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Towards a Generative View of the Oral Formula
... e 'outside' manifestation of these embodied actions, their realizations also serve as 'on-line' cues, via sensory-motor feedback, in the serial reconstruction process during performance (Rubin, 1995). On the other hand, these actions are formed and informed by learning and memory processes and instantiated on the basis of cognitive representations.Then, as Nagler (1967)suggested, in order to understand oral performance traditions it is important to consider formulas as a reflection of underlying mental templates and not mere statistical phenomena. Which leads us to the question of how they might be presented in the performers mind. The foregoing structural analyses have indicated certain features we wo ...
... This leads us back to Kirk and Nagler: the present study seems to confirm Kirk's (1976) suggestion that accuracy of transmission is influenced by the degree of reliance on formulaic constructions. The underlying cognitive mechanisms (Nagler, 1967) help to understand how it is possible for some forms of verbatim transmission to occur in oral cultures. However, quite different question is to explain why it occurs in one culture and not in another although both make use of similar sets of mechanisms. ...
Oral cultures possess a broad array of mnemonic techniques to help recall their poetry, narratives and other oral recitations. In musical performances, structural elements of the music can serve as additional aides for proper recall. The Parry-Kirk debate has focused on the central question: is verbatim transmission - and hence long term stability - at all possible in oral cultures. Contemporary scholars of oral transmission seem to favor the idea that there is little evidence for verbatim transmission and that therefore oral traditions are constantly changing. In the context of Central Australian Aboriginal Music, evidence for verbatim transmission has been forwarded by studies of Ellis (1985) and Ellis and Barwick (1987) and Barwick (1989). The exact nature of the support of verbal memory recall through the musical structures, however, has been somewhat difficult to understand, as words, rhythms and melodies don't seem to be related in any fixed or stable manner. In the present study it will be shown that multi-level formulaic constructions is essential for this music and formulas can be identified at three different levels, that of text-rhythm, melody and beating accompaniment. At each of these levels formulas result from sets of structural constraints that are analyzed in terms of a variety of underlying cognitive mechanisms. Supporting neuropsychological evidence is presented in order to demonstrate how characteristics of these mechanisms, e.g. the dissociation between melodic and rhythmic processing, help to explain certain performance practices in Aboriginal music and open a new view on the question of memory and verbatim transmission in oral cultures..
... Other studies focused on the fundamental concepts conveyed by formulas rather than their formal expression. Nagler's (1967) study on formulas in Homeric Greek also influenced studies on Old English formulas (Olsen 1986, p. 567). Nagler contended that formulas should be viewed as cognitive templates with semantic content, with their surface form being merely an incidental manifestation. ...
This paper explores a constructionist and corpus-based approach to Old English formulaic language through an analysis of the “maþelode system” of speech introductions. The analysis is performed on a section of the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry, comprising the poems Beowulf, Battle of Brunanburh, and Exodus. The results show that most instances of the maþelode system belong to a well-attested construction continuum, structured by the widespread Old English (and ultimately Germanic) poetic devices of variation and kenning. This continuum ranges from more fixed repetitions that exclusively involve the verb maþelian to more schematic patterns that are also attested by other speech verbs, by verbs of giving, as well as by a number of further verbs of various semantic types. The particularly high frequency of this pattern with speech verbs and verbs of giving matches the prominent role, highlighted by previous studies, of both word-exchange and gift-exchange within Old English heroic ideology, and suggests that these formulaic patterns served the purpose to characterize the protagonists of speech or giving events as heroic and/or lordly figures.
... A paradigmatic change came about with the pioneering work of Milman Parry on the oral techniques of composition in Homer's epic poems, supported by his fieldwork on the South Slavic heroic poetry, especially as it was presented by Alfred Lord in The Singer of Tales (1960). These studies, expanded by later contributions (Havelock 1963;Nagler 1967;Peabody 1975;Foley 1980Foley , 1988, provided a convincing account of the formulaic techniques that allowed nonliterate individuals to compose long and elaborate poems, sometimes as they were performing them, without the need to memorize a previously written text. "In a sense," as Lord (1960: 101) says, "each performance is 'an' original, if not 'the' original." ...
This article exposes the principles of an ecosemiotic theory of oral poiesis, which conceives of singing as a highly specific habit or skilled practice within the human domain of languaging. It is claimed that oral poiesis may contribute to the semiotic alignment of human and nonhuman own-worlds (Umwelten), playing a role in processes of structural coupling within a habitat, understood as a hybrid assemblage or collective of multispecies inhabitants. The article describes how oral poiesis, as a modeling system, contributes to sustaining the various modes of identification that characterize collective human ontologies (animism, naturalism, totemism, analogism) through distinctive operations of symbolization (literality, metaphor, metonymy, analogy). These modes of ecopoetic symbolization serve to bring nonhumans, such as animals, plants, mountains, or rivers, into human own-worlds. Moreover, as one of many skilled practices of humans, oral poiesis is characterized by certain intrinsic features, such as attention, play, feeling, ritualization, musicality, or remembrance, which contribute to human sociality and hence to a system-wide relationality. All these elements constitute the foundations of a poetics of cohabitation.
