bosnien im Sommer 1912. Berichte der Phonogramm-Archivs- Kommission der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 30. Vienna: Alfred Hölder. Rpt. in Anzeiger derphilosophisch-historischen Klasse, 8:58-75.

A report on, with individual descriptions of, 46 recordings of oral folk songs by 20 singers made by the author during the summer of 1912 in northwest Bosnia. Notes the limitations on the length of recorded material because of the equipment and remarks the dialectal idiosyncrasies among the singers. Regions covered include Cazin, Biha, Kulen Vakuf, Krupa, Petrovac, and Prijedor.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. Bericht über eine Bereisung von Nordwestbosnien und der angrenzenden Gebiete von Kroatien und Dalmatien behufs Erforschung der Volksepik der bosnischen Mohammedaner. Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch- historische Klasse, Band 173, Abhandlung 3. Vienna: Alfred Hölder.

A summary of an expedition to northwest Bosnia and the bordering regions of Croatia and Dalmatia regarding the oral folk epic of the Bosnian Moslems. Maintains that there exist two types of epic among this group: the old heroic songs and songs about important events in Bosnian history. Also reports on the age range of guslari, the locales for performance, the instruments employed for accompaniment, the audience, and the poetic language.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. Bericht über eine Reise zum Studium der Volksepik in Bosnien und Herzegowina im Jahre 1913. Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch-historische Klasse, Band 176, Abhandlung 2. Vienna: Alfred Holder.

Reports on a trip intended to determine the eastern boundaries of the Krajina (border) type of Moslem oral folk epic but cut short by an outbreak of cholera. Finds Hercegovina the classical heartland of epic song, with the tradition strongly continued by Moslems, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholics. Relates his surprise over the intermixing of Christian and Moslem singers in performance and describes their instruments. Notes that the Catholic songs come largely from books, while those by Eastern Orthodox guslari deal with very recent topics (such as the Russo-Japanese War and even the Balkan wars). Singers come from all walks of life, although most were agricultural workers of some kind; some Moslem singers were gypsies. Includes detailed descriptions of the contemporary state of oral epic in Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. Bericht über phonografische Aufnahmen epischer Volkslieder im mittleren Bosnien und in der Herzegowina im Sommer 1913. Mitteilung der Phonogramm-Archivs-Kommission, 37. Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch- historische Klasse, Band 179, Abhandlung 1. Vienna: Alfred Hölder.

Reports on his August-September 1913 trip to record oral folk songs in the areas of Sarajevo, Mostar,
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "Neues über südslavische Volksepik." Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur, 22:273-96. Rpt. in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 118-52.

A condensation of his earlier accounts of his fieldwork. Among other matters he concludes that all SC oral epic songs were in reality sung or dictated only once, an opinion he bases on variation in performance.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "L'Etat actuel de la poésie populaire épique yougoslave." Le Monde Slave, 5:321-51.

After a history of references to and collections of SC oral epic that includes mention of Hektorovi, Kacic-Miosic, Fortis, Kopitar, Karadzic, Gesemann, Marjanovic, and Hormann (as well as Bajamonti and Feri, who made comparisons with Homer as early as the eighteenth century), he focuses on his main subject: "de me rendre compte de la manière dont vit la poésie épique populaire, de voir qui sont les chanteurs, pour qui, quand et comment ils chantent, s'il nait encore des chants populaires et pourquoi la poesie populaire disparaît et meurt" (328-39). Notes the common store of oral narrative among the many ethnic groups; describes his field trips through 1924; reports that the tradition survives best in Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro; discusses the professional and amateur singers and their instruments (if any); disputes the romantic conception of the blind singer and notes the existence of female guslari; and comments on the singer's learning process, the role of printed versions of songs, and the process of acquiring new material. Reports on the usual occasions for oral performance, the singer's ability to shorten or lengthen a song at will depending on the nature of his audience, the variables associated with performance (such as pauses), and the role of repetition. Describes the typical sequence of instrumental flourish, prelude, and the beginning of the narrative; the pace of composition (16-20 verses per minute); recomposition rather than memorization (341); pressure toward modernization; combination of poems (345); the question of historical truth; and the reasons for the death of oral tradition (chiefly that the content of the songs is no longer meaningful and that modern instruction has intervened). An important historical note: this paper is the "texte amplifié et complété des conférences faites à la Sorbonne le 23, 24, et 25 mai [1928] (321, n.1); those lectures provided an important stimulus for Parry as he finished his theses (1928a, b) and began to make the step from a demonstrably traditional Homeric poetry to an oral epic tradition.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. La Poésie populaire épique en Yougoslavie an début du XXe siècle. Travaux publies par l'Institut d'Etudes Slaves, 10. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion.

