Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Elisabeth M. Jeffreys and Michael J. Jeffreys. "The Style of Byzantine Popular Poetry: Recent Work." In Okeanos: Essays Presented to Ihor

Confronts three problems that affect the study of Byzantine vernacular poetry: (1) repetitious phraseology, (2) relations between and among different manuscript versions, and (3) the mixed language (dialectal forms and anachronisms) used by the poets. After a review of the various avenues of research, they recommend that attention "be concentrated away from the individual Byzantine vernacular poems, and on the oral tradition which must lie behind them_its metre, its language, its subjects, its formulaic techniques, its social position and function" (334).
Area: BG