... In general, we can say that all of this still seems to be applicable to our two case studies. Nagler (1967Nagler ( , 1974 took things one step further and launched the concept of the 'generative formula', a very loose definition that almost implies that any linguistic expression is a formula in some sense. This is, however, not a feasible definition to work with, since it leaves the dividing line between what is a formula and what is not completely arbitrary. ...
In this dissertation I explore Byzantine metre, within the framework of the modern linguistic theory of information structure. I have done this in a corpus of Byzantine book epigrams, in order to come to more generic conclusions about Byzantine poetic texts in general. My focus is mainly on the two typically medieval metres (i.e. the dodecasyllable and the political verse) and their variants. The findings discussed are divided into two main categories: quantitative and qualititative conclusions. The quantitative conclusions are the results of my tagging in my own subdatabase, which is part of the larger Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams. I have tagged several characteristics in my corpus, in order to search for the linguistic properties of a metrical colon (‘What makes a colon tick?’), based on the idea that metrical cola function in a similar way to Information Units. Indeed, the theory of Information Units states that spoken language is never pronounced in long sentences, but rather in short ‘spurts’ or ‘chunks’. These ‘chunks’ (Information Units) have a cognitive basis, since they emanate from a restriction in our short-term memory. On the other hand, we find that medieval metres exhibit a tendency to be divided into prosodic ‘chunks’ as wel: i.e. cola. Indeed, the similarity between the two has been studied several times and implies that metrical cola also have a cognitive aspect to them. Against this background, I have gone searching for different signposts of information structure within the epigrams in my corpus, in order to objectively identify these cola/IUs. The qualitative conclusions are spread over two chapter. In Chapter 6 I have investigated some of the more formulaic epigrams in my corpus from closerby, with the similarity between cola and IUs in mind. Indeed, several book epigrams are somewhere in between oral and written texts in terms of their transmission, and therefore exhibit a host of metrical (and other) mistakes. I have explained the emergence of these mistakes, which are understandable if you keep in mind that metrical cola function as IUs. In Chapter 7, I have studied the vague line between poetry and prose, since many epigrams do not seem to be clearly one or the other. As it turns out, the Byzantines themselves did not have a clear terminology to separate the two themselves, so we might be trying to impose modern labels to medieval texts. All in all, these book epigrams have proven to be a true window into the minds of the scribes that produced them, and have given us some glimpses of what happened there at the moment of verse production.
... For Parry, formula systems are generalizations over analogous instances, a concept that comes pretty close to a constructional schema. Later on, with Chomsky's ideas already in circulation, a generative alternative was proposed: Structurally similar phrases would be created via abstract rules rather than molded on an analogical archetype (Nagler 1967). These two models of formulaic systems seem quite opposite but, just like generative and usage-based theories in linguistics, they both posit a discrete set of abstract units, albeit units of a very different nature. ...
The chunking problem is central to linguistics, semiotics, and poetics: How do we learn to organize a language into patterns and to use those patterns creatively? Linguistics has mainly offered two answers, one based on rule inference through innate capacities for processing and the other based on usage and on outstanding capacities for memory and retrieval. Both views are based on induction and compositionality. The Parry–Lord theory of oral composition-in-performance has argued that oral singers produce complex poems out of rehearsed improvisation through the mastery of a system of formulas, chunks that integrate phrasal, metrical, and semantic structures. The framework of formulaic creativity proposed here argues that the cognitive study of oral poetics can provide crucial insights into the chunking problem. I show the major connections between Parry–Lord and usage-based cognitive linguistics, mainly Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics. However, these approaches still remain compositional and thus struggle to model creativity and learning in oral poetry and everyday speech. The alternative is to explore a model of formulaic creativity not based on compositional patterns, but on wide learning for connecting discriminative perceptual features directly to semantic contrasts within a complex dynamic system, without the intermediation of a set of discrete units.
... Lembrem-se ainda os chamados "clichês", alguns dos quais são de tal modo amalgamados que já não se pode pensar em uma análise nem em processos complexos de interpretação da metáfora em sua compreensão (raio de esperança, verão inclemente, afiado como uma navalha, bafo de onça, etc.). (Vejam-se outros exemplos e classificações desses exemplos em MAKKAI, 1972;MAKKAI;MAKKAI (Org.), 1975;TWADELL, 1972;LADEFOGED, 1972;FRASER, 1970;NAGLER, 1967;BECKER, 1975;NORMAN, 1976;BOLINGER, 1976;KIPARSKY, 1976). ...