First section appeared as Murko 1928. Starts with a brief history of references to and collections of SC oral epic, the former as early as the seventh century, and notes that "cette poésie épique, qui, avant même d'etre universellement connue, était comparée a celle d'Ossian et d'Homère, offre des analogies avec les oeuvres antiques et jette quelque lumière sur la poésie épique populaire grecque et sur celle des peuples romanes et germaniques" (p. 5). Includes a geography of epic singing in the region, discussion of Christian and Moslem traditions and their intermixing, and extended comments on the nature of oral performance, the singers, their repertoires, and the disappearance of epic singing. Observes that the singers numbered, among many amateurs, "de vrais professionels qui voyageaient de l'une à l'autre des cours de la noblesse musulmane, y restant des semaines et des mois pour en divertir le maître et les hôtes (p. 11). Also covers the learning process undergone by guslari, the most common occasions for oral performance (fêtes rituelles et familiales among the Christians, Ramazan among Moslems), usual length of songs, relationships between singer and audience, and traditional structure: "Les chanteurs retiennent ces chants si longs grâce aux répétitions épiques bien connues, utilisées par exemple pour les messages, et à divers clichés destinés à célébrer les beautés féminines, les héros, les costumes, les chevaux, les armes, les duels, etc." (p. 18). Distinguishes between memorization and re-creation (p. 21). Offers various sociohistorical reasons for the demise of oral epic singing, none of which explicitly includes writing and reading. Part II (pp. 34-52) is comprised of plates and brief descriptions of guslari from all parts of Yugoslavia, Part III of guslari from the Sandzak of Novi Pazar. An extremely important early work and a pillar of oral theory. Very frequently quoted by Parry.
Area: SC, CP

Matija Murko. "Auf den Spuren der Volksepik durch Jugoslavien." Slavische Rundschau, 3:173-83.

A valuable summary covering his fieldwork on oral folk epic throughout Yugoslavia. Began in 1909, 1912, and 1913 to study SC tradition as a living phenomenon in southwestern Croatia, the mountain area of Dalmatia, western and central Bosnia, and all of Hercegovina. World War I prevented further expeditions until 1924, when he journeyed through the Sandzak of Novi Pazar, and 1927, when he worked mostly in Dalmatia. His best results were in Montenegro and Hercegovina, and his longest songs (several hundred to 1000 verses) were collected from Moslem singers during the winter season when the demands of farming had slackened. Discusses the various terms for "singer" and the process of oral performance (176), reports encountering two female singers, and notes the age range of guslari as 12 to 89 (although boys from 6-10 were already learning the craft). Observes that some singers learned to read by themselves, and that those who preserve the oral tradition in a pure state are in the minority. Sees the influences of modern media as detrimental to the tradition of oral epic.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "Nouvelles observations sur l'état actuel de la poésie épique en Yougoslavie." Revue des études slaves, 13:16-50.

Continues the survey in Murko 1929 after a trip undertaken in 1930-31. Notes the influence on SC oral tradition of printed sources, family traditions, the instrument used to accompany the sung poetry, occasions for oral performance, sociolinguistic context, the question of historicity, and the formation of new songs.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "Nekoliko zadaa u prouavanju narodne epike." Prilozi prousavanja narodne poezije, 5:2-5. With German summary, 5.

