Postoral Homer: Orality and Literacy in the Homeric Epic 3515120483, 9783515120487

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Rainer Friedrich

Postoral Homer Orality and Literacy in the Homeric Epic

HERMES Klassische Philologie Franz Steiner Verlag

EinzElScHRift 112

Rainer Friedrich Postoral Homer

H E RME S zeitschr if t f ü r klas si sch e p h i lo lo gi e Einzelschriften

Herausgeber: prof. Dr. Jan-Wilhelm Beck, Universität Regensburg, Institut für Klassische Philologie, Universitätsstr. 31, 93053 Regensburg (verantwortlich für Latinistik) prof. Dr. karl-Joachim hölkeskamp, Universität zu Köln, Historisches Institut – Alte Geschichte, 50923 Köln (verantwortlich für Alte Geschichte) prof. Dr. martin hose, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Fakultät für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften, Griechische und Lateinische Philologie, Schellingstr. 3 (VG), 80799 München (verantwortlich für Gräzistik)

Band 112

Rainer Friedrich

Postoral Homer Orality and Literacy in the Homeric Epic

Franz Steiner Verlag

Umschlagbild: Statue des Hermes / röm. Kopie, Vatikan akg-images / Tristan Lafranchis Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2019 Satz: DTP + Text Eva Burri, Stuttgart Druck: Offsetdruck Bokor, Bad Tölz Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-12048-7 (Print) ISBN 978-3-515-12050-0 (E-Book)

FOR HANNO, ANYA, ZOSIA, AND WISIA

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface............................................................................................................... Acknowledgements ...........................................................................................

11 15

I. THE THEORY OF THE ORAL HOMER AND ITS DILEMMAS............

17

1. Introduction. Homer’s Orality – An Open Question Again ...................

19

2. The Waning of Parryism’s Hegemony ................................................... a. Oral Theory & the Theory of the Oral Homer: A Necessary Distinction ................................................................... b. The Alleged Evolution of Parryism.................................................. c. The Differentiations Within Parryism .............................................. d. ‘Multiform Parryism’ – Its Irreconcilable Divisions ....................... e. Scripsists and Oralists: Literacy as Fetish and Orality as Idol ......... f. ‘Prisonniers de l’oralisme’...............................................................

23

3. ‘Hard Parryism’ and ‘Soft Parryism’ – An Oral Poetics for Homer? .... a. Oral Poetics ...................................................................................... b. Aristotelian Poetics versus Oral Poetics of the Epic ........................ c. Chart: Aristotelian Poetics versus Oralist Poetics of the Epic ......... d. Oral Poetics for Homer: ‘Honor’d More in the Breach than the Observance’ ........................................................................

38 40 41 42

4. The Parryist Tests of Orality .................................................................. a. The Formula Test: Formular Language and Schematized Diction .. a1. Parry’s Epochal Discovery and Its Problems ........................... b1. Lowly Status of the Epithets...................................................... c1. Too Rigidly Drawn Distinctions ................................................ d1. The Homeric Epithet and the mot juste ..................................... e1. An Anatomy of the Parry-Lord Formula Analyses ................... b. The Microphilology of the Formula: A Critical Account ................. a1. ‘Oralist Alchemy’ ...................................................................... b1. Chart: Development of Formular Theory .................................. c1. The Erosion of Oral Substance .................................................. c. Attempted Remedies: Alternative New Approaches ........................ d. Conclusion. The Malaise of Parryist Formular Theory ....................

50 52 52 56 60 63 65 71 77 79 80 85 96

24 28 30 35 36 37

45

5. The Tests of Orality Resumed – The Formula Test ............................... 97 a. A Revised Concept of the Formula .................................................. 97 b. ‘Words of Zero-Formularity’: hapax legomena in Homer ............... 99 c. Formular Analyses for the ‘Litmus Tests of Orality’........................ 101

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Table of Contents

d. The End of the Notion of Formular Uniformity in Homeric Diction ........................................................................... 106 6. The ‘Test By Thrift’ – The Economy Test ............................................. 110 7. Parataxis & Hypotaxis In Homer – The Enjambment Test ................... a. The Nature and Forms of Enjambment ............................................ b. The Statistical Evidence. .................................................................. c. Parryists in Denial ............................................................................ d. “Nonconfigurationality” .................................................................. e. Hypotaxis in Homer ......................................................................... f. Parataxis in Homer ...........................................................................