No início da década de 1980, Carlos Franchi, temporariamente afastado de suas funções de Diretor do Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem da Universidade Estadual de Campinas e contando com o apoio da Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, realizou um estágio de Pós-Doutorado na Universidade da Califórnia – Berkeley.Viu-se então imerso em um ambiente de grande efervescência intelectual em que se discutiam noções e teorias linguísticas praticamente desconhecidas da universidade brasileira que, em geral, ainda vivia o debate entre o estruturalismo europeu e o gerativismo e, em seus centros mais avançados, se empenhava em compreender ou aplicar ao português as sucessivas versões da gramática chomskiana.Durante esse estágio, Carlos Franchi escreveu longos relatórios em que descreveu de maneira circunstanciada e crítica, como lhe era próprio, a experiência intelectual que estava vivendo.O texto que segue é a transcrição de um desses relatórios que, lido na época por um pequeno número de pessoas próximas, se perdeu em seguida em algum processo administrativo da Unicamp. Resgatado recentemente, por uma iniciativa do Centro de Documentação Cultural “Alexandre Eulálio” (CEDAE), soa hoje mais atual do que nunca. Não só pelo que informa, de maneira inédita, sobre a biografia intelectual de um dos principais representantes da linguística brasileira do século XX, mas também pela presença que as ideias de Berkeley têm hoje em várias orientações da linguistica brasileira.Carlos Franchi faleceu em 2001. Foi fundador e (na década de 1970) Diretor do Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem da Unicamp. Foi presidente da Associação Brasileira de Linguística no biênio 1977-1979.A Revista da Abralin agradece a Sra. Eglê Pontes Franchi, esposa do professor, por ter disponibilizado a única cópia hoje existente deste “Relatório de Berkeley”; agradece a Professora Dra. Raquel Salek Fiad e a Ms. Flávia Carneiro Leão, respectivamente Coordenadora e Supervisora do CEDAE, pelas gestões que resultaram na recuperação do manuscrito do trabalho ora publicado e pela cuidadosa revisão que fizeram do texto. Nas páginas que seguem, a numeração de fundo preto é a das páginas do original. Nessa numeração a página de número 31 nunca existiu.
... 10 Entendo "fórmula" no sentido dado por Lord (1965) em seus estudos sobre a composição oral. Nagler (1967;rediscutido por Goody 1994:101 e segs.) ofereceu uma definição alternativa interessante a partir do paradigma gerativista. ...
This article explores the relation between the verbal arts of the Marubo (Panoan speakers of western Amazonia) and a repertoire of drawings made by their shamans. These drawings are visual cosmographic schemes, possessing affinities with other Amerindian technologies of memory that are also marked by the transit between verbal and graphic expressions. Produced for the anthropologist, the repertoire of images actualizes, in a graphic medium, a formulaic, parallelistic and metaphoric composition that is highly patterned. The analysis of the visual compositions is carried out in parallel with the study of poetic, shamanistic formulas, taking into account questions concerning memory, transmission, and the acquisition of specialized knowledge. The study of the interface between images and verbal arts is articulated with elements of cosmology, concepts of the person and Marubo shamanistic thought.
... This absorption of words, phrases and expressions is not just a question of learning and memorisation, but more an active 'soaking up' grounded in performance that Nagler long ago described as a 'gestalt', a holistic grasp of the occasion. 35 This, again, is the ground for identity construction, the means by which a medical self, an identity of 'diagnostician' in particular, is formed, both aesthetically and ethically. 34 There is undeniably heroism in this self-forming and it will be interesting to see if this is tempered in an age in which the gender balance has shifted to more women entering medicine. ...
This paper progresses the original argument of Richard Ratzan that formal presentation of the medical case history follows a Homeric oral-formulaic tradition.The everyday work routines of doctors involve a ritual poetics, where the language of recounting the patient’s ‘history’ offers an explicitly aesthetic enactment or performance that can be appreciated and given meaning within the historical tradition of Homeric oral poetry and the modernist aesthetic of Minimalism. This ritual poetics shows a reliance on traditional word usages that crucially act as tools for memorisation and performance and can be linked to forms of clinical reasoning; both contain a tension between the oral and the written record, questioning the priority of the latter; and the performance of both helps to create the Janus-faced identity of the doctor as a ‘performance artist’ or ‘medical bard’ in identifying with medical culture and maintaining a positive difference from the patient as audience, offering a valid form of patient-centredness.