A brief geographical report on the survival of oral epic singing in SC, with emphasis on the Moslem tradition in Montenegro, Hercegovina, the Sandzak area, and Serbia. Stresses the need for collaborative work among field collectors, metricians, and ethnomusicologists. Suggests comparisons of collected material with the Vuk texts of the nineteenth century, but notes the inherent problem of the lack of information on geography, authorship, and editorial activity in the latter.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. "Za narodnom epikom na Kosovu." Prilozi, 18:565-76.

A report on his field trip in 1930 to the Kosovo region. Describes the singers he encountered, the nature of their repertoires, and the predominant use of the gusle as the chosen instrument for accompaniment.
Area: SC

Matija Murko. Tragom srpsko-hrvatske narodne epike: Putovanja u godinama 1930-32, 2 vols. Djela Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti i Umjetnosti, knj. 41-42. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti.

The summary and single most important work in the Czech ethnographer's bibliography. Contains sections on his 1930-32 fieldwork itinerary; an inventory of various areas where oral epic persisted; the conception of folk epic; the singers (by region, both male and female); blind guslari; different kinds of epic songs (including comparison with Albanian and Turkish cycles); manuscript sources for oral material; printed editions; instruments used for accompaniment; a cappella performance; the place, time, and function of epic singing; oral performance, with notes on form and structure; language; geography, history, and international motifs; cultural history; and the origin of folk epic and its present decline. Includes (pp. 381-400) some remarks on the morphology of formulaic diction under performance conditions. A treasury of firsthand observations on the making of oral poetry in an epic tradition.
Area: SC, AB, TK, CP

Gerard Murphy. Saga and Myth in Ancient Ireland. Dublin: Cultural Relations Committee of Ireland.

A brief monograph on Irish oral tradition from early medieval times that includes sections on bards and storytelling (structure, oral performance, manuscript records), mythological tales, tales of the heroic age, tales of kings, and later developments.
Area: OI

Alois Musil. The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins. American Geographical Society, Oriental Explorations and Studies, no. 6. New York: American Geographical Society.

Contains an extensive chapter (10, pp. 283-328) on poetry or kasâjed, which is composed and transmitted orally. Notes that the Bedouins all contribute to this poetic store, and that they have a number of genres: lament, praise-poem, lyric, longer narrative, gnomic poem, and riddle.
Area: AR

Tauno F. Mustanoja. "The Presentation of Ancient Germanic Poetry_Looking for Parallels." Neuphilologus Mitteilungen, 60:1-11.

Reviews three pieces of evidence on the manner of recitation in Finnish runo-singing (popular poetry, possibly "invented" orally). Suggests an analogy with the OE Widsith and early Germanic poetic recitation.
Area: FN, OE, GM, CP

Tauno F. Mustanoja. "The Unnamed Woman's Song of Mourning over Beowulf and the Tradition of Ritual Lamentation." Neuphilologus Mitteilungen, 68:1-27.

Agreeing with Pope's restoration of Geatisc neowle in Beowulf 3150b, he contends that the woman referred to was fulfilling a traditional part of the funerary ritual: a formal lamentation for the dead hero. On analogy with other IE practices, he posits a separate oral tradition of ritual mourning in OE.
Area: OE, CP

Sharon Myers-Ivey. "Repetitive Patterns for Introducing Speech in the Manuscript Tradition of the Prise d'Orange." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 8:51-65.

Undertakes a formulaic analysis of the three versions of the Prise, with special emphasis on the "articulated prolepsis," a network of phraseology involving (1) a perception, (2) a reaction, and (3) speech. Finds partial confirmation of Regnier (1966) that the C-version is a deliberate remaniement and the D-text closest to the oral style in its percentage and texture of formulaic diction, but questions the "literary" status of text AB and the hypothesis of a lost archetype. Views the textual problem as one of oral transmission of multiple texts with no true "original."
Area: OF

John L. Myres. Homer and His Critics. Ed. and cont. D.H.F. Gray. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

A study of the history of Homeric criticism, stressing the archaeological perspective, from antiquity to the current state of affairs. Includes discussion of Parry's work and oral poetry (pp. 239-44).
Area: AG, BB

Michael N. Nagler. "Towards a Generative View of the Oral Formula." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 98:269-311.