114 116 118 120 124 128 131

8. Composition-by-Theme – The Thematic Test ....................................... a. Type-scenes ...................................................................................... b. Catalogues ........................................................................................ c. Anatomy of a Parryist Thematic Analysis of Iliad I ........................ d. A Tale of Two Assemblies ................................................................ e. The Dilution of the Term ‘Oral Theme’ ........................................... f. The Different Uses of Typical ..........................................................

135 136 139 143 144 151 154

9. The Test Results – Preliminary Conclusions ......................................... 155 II. THE THEORY OF THE POSTORAL HOMER ......................................... 157 1. Taking Stock and The Task Ahead ......................................................... 159 2. Literacy in Archaic Greece ................................................................... 162 a. The Evidence .................................................................................... 162 b. ‘Alphabetic Revolution’ ................................................................. 169 3. The ‘Other Parryism’ of Parry Fils: Postorality & Transitional Text .... a. Critique of Hyperoralism ................................................................. b. Dictation versus Autograph .............................................................. c. The Case for Postorality ...................................................................

174 177 178 183

4. Towards Non-Schematized Free Composition of Postorality................ a. Postoral Poet and Transitional Stage ................................................ b. Craft Into Art .................................................................................... a1. Iteration – Oralism’s Kingdom – and its Artistic Uses .............. b1. ‘Formulaic Artistry’ ................................................................... c1. Craft-Into-Art in Type-Scenes .................................................. a2. Type-scene and êthopoiia: Pondering Scenes .......................... b2. The Type-Scene ‘Arming’ and the Typology of the Aristeia ..... c. Oral Theme & Simile – The Non-Oral Nature of the Homeric Simile ......................................................................

186 186 187 187 193 195 196 197 202

Table of Contents

5. Characterization & Large-Scale Structure: Postorality & Neoanalysis . a. Dramatic Large-Scale Structure ....................................................... a1. Beyond the Memnonis-hypothesis: the Evolution of Neoanalysis .......................................................................... b1. A Historical Morphology of Archaic Greek Epic ...................... c1. Homer’s Two Iliads ................................................................... d1. Integral-dramatic Large-Scale Epic ........................................... b. Characterization (hjqopoiiva)............................................................. c. The ‘Uniqueness of Achilleus’ ......................................................... d. The Grand Finale: The Ransoming of Hektor (Hektoros Lytra) and the Return of the megalopsychos............................................... e. Heroic Ambition (philotimia) and Tragic Loss ................................

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209 209 213 214 217 221 225 226 235 237

6. Epilogue: A Last Word on Postoral Narrative Art & Schematization .... 243 APPENDICES .................................................................................................. Appendix I: Supporting Passages to the “Formular Analysis” of Vergil, Aen. 1, 1–10 .................................. Appendix II.................................................................................................. Appendix III ................................................................................................

245 245 248 252

Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 255 Indices ............................................................................................................... 269 Index rerum ................................................................................................. 269 Index locorum.............................................................................................. 272