Epic poetry, notably the Iliad and the Odyssey, stands as one of the most enduring legacies of ancient Greece. Although the impact of these epics on Western civilization is widely recognized, their origins remain the subject of heated debate. Were they composed in a single era or over the course of centuries? Were they crafted by one or by many poets? Do they reflect historical reality? These and other important questions are answered in this book. Using a fresh, dynamic approach, Michael Cosmopoulos reconstructs the world of the Homeric poems and explores the interplay between poetry, social memory, and material culture. By integrating key insights from archaeology, philology, anthropology, and oral tradition, he offers a nuanced perspective of the emergence and early development of Greek epic. His wide-canvas approach enables readers to appreciate the complexity of the Homeric world and gain a deeper understanding of the intricate factors that shaped these magnificent poems.
This article reassesses the so-called Nereid Monument (ca 380 BCE) at Xanthos in Lycia by focusing on the narrative and symbolic role of female figures within its sculptural programme. Constructed as the tomb for the Lycian dynast Erbbina, the monument has been noted for its over-human-size sculpture of Nereids, its historicising city-siege reliefs, as well as its spectacular fusion of visual and architectural styles, motifs and themes from various contexts throughout the Aegean and Anatolia. Building on this scholarship, I turn specifically to the monument’s innovative representations of non-mythological women in prominent areas of its visual programme: Erbbina’s dynastic consort and a distressed woman who is caught in the throes of military violence. By focusing on the role of female bodies in Erbbina’s funerary qua triumphal monument, I argue for the important narrative function of female bodies in articulating dynastic legitimacy and continuity. Finally, this article comments on the importance of femininity in addition to masculinity in dynastic expressions in the fourth century, thus anticipating major art-historical changes in the art of power at the beginning of the Hellenistic period.
What if formularity, meter, and Kunstsprache in Homer weren't abstract, mechanical systems that constrained the poet's freedom, but rather adaptive technologies that helped poets to sustain feats of great creativity? This book explores this hypothesis by reassessing the key formal features of Homer's poetic technique through the lenses of contemporary linguistics and the cognitive sciences, as well as by drawing some unexpected parallels from the contemporary world (from the dialects of English used in popular music, to the prosodic strategies employed in live sports commentary, to the neuroscience of jazz improvisation). Aimed at Classics students and specialists alike, this book provides thorough and accessible introductions to the main debates in Homeric poetics, along with new and thought-provoking ways of understanding Homeric creativity.
This article investigates the styles of enquiry involved in Lowland South American Amerindian shamanic and narrative discourse genres. The article argues in favour of the existence of an Amazonian mode of thinking strictly related to formulaic composition, commonly found in different verbal poetic genres and its contemporary transformations into written texts published as books by Amerindian researchers and narrators. Taking into account philosophical and anthropological discussions about speculative thinking, this study aims to revise the role of narrative verbal genres in Amerindian ethnology and its ontological backgrounds, as well as offering an alternative perspective on the contrast between writing and oral traditions. The article is based on translations of songs and testimonies collected among the Marubo of Western Amazonia.
Born into a family boasting eminent educators—William Greenleaf Eliot, founder of Washington University in St. Louis, and Charles William Eliot, famous Harvard President—T.S. Eliot joined the debate about schools and universities early on, in the era of the great educational reform leading to the development of the system of elective courses. He criticized the changes and the resulting decline of Classics, though his concern with the problem of education was never purely theoretical. His own education was a product of the elective system, and he himself, as he complained, a “victim” of it. But, for a while, Eliot was also a teacher: prior to working at Lloyds Bank, and before his professional and financial investment in Faber and Faber, he taught pupils in grammar schools and, as an extension lecturer under the auspices of Oxford University, evening classes to adults. His interest in educational issues continued over many years, assuming diverse forms—from writing on education to lecturing and giving opening addresses at universities, to recommending poetry books for pupils and asking practical questions about the accessibility of university accommodation for students from abroad. Nevertheless, he was criticized for seeming to oppose the equality of educational opportunity. This essay re-examines the ideas from Eliot’s “Notes towards the Definition of Culture” (1948) and “The Aims of Education” in the context of his ephemeral prose writings, and it reconsiders the question of whether Eliot’s views on education did indeed represent exclusivist elitism.
https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/134163/edition/123634
El cantar de Hildebrando nos ha sido transmitido en dos momentos temporales: primero, durante el periodo del alto antiguo alemán (750-1150), y, más tarde, durante el periodo del alto alemán paleomoderno (1350-1750). La diferencia temporal entre ambos no solo muestra cambios en la lengua alemana, desde una perspectiva puramente lingüística, sino también diferencias significantes en el modo en el que esta misma historia es narrada y transmitida. Cuando tiene lugar la primera constancia del cantar heroico de Hildebrando (Älteres Hildebrandslied-cantar antiguo) durante la primera mitad del siglo IX, el texto muestra muchos rasgos de la poesía germánica oral tradicional, como, por ejemplo, el denominado lenguaje oralformulaico, aún muy extendido en aquel tiempo. Más tarde, durante el alto alemán paleomoderno, la misma historia de Hildebrando y su hijo (Jüngeres Hildebrandslied-cantar moderno) se presenta en un formato literario bien diferente, que apenas muestra rasgos de la tradición oral previa. Basándonos en estos hechos es posible trazar la evolución de un mismo relato desde un formato de transmisión oral a otro de carácter escrito. Sirviéndonos de un análisis comparado, en el presente trabajo se examina cómo la transmisión de esta historia evoluciona desde un formato oral a otro escrito, es decir, cómo los rasgos propios del lenguaje oral-formulaico del cantar antiguo desaparecen en el moderno sin apenas dejar huella.