Understands verbal formulas as the surface structures generated from traditional, preverbal Gestalten. Thus certain phrases may be related as allomorphs, stemming from a preconscious nexus and looking back to that source for their ultimate meaning, although realized within the synchronic constraints of meter, euphony, and so on. Subsumes the usual polarities by arguing that "all is traditional on the generative level, all unique on the level of performance" (311) and demonstrates that this view of oral-formulaic composition demands that one consider aesthetics alongside structure in studying the traditional character of the Homeric texts. A ground-breaking article and an important development in the history of oral studies. Revised and expanded as Chapters 1-2 of Nagler 1974 (pp. 1-63).
Area: AG

Michael N. Nagler. "Oral Poetry and the Question of Originality in Literature." In Actes du Ve Congrès de l'Association Internationale de Litterature Comparee. Ed. Nikola Banasevic. Belgrade and Amsterdam: Beogradski Grafiki Zavod and Swets & Zeitlinger. pp. 451-59. Rpt. in German in Homer: Tradition und Neuerung. Ed. Joachim Latacz. Wege der Forschung, Band 463. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1979. pp. 387-402.

Finds no generally accepted theory and definition of the oral formula. Proposes the preverbal Gestalt and family of allomorphs (a model developed further in Nagler 1967 and 1974) as a productive way to view the generation of traditional phraseology and to avoid the usual typology that separates the traditional from the original.
Area: AG

Michael N. Nagler. Spontaneity and Tradition: A Study in the Oral Art of Homer. Berkeley: University of California Press.

A full exposition of his generative theory of Homeric oral composition, the first two chapters (on the "traditional phrase") constituting a revision and expansion of Nagler 1967. Extends the concepts of Gestalt and allomorph from phraseology to narrative structure ("motif" and "motif sequence" are the patterns), stressing the aesthetics of oral poetry in its spontaneous rendering of traditional ideas. Explores what Lord identifies as the WDR (Withdrawal-Devastation-Return) story-pattern in the Iliad and the generic/particular relationship in Iliad 24. Argues that "like all spontaneous poetry at its best, repetition is an opportunity for complementary potentialities to be realized and new connections brought to the fore" (p. 194). A short appendix on comparative structures in OE is added.
Area: AG, OE, OF, SK, CP

Michael N. Nagler. "`Dread Goddess Endowed with Speech'." Archeological News, 6:77-85.

Interprets the formula deinO yeUw aEdÆessa, applied in the Odyssey to both Circe and Kalypso, as a generic epithet tying these two figures to the IE dawn-goddess. The last element connotes the ability to prophesy and to aid in the hero's return. Sees Penelope as a domestic hypostasis of the same mythic figure.
Area: AG, SU, IE, CP

Michael N. Nagler. "Entretiens avec Tirésias." Classical World, 74:89-106.

Concentrates on the nekuia episode of Odyssey 11 in demonstrating the necessity of considering the bearing of the traditional IE mythic background on the immediate performance of the Odyssey that survives to us. Sees Teiresias as answering two questions: (1) how to return home and (2) who Odysseus is. Claims the nekuia reveals Odysseus as a hero escaping death goddesses, a mantic prophet escaping a love goddess, and an adventurer now eager to return.
Area: AG, IE, CP

Gregory Nagy. "Phaethon, Sappho's Phaon, and the White Rock of Leukas." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 77:137-77.

Applying the diachronic method, he works from a variety of references and allusions in early Greek poetry toward a common mythic form that they figure forth. Sappho's leap from the white rock of Leukas into the sea for the love of Phaon and Phaethon's plunge into Eridanos are shown as sharing a common solar motif associated with themes of death and rebirth.
Area: AG

Gregory Nagy. Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 33. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

By looking back along the evolutionary axis of oral traditional phraseology, from the Homeric formula kldeg.ow êfyiton and its Sanskrit cognate formula ráva(s) áksitam toward a common IE parent phrase, he posits that, originally, traditional diction gave rise to meter, that formula generated meter from a diachronic point of view. Also reverses the usual chronology of AG epic and lyric, assigning historical primacy to the latter, and derives the Homeric hexameter from a pherecratic prototype. Explains kldeg.ow êfyiton as the singer's designation for his own song, the name for heroic deeds memorialized in epic. A very influential monograph.
Area: AG, SK, IE, CP

Gregory Nagy. "The Name of Achilles: Etymology and Epic." In Studies in Greek, Italic, and Indo-European Linguistics Offered to Leonard R. Palmer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, June 5, 1976. Ed. Anna M. Davies and Wolfgang Meid. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Band 16. Vienna: Ernst Becvar. pp. 209-37.

