Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

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