The term formula has been a key part of Old English studies since the early nineteenth century. However, formula has meant and still means different things in different contexts. This chapter, building on earlier summaries by John Miles Foley and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, traces the use of formula, most often as it is used with respect to oral-formulaic theory, in the study of Beowulf. The chapter examines formulaic theories of composition at the level of the half-line and system, but also shows how the term connects with themes (or type-scenes), structural patterns (such as envelope patterns and ring structure), and story-patterns.
In the earliest extant works of Greek literature, Zeus reigns supreme in the Olympian hierarchy. However, throughout the early Greek portrayals of him, there are allusions scattered and scanty as they may be - to threats of rebellion which challenge Zeus' supremacy. This thesis examines these passages, drawn from Homer, Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, to offer new interpretations of these texts. While focusing on the theme of cosmic/divine strife, I also reveal hidden logic and lost legends underlying these texts: discoveries of significance to the improved understanding of early Greek poetry. Chapter one, focusing on Thetis' supplication, examines the crisis of Zeus in Iliad 1. I analyse the (mythological) theme of the son who is mightier than his father, interpreting Achilles and Peleus' relationship in terms of succession myth. Chapter two explores the Golden Chain of Hera in Iliad 15. Retracing a lost Gigantomachia epic, I view the incident from the perspective of cosmic strife, discussing Hera's rebellion and the role of Heracles in this rebellion. Drawing on the re-evaluation of the Gigantomachia, Chapter three investigates the war between the gods in the Eiad, concentrating on antagonism between Zeus and Poseidon, which reaches its end with Zeus' reordering of the universe. Chapter four reinterprets the Hesiodic account of Athena's birth, offering solutions as to how and why Zeus achieves his final conquest in the succession story. Chapter five considers the Typhon-story in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. Examining this hymn from the broad perspective of the struggle for cosmic power, I re-integrate this story into the hymn. Chapter sbc focuses on the love of Aphrodite and Anchises in the Hymn to Aphrodite. I explore the dual themes of mortality and the bitter sorrow of Aphrodite - defeated by Zeus and diminished in power.
In the Iliad the Achaean ships play a prominent role in the narrative; they are foregrounded as Achilles sits by his vessels in anger and threatens to sail home; as the Trojans come close to burning them; and as Hector's body lies by Achilles’ ships until ransomed. Where not in the foreground, the ships remain a consistent background; without them the Achaeans would not have reached Troy; they are an essential component of the Greek encampment; and are the unrealized potential vehicle of the Achaean homecoming.
première publ. sous forme virtuelle, publication papier en attente : https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6618
This paper discusses the first stages of the system of versified language, paying special attention both to the origin of metrical forms, and to the measure of such forms.
The study of oral formulae in the twentieth century had several phases. After
the initial - very stimulating and influential - research by M. Parry and A.
B. Lord, who focused on the technique of composing the poem and the
mnemotechnic function of formulae, the focus at first shifted to the concept
of performance (J. M. Foley), and then to the mental text (L. Honko), which
introduced into research horizons social, ideological, psychological and
mental conditions of improvisation, interaction between the singer and the
audience, collective and individual factors of memorising, cultural
representation, and the like. Although all the abovementioned aspects
undoubtedly determine the structure of a specific variant, it should be kept
in mind that formulae transcend concrete improvisations and connect different
epic zones, different local traditions and different times. The formula
precedes verbal improvisation both chronologically and logically. Therefore -
before explaining the repeating of formulae by the needs and nature of
improvisation (composition-in-performance) or the generating of formulae in
specific variants by textualisation of mental text - we must explain the
existence of the formula in the first place. This paper seeks to point out
the complex system of factors that determine the genesis of formulae.