A textual examination of traditional thematic correlations and naming in support of Palmer's etymology of Achilles: *Ax-la+/-Wow, from êxow ("woe") and laOw ("people"). Considers formulaic associations of these and other key words in demonstrating the thematic and plot structure of episodes in the Iliad and of the poem as a whole. Understands "the genius behind our Iliad and its artistic unity is in large part the Greek epic tradition itself" (216). Constrasts local cultic and Panhellenic epic traditions, viewing the Homeric epics as the product of a general pan-nationalistic movement in the eighth century B.C.
Area: AG, IE

Gregory Nagy. "Formula and Meter." In Oral Literature and the Formula. Ed. Benjamin A. Stolz and Richard S. Shannon. Ann Arbor: Center for the Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies, University of Michigan. pp. 239-60.

After a brief review of Parry's thinking, he argues that the formula is not bound by the metrical rules of the hexameter, but that from a diachronic perspective formula generates meter and not vice versa. Goes on to contend that the themes of oral poetry govern the formulas and all other kinds of fixity in oral poetry, defining the formula as "a fixed phrase conditioned by the traditonal themes of oral poetry" (p. 251). Advocates complementing the too prevalent synchronic analysis of oral poetics with a diachronic viewpoint.
Area: AG, SK, IE, CP

Gregory Nagy. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Examines the generic "best of the Achaeans" pattern and relates it to Odysseus and Achilles in the Homeric epics they dominate by making the stories their kléos. Assumes the poetry to be in origin oral traditional and analyzes the narrative in terms of themes named and marked by traditional oppositions of key words. Understands our texts of the Iliad and Odyssey as unified by the genius of the poetic tradition and their heroes as the focus and inheritors of a cluster of Indo-European attributes. Also discusses praise and blame as one of the most ancient features of the poetry. Posits a Panhellenic movement behind the fixation of the Homeric texts. Chapters 5-6 recast from Nagy 1976a.
Area: AG, IE, CP

Gregory Nagy. "On the Origins of the Greek Hexameter: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives." In Festschrift for Oswald Szemerényi on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Ed. Bela Brogyanyi. Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, ser. 4. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, vol. 11:2, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 611-31.

Maintains that we must approach Homeric traditional phraseology and meter from a perspective that combines the diachronic and synchronic views. Defines the formula as "a phrase that is diachronically generated by the theme which it expresses and synchronically regulated by the meter in which it is contained" (p. 617). Since he understands Homeric formulas as containing rhythms that predate the meter which regulates phraseology, he suggests that we can study the evolution of the hexameter by examining that same phraseology.
Area: AG, IE

Gregory Nagy. "An Evolutionary Model for the Text Fixation of Homeric Epos." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983. pp. 390-93.

Suggests the Panhellenic ethos as a context for the recording of our texts of the Iliad and Odyssey. Feels that oral tradition took a fixed form during this nationalistic "movement."
Area: AG

Gregory Nagy. "On the Death of Sarpedon." In Approachers to Homer. Ed. by Carl A. Rubino and Cynthia Shelmerdine. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 189-217.

An etymological investigation into the meaning of tarchuô in Iliad 16.456 based on the premise that both the Greek language and Greek institutions are "cognate with the corresponding institutions of other Indo-European-speaking people" (192). Suggests that the implication of "overcoming the obstacle of death" inherent in the word (evidence is offered that it is derived through Anatolian from the Indo-European) is corroborating evidence for the existence of a cult of heroes ultimately derived from the worship of ancestors.
Area: AG

Joseph F. Nagy. "Close Encounters of the Traditional Kind in Medieval Irish Literature." In Celtic Folklore and Christianity: Studies in Memory of William H. Heist. Ed. by Patrick K. Ford. Santa Barbara: McNally and Loftin, pp. 129-49.