PREFACE The research of the Oral-Poetry School has given rise to the pronounced awareness that the Homeric epic grew from a unique, never to recur, cultural constellation marked by the transition from orality to alphabetic literacy. This awareness is widely shared among Homerists. It implies that both orality and literacy had a part in the genesis of the Homeric epic. The irony is that those to whose researches it is owed do not share this awareness and will have none of it. The scholars of the OralPoetry School insist on the purely oral composition of the Homeric epics and are scandalized by the talk of a transitional period. The present study is a response to the irony of the situation. Its first part, my 2007 monograph – Formular Economy in Homer. The Poetics of the Breaches – tackled the Parryist Theory of the Oral Homer at its strongest site: Milman Parry’s epochal discovery of the organization of the Homeric name-epithet formulas in systems of extension and economy. Parry had dubbed his discovery the schematization of the Homeric diction. He succeeded in identifying it as a force in the Homeric narrative that is exclusively oral: indispensable as it is for oral composition-in-performance, schematization would be an encumbrance on written composition. Parry was quick to extrapolate his discovery of schematization among the noun-epithet formulas to the whole of the Homeric diction. This extrapolation gave rise to the twin Parryist beliefs in (1) Homer’s strict observance of formular economy and, as a corollary, in (2) the ubiquity of schematization in the diction of both Homeric epics. It is chiefly on these beliefs that the Parryist assumption of Homeric orality turns. In examining the Parryist beliefs, my 2007 monograph had registered more than 300 infractions of the principle of formular economy. Such infractions serve for the most part poetic design. The results of my study called into question both Parryist beliefs: observance of formular economy is in no way strict and consistent, nor is schematization ubiquitous in Homeric diction. However, the result of my examination was rather inconclusive in the sense that formular economy in Homer is being honoured both in the breach and the observance (with apologies to Shakespeare): schematization, though diminished and attenuated, is still a real factor in Homeric diction, but of a far more limited compass and extent than Parryism assumes and makes it out to be. Such inconclusiveness at the site, where the Homeric epic is assumed to be most pronouncedly oral, should give pause to Parryists. It should trigger a re-examination of some of Parryism’s central tenets. Inconclusive is the outcome of my examination only within a model that postulates, as mainstream Parryism does, that the text must be either oral song or written literature, allowing no third term: tertium non datur. Yet with their frequent breaches of formular economy and diminishing schematization, the Homeric epics behave neither as straight oral songs; nor do they, given their still discernible observance of economy and schematization, how-

12

Preface

ever attenuated, behave as straight literate texts either. The mainstream Parryist model thus leaves them in limbo. It is this very inconclusiveness that points beyond the Parryist model and demands a third term: tertium datur. In order to take the Homeric epics out of limbo and find for them (again with apologies to Shakespeare) “a habitation and a name”, I postulated in the conclusion of my monograph Homeric postorality and the transitional text. Their habitation would be the as yet uncharted terrain between orality and literacy, the site of the transitional text; and postoral would be their name. To substantiate what I am postulating, and to enunciate Homeric postorality in its full scope and depth, are the twin purposes of this book. The epithet postoral I coined for Homer decades ago in my Stilwandel im homerischen Epos (Friedrich 1975). The occasion was my perusal of Adam Parry’s sagacious 1966 essay “Have we Homer’s Iliad?” Parry fils does not use the term in his essay, yet the notion of Homeric postorality is already there in all but name. Very briefly and most generally put, and to be fully articulated and elaborated in this book, the notion assumes a Homer who, when being trained as an oral bard, had absorbed the Hellenic oral tradition with its formular apparatus, narrative techniques, and typical themes, along with the traditional body of tales set in the heroic age; yet who, in the course of his career as an oral singer, had acquired literacy and applied it to widen, deepen, and refine his epic art, and thus grew into ‘postoral Homer’, the author of so complex an epic as the Iliad. The notion of an initially oral Homer attaining literacy is not quite novel. It had been considered intuitively by H. T. Wade-Gery and C. M. Bowra (Wade-Gery 1952; Bowra 1952). This notion was promptly dismissed by Albert Lord as an attempt at a flaccid compromise of scholars, uncomfortable with the idea of an unlettered Homer and yet forced to acknowledge an oral tradition operative in the Homeric epics (Lord 1953:124–26). What, then, can be claimed to be new (apart from the name ‘postoral’) in my enterprise? New is that it will go beyond intuition and develop the notion of the postoral Homer for the first time comprehensively and systematically, based on hard textual facts. One such fact is the co-existence of oral and non-oral – i. e., literate – features in Homer. A brief article with the title “Oral and Literate Elements in Homer” (Whitaker 1986:18–25) hints at such co-existence, yet without suggesting postorality. Evidence for this co-existence I have furnished in a number of studies preliminary to the present book (Friedrich 2000; 2002; 2007; 2011). Of these, my 2007 book-length study Formular Economy in Homer constitutes practically the first volume of the project Postoral Homer. It has become the object of Edzard Visser’s extraordinarily tendentious review in GNOMON (vol. 83.1, 2011). Teeming as it does with inaccuracies, distortions, and factually false assertions that allege the opposite of what is found in my text, his review is based on an at best cursory, if not altogether ‘diagonal’, reading, which is all too patent when he criticizes my text for alleged omissions while ignoring my explicit statements on pp. 13–4; 20–2; 92; 100–1; 104–6; 138–9 (to cite only the most egregious instances). Part I of Postoral Homer is a critical analysis of Parryism that will turn on the problems and dilemmas of the Theory of the Oral Homer. It will examine long-held