Formulae are regarded as cultural codes, which combine elements from
different spheres (the conceptualization of space, time, colour and so on,
elements of rituals, customary norms, historical experience, life realities,
ethics, etc.). Therefore, their structure is described in terms of hidden
knowledge, hidden complexity, frame semantics, the tip of the iceberg,
compressed meanings. Meanings “compressed” in the formulae are upgraded with
new “income” in every new/concrete realisation (i.e. poem) and this is the
area where aesthetics rivals poetics. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike
Srbije, br. 178011: Serbian Oral Tradition in an Intercultural Code]
It has long been customary to stress the artificial and conventional character of the Homeric language. The coexistence of aeolic and ionic forms, for instance, the metrical lengthenings, the so-called diektasis of contract verbs, the glosses have been studied and used to posit the theory of a language that was never spoken by anybody on earth, composed rather than developed on its own strength. More recently Milman Parry has further enhanced this view. He has stretched the same principle of conventional composition to cover the whole syntax and phraseology of Homer. The traditional language which he postulates is again far removed from the sources of living speech.
My dissertation entitled The Princess Is in Another Castle: Multi-Linear Story Systems in Greek Epic and Video Games is an interdisciplinary investigation at the crux of two scholarly debates in classics and digital media studies. In this study, I offer an understanding of narrative that can be applied across media and across disciplines, reaching from the traditional practice of Classics to the new and developing study of games. With a perspective that incorporates both the past and the present, I present a theoretical model of story that provides new insight into the way we construct narratives and find meaning within them.
My study finds the common thread between oral and game narratives by investigating and comparing their story structures and authorial processes. Bards and players do not fully create new stories, but neither do they only take pre-made stories and adjust them. Rather, they take pieces of narrative, scenes here and actors there, and combine them into a new linear sequence. Narratives of this kind, those telling a single story through many possibilities, are multi-linear narratives. In the Iliad, we hear of different histories of Achilles??? education, we see hints of other possible happenings at Troy, and we see familiar yet different events in the traditional tale. In games, players are able to choose different paths for their characters, experiencing familiar events but with different results and different actors. Richer meaning and more developed characters arise in the contrast and interplay between the two (or more) tellings.
A multi-linear understanding of story as a system variably built from interchangeable narrative pieces allows us to see that meaning and interpretation of these stories is highly dependent on the audience???s awareness of other possible story paths. It takes many encounters with the story to fully understand all its possibilities and turns, not only because of its many possible interpretations, but because the story has many possible linear sequences within it. Through a multi-linear understanding of narrative, we can see that traditional notions of narrative construction are only part of the story, one dependent on audience members as co-authors of unique narrative experiences.
This paper aims at demonstrating that the variae lectiones EcpüiteeOs and ensörpce in Od. 5, 232 are equally 'Homeric' and thus equivalent. A textual choice between the two readings would try to identify the original, thereby discarding meaningful evidenee - transmitted via literary quotations, a Ptolemaic papyrus, the scholia and the manuscripts - for fluidity of composition during Performance and, thus, for the textual transmission of Homer. In Order to preserve this evidenee and not choose between two variants, like etponeeGe and e7re0rpte, whieh are demonstrably formulaic and in accordance with Homeric usus, the multitextual approach and the electronic edition being prepared by the Center for Hellenic Studies (Washington D.C.) could be helpful.
El presente trabajo analiza el estilo reiterativo de la Historia Roderici y la Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, y en particular su modo más acentuado, es decir, las fórmulas y las expresiones formulares. Además de estudiar los sistemas formulares de ambas crónicas desde una perspectiva amplia, se dará cuenta de las relaciones existentes entre ambos textos en lo que concierne a las secuencias cristalizadas, así como las particularidades de cada una, y todo ello teniendo en cuenta las prácticas formulares de dos crónicas asturianas, la Chronica Rotensis y la Albeldensia. Por último, se observan las tendencias formulares del Cantar de mio Cid, el Libro de Fernán González y las Mocedades de Rodrigo, subrayando tanto los paralelismos como los elementos distintivos de cada poema.Ce travail analyse le style réitératif de l’Historia Roderici et de la Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, et en particulier son expression la plus accentuée, c’est-à-dire les formules et tournures adoptant la forme de formules. Nous étudions les systèmes de formules des deux chroniques dans une perspective large mais rendrons également compte des rapports existant entre les deux textes en ce qui concerne les séquences figées, ainsi que des particularités de chacun d’entre eux, en mettant ces divers éléments en relation avec l'usage des formules dans deux chroniques asturiennes, la Chronica Rotensis et la Chronica Albeldensia. En dernier lieu, on observera quel usage des formules font le Cantar de mio Cid, le Libro de Fernán González et les Mocedades de Rodrigo, en soulignant autant les parallélismes que les éléments distinctifs de chaque poème.