A continuation of the scholarship of Proinsias MacCana, examining such medieval Christian tales as Síaburcharpat Con Culainn and Acallam na Senórach and demonstrating the probability of their origins in the oral tradition.
Area: OI

Joseph Falaky Nagy. "Vengeful Music in Tradition Narrative." Folklore, 95:182-89.

Compares the Scandinavian/English ballad "The Two Sisters," the Hymn to Hermes, and Medieval Irish and Old Norse analogs to the "Singing Bone" narrative pattern, presenting "a structure of narrative motifs and associated ideas that appears in many separate traditions_a structure, or pattern, through the analysis of which we gain insights into the inner meanings of the various sources in which it occurs" (189).
Area: FB, ME, ON, OI, CP

Joseph F. Nagy. The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Argues for the essential consistency of the narratives of the boyhood deeds of Finn in the Gaelic tradition from the twelfth century through recent folktale versions collected in Ireland and Scotland, maintaining that such variations as have occurred have enriched the tradition's ideological significance. Suggests that the tales of Finn's boyhood deeds, while rooted in pre-history, express and preserve fundamental Indo-European and Celtic beliefs regarding passage into adulthood, the relationships between this world and "the other," outlawry, and the institution of the bards which transcend the specific historical situation of any particular audience or performance.
Area: OI, IE, MI

Barbara Nauer. "Soundscript: A Way to Help Black Students to Write Standard English." College English, 36:586-88.

Describes a method by which mistakes made by black students in compositions due to oral residue are rectified by teacher re-dictation to students of their own corrected compositions, so as to facilitate better hearing of the "proper" sounds and thus achieve not only an improved revision of the originally submitted work, but also a realization on the part of the students of the differences between dialectial and standard speech.
Area: AA, US, PT

S. Ju. Nekljudov and Z. Tömörceren. Mongolische Erzählungen über Geser. Asiatische Forschungen, 92. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Text and German translation of Mongolian Geser oral performances collected in 1972.
Area: MN

Bruno Nettl. "Some Notes on the State of Knowledge about Oral Transmission in Music." In Transmission and Form in Oral Traditions. Ed. Leo Treitler et al. In International Musicological Society: Report of the Thirteenth Congress (Berkeley 1977). Kassel: Barenreiter. pp. 139-44.

Discusses the effect of oral transmission and creation on pieces of music (individually) and on repertoires, the kinds of changes that occur in oral transmission, the changes in form from oral to written tradition, the typical history of a piece of music in oral tradition, and other questions associated with oral creation and transmission.
Area: MU

M. Ngal. "Literary Creation in Oral Civilizations." New Literary History, 8:335-44.

Stresses the creativity of the individual within oral tradition in Africa. Understands oral performances as "rereadings" which contain both a fixed and a variable component, so that they are continually adapted to time, place, audience, performer, etc. Thus the ever-changing community can enter into the rereading and inscribe its identity on the ever-malleable text.
Area: AF

Stephen G. Nichols. Formulaic Diction and Thematic Composition in the Chanson de Roland. Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, no. 36. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Studies formula, enjambement, and theme in the OF chanson de geste to demonstrate oral traditional structure. Assumes that the text was composed by a literate singer trained in the tradition. Envisions an individual artist who uses the inherited materials creatively and who occasionally goes beyond conventional limits. Appendices offer examples of formulaic diction (mostly structural rather than phraseological patterns), enjambement statistics, and example themes with occurrences in other chansons de geste.
Area: OF

Stephen G. Nichols. "The Interaction of Life and Literature in the Peregrinationes ad loca sancta and the Chansons de geste." Speculum, 44:51-77.

Views the various versions of a chanson as "a series of drafts in a continually evolving process of creation, a process which strove to present the truth of the past from the perspective of the present" (77). Oral accretions as well as literary composition figure in this ongoing process.
Area: HI, OF, CP

Reynold A. Nicholson. A Literary History of the Arabs. Rev. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930. Rpt. 1969, 1978.