Preface

13

assumptions of Parryism, in particular its belief of having proved the orality of Homer through a successful application of its four tests of orality. The resumption of the tests yields the central result of Part I: their inconclusiveness in the form of that co-existence of oral and literate elements in the Homeric epics that demands an explanation. Part II will offer this explanation, proposing thereby a resolution to the dilemmas of Parryism’s Theory of the Oral Homer in terms of the postorality of the Homeric epics. It will widen the scope of the book’s argument: going beyond the microphilology of formula, stereotypical theme, enjambment, and schematized diction, it will embark on the discussion of the major topics of Homer-exegesis: nonschematized free narrative, characterization, and large-scale structural design, along with the Iliad’s intellectual physiognomy and its underlying nexus of ideas. In the process the postoral argument will be conjoined with Neoanalysis. Here are the unargued presuppositions of this study, which, apart from occasional references to the Odyssey, deals almost exclusively with the Iliad. I share the chorizont hypothesis of two distinct poets for Iliad and Odyssey, which is unitarian for either epic – a position I have argued in Friedrich 1975. My chorizont perspective connotes the notion of the Homeric epic comprising both poems (except for spurious Iliad X) in the sense that the Iliad-poet Homer and the Odyssey-poet formed some kind of school of epic composition in terms of a master-disciple relationship, appositely characterized by Felix Jacoby as creative mimesis on the part of the younger Odyssey-poet (Jacoby 1933). This younger poet was possibly literate from the beginning. – As to the question of the date of the Iliad’s composition – late eighth or early to mid-seventh century – I tend to be agnostic. Either date would go with the postoral argument; the seventh-century dating would facilitate it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sam Scully, a friend and colleague, formerly of Dalhousie University, has read the whole manuscript and offered invaluable critical comment that has greatly improved this book. It is with profound gratitude that I acknowledge his contribution. To Professor Dr. Wolfgang Kullmann I am most grateful for advice, encouragement, and inspiration. I wish to thank the editors of Hermes Einzelschriften – Professors Dr. Beck, Dr. Hölkeskamp and Dr. Hose – for including Postoral Homer in the HE series and for the critical study of the manuscript that this implies. For the formatting of the manuscript I received invaluable aid from the IT Help Desk of Dalhousie University, in particular from Messrs. Norbert Addo and Arshdeep Singh Sandhu. To them and the crew of the Help Desk I wish to express my gratitude. Likewise, I wish to thank Hanno Friedrich for solving some serious formatting problems. For the completion of the camera-ready copy, my gratitude goes to Frau Andrea Hoffmann and the Steiner-Verlag. Halifax, Nova Scotia