Homer is universally praised for the clarity of his style. Yet even to sympathetic or perceptive readers, if their critical remarks really express their judgments, his poetical intention has been singularly opaque: invited to leave town by Plato, as if he were a bad ethical philosopher; lauded by Aristotle for his dramatic unity, as if he were a pupil of Sophocles; criticised by Longinus for composing an Odyssey without Iliadic sublimity; abused in more recent times by Scaliger as indecorous, irrational, improper and undisciplined, as if he were seeking (like Virgil) to portray the perfect exemplar of a renaissance prince; defended by Dacier as a sublime primitive, innocent of taste and art, who achieved perfection ‘par la seule force de son genie’. Some of these judgments are no more than the stock responses of their age to epic poetry. The critic regards the poems from his own point of view; he discovers what he expects to find; and he passes a judgment that illuminates the workings of his own mind but sheds nothing but darkness upon Homer's. The announcement, therefore, of a new criticism by Notopoulos and Lord, a criticism based on the results of comparative study and free from the old prejudices of Analysts and Unitarians, is an event of importance. It may even be the case that the despised anachronistic ‘singer’, that unwashed, mendicant figure lurking in the coffee houses of the Balkans, has something to say. But whatever he says, it will be applicable to Homer only by analogy, and will require verification.
The formula ο ο forms part of a simile which has acquired a context-free semantic aura disclosing Homeric eschatological beliefs. The pre-verbal Gestalt which was nascent in the formula ο ο was that of the terrified, panic-stricken young deer being attacked by some carnivorous predator when they were drinking water. The participles ο and ο determine this framework including two temporally distinct phases of the realization of the Gestalt: confusion and daze before the imminent menace (ο) and panic-stricken flight (ο). Thus, the οο notion expresses the concept of dangerous transition and the water imagery connotes destruction, imminent death.
The first major treatise on narrative and narrative theory to make use of all the analytic tools developed in the last two decades.
Ruth Finnegan unleashed the controversy surrounding the African oral epic in 1970, when she stated that the epic does not occur in African oral literature. Since then, many scholars have come forward to refute or refine Finnegan's arguments. In the process, the African epic has received more attention than most other forms of orature. Today, thirty years later, the existence of the African oral epic is no longer in doubt; previously unacknowledged epic traditions have been unearthed and studied from many parts of Africa. Nevertheless, research on, and study of, the epic in East Africa has generally lagged behind. Apart from studies of the Swahili epic traditions, research on the epic literature of the other nationalities of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania is scarce. The present writer's study of the enanga epic tradition of the Bahaya of North-Western Tanzania is an isolated exception. This paper revisits the controversy on the African epic that raged in African literary circles from the 1970s to the 1990s. It reviews and summarizes the arguments of all the sides involved, in the context of pertinent theories of oral literature and oral creativity. Using data from a wide spectrum of African epic repertories, supplemented by raw data from the enanga epic tradition of Tanzania, the paper attempts to delve into the secrets of oral creativity, especially the relationship between tradition and conscious artistry, and between text and performance. Finally, the paper proposes an alternative model for defining the African oral epic and epic hero.
In spite of a long and influential philosophical career, when Carneades of Cyrene (214-129 BC), head of the Academy in its skeptical phase, died at age eighty-five, he left behind no written works. There were, we are told, some letters extant in Diogenes Laertius' time addressed to Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, but Carneades' philosophical opinions were conveyed orally and transmitted to posterity in written form only by his students (D.L. 4.65). 1 In this respect Carneades resembles not only Pythagoras and Socrates before him and Epictetus later, but also his Skeptic predecessors Pyrrho and Arcesilaus, whose refusal to commit their ideas to writing was a conscious protest against philosophical dogmatism. 2 And yet, while not a writer, Carneades' devotion to the word was total and complete: he let his hair and fingernails grow weirdly long, Diogenes Laertius reports, because he was so engrossed in philosophical debate (aj scoliv a/ th' / peri; tou; " lov gou"; D.L. 4.62), and his skills as a dialectician, conversationalist, and orator were by all accounts astounding. Indeed, Carneades' mastery of forms of oral expression became the stuff of legend: his booming voice brought him humorously into conflict with the local gymnasiarch (D.L. 4.63). Professional orators, it is said, would cancel their own classes in order to attend his lectures (D.L. 4.62). He became 1 Chief among whom was the Carthaginian Hasdrubal, Carneades' prolific successor, known by his adoptive Greek name, Clitomachus. None of Clitomachus' many works survive, though Cicero and Sextus Empiricus preserve a good deal of Carneades' thought. All extant fragments and testimonia with commentary may be found in Mette 1985:55-141; select passages with English translation and commentary in Long and Sedley 1987, vol. 1:438-88 and vol. 2:432-75. 2 Cf. D.L. 4.32 (of Arcesilaus), with Long 1985:80, 94. Plato's injunction that the philosopher should consider writing nothing more than an amusement (paidia; cf. Phaedrus 274b-76d) was perhaps also a factor.