In Chapter 3 ("Pre-islamic Poetry, Manners, and Religion," pp. 71-140), he discusses the flourishing of oral poetry as the sole medium of literature from ca. 500-622 A.D.
Area: AR

Lewis E. Nicholson. "Oral Techniques in the Composition of Expanded Anglo-Saxon Verses." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 78:287-92.

An inventory of modes of formulaic modification in the hypermetric verses.
Area: OE

W.F.H. Nicolaisen. "How Incremental Is Incremental Repetition?" In Ballads and Ballad Research (Selected Papers of the International Conference on Nordic and Anglo-American Ballad Research, University of Washington, Seattle, May 2-6, 1977). Ed. Patricia Conroy. Seattle: University of Washington Press. pp. 122-35.

Finds the term "incremental repetition" misleading, since it does not suggest the possibility of mere substitution, accumulation, progression, and intensification in the traditional ballad structure.
Area: FB, CP

Susan Niditch. Chaos to Cosmos: Studies in Biblical Patterns of Creation. Chico: CA: Scholars Press.

Discusses the five creation themes of Genesis chapters 1 through 11 as multiforms and treats the relation of genealogies to creation stories, the creation patterns of prophetic literature, and traditional literary themes.
Area: BI

Eduard Nielsen. Oral Tradition: A Modern Problem in Old Testament Introduction. Studies in Biblical Theology, no. 11. London: SCM Press. 4th printing 1961.

After a brief review of writings on oral tradition and the Bible, he discusses the extent and nature of oral texts of Near Eastern provenance. In Chapter 3 (pp. 39-62) he treats the subordinate role of writing in early Israel, evidence of the oral transmission of the Old Testament, and "the problem [of] how a written canon can come into existence in an age that demonstrably still venerates the spoken word" (p. 39). The final chapter applies the traditio-historical method directly to the Old Testament texts.
Area: BI

John D. Niles. "Ring Composition in La Chanson de Roland and La Chancun de Willame." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 1, ii:4-12.

Accounts for anomalies of place and detail (narrative inconsistencies) by adducing oral theory, arguing that oral literature demands fidelity to the performance. Applies Proppian analysis to explain the otherwise troubling resuscitation of Vivien as demanded by a folkloric pattern. In general, he treats problems of unity and coherence via oral poetics, with reference to SC, AG, and Russian narrative.
Area: OF, SC, AG, RU, CP

John D. Niles. "Patterning in the Wanderings of Odysseus." Ramus, 7:46-60.

Seeks to demonstrate repetitive patterns and their variation in Books 5-12. Also discusses the wanderings as a psychic journey and as a cultural document or "picture of the early Greek view of man and his place in the universe" (59).
Area: AG

John D. Niles. "Narrative Anomalies in La Chançun de Willame." Viator, 9:251-64.

Considers the structure and unity of this chanson de geste from the point of view of oral poetics. Notes relatively high formulaic density, a large number of hypermetric lines, supposed narrative inconsistencies, story-patterns and folktale elements, and the gradually loosening structure of the laisse and diminishing use of the refrain. Favors the theory of a single "author" and single performance over the conventional multiple authorship hypothesis.
Area: OF, CP

John D. Niles. "Ring Composition and the Structure of Beowulf." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 94:924-35.

Though preferring to leave its exact relation to oral tradition unspecified, he illustrates the chiastic design in Beowulf and explains its aesthetic effect both for an aural audience (primarily unconsciously apprehended symmetry) and for the modern reader (conscious appreciation of artistic design). A device also found in AG, BI, OF, and British folk balladry, all of which are oral-derived.
Area: OE, CP

John D. Niles. "Formula and Formulaic System in Beowulf." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983. pp. 394-415.

Argues for flexible formulaic systems as the oral traditional idiom of Beowulf. Modifies the theory proposed by Fry (1967b), emphasizing precision of definition and generativity.
Area: OE, AG, CP

John D. Niles. "Compound Diction and the Style of Beowulf." English Studies, 62:489-503.