Rainer Friedrich

I. THE THEORY OF THE ORAL HOMER AND ITS DILEMMAS

1. INTRODUCTION. HOMER’S ORALITY – AN OPEN QUESTION AGAIN Milman Parry’s epochal discovery of formular systems in the diction of Iliad and Odyssey had revealed a tradition of oral verse-making behind as well as within the Homeric epic. It had started as an Essai sur un problème du style homérique – the subtitle of Parry’s 1928 Parisian thèse, L’Epithète traditionnelle dans Homère. The problem referred to in the title was the seemingly random use of the frequent and widely distributed epithets combining with names and nouns to form those recurrent word-groups called fixed formulas. Parry showed that they were adapted to the needs of versification in that their metrical shapes corresponded to the main divisions of the hexameter, its caesurae and diaereses. In their ensemble, they make up the thesaurus of ready-made formulas that the tradition furnishes the epic singers to meet their versemaking needs: to fill given metrical spaces with these names and nouns to complete both sentence and verse. There is nothing random about their use. For the salient point of Parry’s discovery is that this thesaurus of formulas, far from being an amorphous Traditionsmasse, is highly structured, organized as it is into systems by the twin principles of extension and economy. Such systems, Parry convincingly explained, were designed to meet a maximum of the singers’ metrical needs (= extension), yet, for mnemonic reasons, to meet them with a minimum of formulas (= economy). The raison d’être of such systems was to enable unlettered singers to compose during performance; or, to use Bryan Hainsworth’s delightfully matter-of-fact description, “to accomplish the tricky task of improvising in Greek hexameters”1. For such schematization of diction is explicable only in terms of oral composition-inperformance. Here it has an essential function, while in written composition schematization would be counterproductive, a pointless encumbrance on the literate poet. Schematization causes the oral diction to differ in kind from the diction of written literature. Having demonstrated the existence of schematization in Homeric diction, Parry had thereby established an undeniable link between the Homeric epic and oral poetry – a kth`ma ej~ aijeiv for Homeric studies. The tradition of oral verse-making in Homer is thus most pronouncedly present in the systematic organization of the formulas. It is a tradition that had grown over many generations of oral singers who contributed to it in different measure. From this finding derives the Parryist claim that Parry’s discovery has basically made the Homeric Question obsolete. It was assumed to have resolved the division and opposition of the analyst and unitarian schools by reconciling the respective principal tenets of either. A multiplicity of singers (the analyst tenet) was operative in the origin, growth, and development of the oral tradition from which the Homeric epics sprang – its formular diction and its narrative techniques for the epic shaping of the 1

Hainsworth 1969: 12.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

canon of the Trojan-war themes; while one outstanding singer of this tradition, Homer, composed the epics as we have them by giving them their grand design (the unitarian tenet). Now this thesis is quite elegantly argued, but apparently in too facile a fashion to dispose of the old Homeric question. Yet there is something to this claim. Parry’s discovery of an oral tradition behind and within the Homeric epic did lift Homeric studies out of the paralyzing impasse caused by the unitarian/analyst dichotomy. It did so by throwing light on an important feature of Homeric composition, central to the unitarian/analyst dispute. In conferring an altered status on the frequent forms of Homeric iteration – iteration of phrase, scene, theme, motif, pattern, all prime targets of analyst theories – it raised repetition from ‘damnable iteration’ (as Shakespeare’s Falstaff vividly describes its pre-Parry status) to a distinct characteristic feature of an epic style that has evolved in and from an oral tradition. That Parry’s discovery has demonstrated a link between the Homeric epic and oral poetry is indisputable. Yet the exact nature of this link has remained a moot point. It is, in short, an open question, one still to be settled. In fact, it is nothing less than the New Homeric Question, turning on the roles orality and literacy played in the genesis of Iliad and Odyssey. Such talk raises Parryist hackles. ‘Moot point’ and ‘unsettled open question’ are hardly terms in which Parryism’s scholars view the framework of Milman Parry’s achievement. On the contrary, no matter how much the various Parryist approaches may differ from one another – they are agreed in their belief that Milman Parry has furnished “the decisive proof that the poems are oral compositions” by having demonstrated that “the language of the Iliad and Odyssey is formulaic from beginning to end”2; that this proof is “unanswerable and unassailable”, representing “a truth that abides as surely as Euclid’s demonstrations abide”3, based, as it is said to be, on “irrefutable statistical facts that distinguish the texts of Homer from those of poets known to have composed by writing”; so that “it is obvious that on statistical grounds alone Homeric poetry was fundamentally oral poetry”4, “thoroughly exemplify[ing] the formular economy and scope of a well-developed oral tradition”5. Thus, far from being seen as a moot point, Homer’s orality has become the undisputed axiom of the Parryist creed. It was the dominant doctrine during Parryism’s hegemony in Anglophone Homeric Studies that has lasted for several decades. Under this hegemony, paying homage or at least lip-service to this axiom had come to be de rigueur for many Homerists. In short, the Parryist view of the oral Homer is grounded in an axiom, which, as is the way of axioms, is advertising itself as a self-evident truth. Parryist beliefs notwithstanding, Milman Parry had never proved the orality of the Homeric epics. In view of the hyperbolic claims of Parryists, one does well to recall Adam Parry’s more sober assessment of his father’s achievement in his Introduction to The Making of Homeric Verse. Milman Parry himself, he writes, 2 3 4 5