Transactions of the American Philological Association 131 (2001) 23�51 Odysseus in Ino�s Veil: Feminine Headdress and the Hero in Odyssey 5 Dianna Rhyan Kardulias The College of Wooster �Odysseus tests all the limits of his culture.�1 Introduction: Feminine Headdress and the Hero As Odysseus journeys home, from �submerged identity� back to wholeness and reintegration, from the languishing �dangers of exotic vice� back to the firmfounded bed of Penelope, even from death back into life, various devices and disguises demonstrate his epithet mli�qolmlt.2 Homeric scholarship has long been engaged to investigate his polytropic deviousness. One maneuver, however, remains unappreciated: his brief, clumsy, aquatic d�but wearing a veil (5.333�462). When Ino-Leukothea spies the shipwrecked (or rather raft-wrecked) Odysseus struggling in the ocean between Ogygia and Skheria, she pities him and loans him her veil (ho�abjklk). R�k a� �abk I�ajlr vrd�qeo+ h^ii�pcrolt ~Gk�+ Jbrhlv�e+ � mo◊k j�k �ek _olq�t ^�a�bpp^+ k�k a~ �i�t �k mbi�dbppf vb�k �g �jjlob qfj�t1Foley 71. I would like to thank Don Lateiner, Bruce Heiden, and Erwin Cook, along with the editor and anonymous readers of TAPA, for thoughtful suggestions that helped to shape the final version of this article, and Steve Tracy, Joe Tebben, Sarah Johnston, and Jane Snyder for Homeric and feminist studies. 2Submerged identity: Holtsmark 207 n. 6, citing Whitman 289. Dangers of exotic vice: Brilliant 167. On the bed of Penelope see Dietz; Felson-Rubin 12, 38�39, 62; Zeitlin 1995. Death into life (rebirth): Holtsmark; Segal 1967; Germain 78�86, 126�28, 131�32; Anderson; Taylor; Flaumenhaft; Pucci 1987: 148�54. Odysseus polutropos: Pucci 1982 esp. 50�57. 24 Dianna Rhyan Kardulias � ...
Le travail du philologue americain Albert Bates Lord (1912-1991), qui poursuit celui de Milman Parry (1902-1935), est a l’origine de ce que l’on a appele la « theorie formulaire » (oral-formulaic theory). L’ouvrage de reference d’Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (1960), defend l’idee de la composition orale de certains grands textes telles les epopees homeriques, en s’appuyant sur une etude de terrain portant sur des bardes du sud de l’ex-Yougoslavie. Parry, dont Lord fut l’assistant, est un ...
The position of the polis in the Iliad and the Odyssey is equivocal. Because there is a great span in time between the formal subject material of the poems ( ca . 1250 BC) and the time of their composition ( ca . 750-700 BC, by convention), the poems present a hybrid world picture with varying and occasionally contradictory systems of social organization. As much as the poems are part of a long epic and formulaic tradition which looks back to an ancestral Mycenaean past, they also have been adapted to the conditions of Homer's lifetime. In political organization, the Iliad and the Odyssey look back through the small tribal groupings and warrior aristocracy of the Dark Ages, to a highly centralized and bureaucratic society governed by divinely ordained kings; but they also look forward to that form of social organization which Homer saw emerging about him — the polis . With this wide disparity in socio-political orientation apparent in the poems, one scholar can say, ‘For Homer and his audience the polis is regarded as the typical form of human community’, whereas another can argue that the significance of the polis is masked and superseded by that of the oikos (the means of social unification preeminent in the Dark Ages). And even if the polis were agreed to be the typical form of human habitation, it is nevertheless argued that the focus in the poems upon the individualistic warrior aristocracy prevents the polis from playing a significant dramatic role in the poems as a higher coercive power: ‘die Stadt habe für die fuhrende Schicht nur an der Peripherie des Daseins gestanden.’ More extensively the same critic writes (p. 164):
Der adlige Herr mag häufig in seinem Kreis besondere Formen des Lebens pflegen, an denen die übrige Menge keinen Teil hat, für ihn mag eine, nur ihm bemässe, ritterliche Ethik geben, der er sich verpflichtet fühlt, aberer kann sich im grund nicht von dem Boden der Stadt lösen, die seine Heimat ist.
Is there an answer to the question ‘what is a refrain?’ Traditionally, scholars of thirteenth-century French song begin their reply by noting that a refrain is the characteristic formal feature of a rondeau, that is, an element which is repeated, usually with a separate half-repetition, in alternation with a strophic ‘respond’:
Aaliz main se leva,
bon jor ait qui mon cuer a!
Biau se vesti et para,
desoz l'aunoi.
Bon jor ait qui mon cuer a
n'est pas o mot .
Moreover, most modern attempts to define refrains have explicitly begun by collecting rondeaux. But since only a small proportion of refrains occurs in rondeaux (in van den Boogaard's bibliography approximately one tenth), it is clearly not a comprehensive definition.
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