Analyzes compounding as an aspect of oral-formulaic verse-making technique, distinguishing the tradition-dependent or idiosyncratic nature of OE poetic composition from other modes. Stresses the utility of flexible formulaic systems to the composing scop. Notes parallels to Beowulf compounds in other Old Germanic poetries. Compares passages from Beowulf and the Meters of Boethius to demonstrate the Beowulf-poet's dependence on flexible systems, denying Benson's (1966) hypothesis of literate formulaic composition.
Area: OE, AG, OSX, ON, OHG, GM, CP

John D. Niles. "The Normans and the Chansons de Geste." In VIII Congreso de la Société Rencesvals. Pamplona: Institucion Principe de Viana, Diputacion Foral de Navarra. pp. 359-66.

In the process of arguing for a Norman patronage of medieval French chansons de geste, he reviews oral-formulaic theory as explaining the mode of transmission of songs before their commission to writing.
Area: OF

John D. Niles. Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

An in-depth analysis of the Old English heroic epic Beowulf which addresses its place in the Old Germanic heroic tradition with special emphasis upon its oral traditional nature. Part I discusses Beowulf in its mythological and Christian contexts with particular attention to the aesthetics of composition and reception in a culture in which Christian and pagan concepts are coexistent. Part II addresses the Old English formulaic system, in which formula, ring composition, and "barbaric style" (a poetics relying primarily upon recognizable contrasts and integrity of familiar episodes) operate together to confer meaning. Taking these aspects of Beowulf into consideration, Part III goes on to discuss at length an interpretation of the poem, addressing in turn the elemtns of the mythic continuum of time in the traditional epic; the voice of the oral poet with respect to traditional knowledge and wisdom and the listening audience's reception of that voice; the concept of reciprocity, a "complex system of exchange that was at the heart of the social order" (p. 213) of which the social hsitory of "heriot," of the bestowing of armor, is an example; thematic unity of the epic in which material that concerns characters and events other than those immediately touched upon by the narrative operates to broaden the poem's scope; and the theme of Beowulf, which he finds to be a contradiction "lodged in the recalcitrant breasts of human beings who in times of crisis find themselves unable to live up to the ideals to which their lips give assent" (p. 226).
Area: OE

Martin P. Nilsson. The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology. Sather Classical Lectures, vol. 8. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rpt. with intro. and bibliography by Emily Vermeule, 1972.

In Chapter 1 ("How Old Is Greek Mythology?" pp. 1-34), he emphasizes the formulaic structure of orally composed traditional epics, citing numerous analogs (especially the Kara-Kirghiz as studied in Radlov 1885 and in more general terms the Teutonic and Hellenic as described in H. Chadwick 1912). Also notes other features characteristic of oral epic: composition in performance, fluency of the traditional idiom as a language, typical descriptions, and elements of widely variant chronology. A very early awareness of oral traditional poetics, without reference to Parry; but see Nilsson 1933 for an explicit citation.
Area: AG, KR, CP

Martin P. Nilsson. Homer and Mycenae. Rpt. New York: Cooper Square, 1968 and Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972.

Chapter 1 (pp. 1-55) gives a summary of the Homeric Question and in particular the Analyst-Unitarian controversy. In Chapter 4 ("Homeric Language and Style," pp. 160-83) he describes the oral-formulaic basis of Homeric phraseology according to the original Parry model. In Chapter 5 ("The Origin and Transmission of Epic Poetry," pp. 184-211) he summons comparanda for Homeric epic from numerous other oral poetic traditions. One of the earliest extensions of Parry's original work.
Area: AG, OE, ON, OF, SC, RU, KR, CP

John A. Nist. The Structure and Texture of Beowulf. Bol. no. 229, Língua e literatura inglése, no. 1. Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências, e Letras. Rpt. Philadelphia: R. West, 1978.

His comments on the structure of the poem (pp. 17-65) assume a poem composed for oral recitation and an audience that responds to the performance out of a knowledge of poetic tradition. Also considers the role of repetition (with comparisons to Home