Fenik 1968: 2 (emphasis added). Carpenter 1959: 6. Nagler 1967: 274 (emphasis added). Kirk 1976: 113.

Introduction. Homer’s Orality – An Open Question Again

21

almost never discussed Homer, that is, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, as opposed to the tradition in which Homer worked; nor did he ever demonstrate, although at times he seems to assume it, that Homer was himself an oral poet.

And he adds in a footnote: That Homer himself … was an oral poet, there exists no proof whatever. Otherwise put, not the slightest proof has yet appeared that the texts of the Iliad and Odyssey as we have them, or any substantial connected portion of these texts, were composed by oral improvisation of the kind observed and described by Parry and Lord and others in Jugoslavia and elsewhere … What has been proved is that the style of these poems is ‘typical of oral poetry’, and it is a reasonable presumption that this style was the creation of an actual oral tradition6.

It is quite astounding that a scholarly hegemony of the kind that Parryism has held in Homeric scholarship could have sustained itself for decades, based as it is on unsupported axiomatic claims. The vaunted ‘irrefutable statistical facts’ are nowhere to be found. The statistics offered for the claim of the formularity of the Homeric diction – its formular density, the “litmus test of orality”7– that have been offered, are, as will become patent, anything but irrefutable. Nor do they represent textual facts. How could they in view of the unsettled definition of the formula?! This situation points to the fundamental dilemma of Parryism: its inability to produce a valid and generally accepted definition of one of its central concepts, the formula. This dilemma is to be discussed in detail below. As one self-critical Parryist has described the dilemma, there is an “almost universal agreement among oralists that Homer is a formulaic poet”, matched by an “almost equally universal disagreement on the basic definition of formula”8. This was written in 1975; in the meantime this dilemma has been aggravated by the further proliferation of ever new concepts of the formula. In the natural and physical sciences such a dilemma, if it could arise there at all, would amount to a scientific scandal. But most oralists seem to be quite unperturbed by it, with some even trying to make a virtue out of a vice by celebrating the multiplicity of formula-concepts as indicative of a refined and richly nuanced Parryism. Yet perturbed they should be. For without a valid definition of the formula, how could one claim that Homer’s diction is “formulaic from beginning to end” and thus passes the “litmus test of orality”? Furthermore, the lack of a valid definition of the formula is only the chief one of Parryism’s dilemmas and points to its general malaise, as will become patent: the diffusion and confusion that obtain in its nomenclature and conceptual apparatus. In this respect one could be tempted to describe Parryism as a body of unresolved dilemmas. Thus the fact of the matter remains that Milman Parry’s great discovery amounts to having established an irrefutable link between the Homeric epic and oral poetry, the nature of which has still to be determined – no more, no less. His discovery did not render the Homeric Question obsolete. But it has taken it to a new level. In fact, Parry’s discovery had reframed it entirely as the New Homeric Question, turning, 6 7 8

A. Parry 1971: LX–LXI, and LXI n.1 (emphasis added). Notopoulos 1964: 19. Cp. also Lord 1968: 24; Peabody 1975: 30–31. Austin 1975: 14 (emphasis added).

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

as noted above, on the roles orality and literacy played in the genesis of the epics. Yet it had not, oralist beliefs and claims notwithstanding, settled it by proving the orality of the epics.

2. THE WANING OF PARRYISM’S HEGEMONY That Homeric orality, after decades of ruling Parryist orthodoxy, has become an open question again is due to the waning of Parryism’s hegemony. To be sure, this hegemony has given rise to a number of important achievements. There is, first of all, the edition of Milman Parry’s collected papers, The Making of Homeric Verse (1971), edited by Adam Parry with an exegetical introduction to his father’s work. Then there is Albert Bates Lord’s canonical The Singer of Tales (Lord 1960), which can rightly claim the rank of a classic and whose impact on Homeric studies can hardly be overstated. On top of that, it initiated the new discipline of Comparative Oral Epic (on which more below). Its sequel The Singer Resumes His Tale (Lord 1991) is of similar importance. Furthermore, Richard Janko succeeded in the relative dating of the early Greek hexameter texts (Homer, Hesiod, Homeric hymns) on reliable linguistic evidence (Janko 1982). And finally, at its height, the hegemony gave rise to the six volumes of the monumental Parryist Cambridge Iliad-Commentary (1985–1995). Yet this crowning achievement of the Parryist hegemony may turn out to be its swan-song as well. Signs that augured its waning already appeared while the Commentary was being produced. The publication of a collection of essays by prominent Homerists in 1987, just two years after the first volume of the Cambridge Commentary had appeared, had the provocative title Homer: Beyond Oral Poetry. It was provocative in that it signaled that paying homage or lip-service to the doctrine of the oral Homer had ceased to be de rigueur. Meanwhile, Karl Reinhardt’s Homer-book, notorious for its emphatic repudiation of Parryism, has been gaining currency in the English-speaking world: once dismissed by Parryists as the regrettable sacrificium intellectus to a traditional aesthetics one would expect of a German-speaking unitarian, it is now being frequently taken into account even by oralists9. Most importantly, through Wolfgang Kullmann’s dialogical engagement with Parryism10, Neoanalysis has risen to prominence in Anglophone Homeric scholarship – a school that at the height of the Parryist hegemony had met with extraordinary hostility and ridicule at the hands of Parryists, because its tenets involved Homeric literacy11. There are other, more subtle and indirect, signs that the hegemony is giving way to a more balanced state of affairs in Homeric Studies. The Cambridge Iliad Commentary was an entirely oralist affair; and the New Companion to Homer (1997) had a largely oralist tenor; yet the English version of the Italian Odyssey Commentary (1989) had oralists and non-oralists as authors; and the recently published Homer-Encyclopedia (2011) is an enterprise, to which oralists, postoralists, and non-oralists alike have contributed. Yet note that the only Homeric scholars 9 10 11

Most prominently so in Taplin 1992. Kullmann 1984: 307–23 (= Kullmann 1992: 140–55). Page 1963: 21–24.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

whom the Homer-Encyclopedia grants an entry, complete with a portrait, are the founders of Parryism, Milman Parry and Albert Bates Lord, along with their precursor, Friedrich-August Wolff12. It is an intensive afterglow of the old Parryist hegemony. A determined attempt to re-assert the hegemony was Gregory Nagy’s “Homeric Questions”, a programmatic declaration presented in the form of the Presidential Address at the 1991 Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association in Chicago. Taking offence at a book-title such as Homer: Beyond Oral Poetry and wondering how this title, along with the implied affront to oralist orthodoxy, was conceivable at all in this Parryist day and age, he proceeded to condemn the statement “Homer wrote” as irresponsible extremism born from ignorance, and solemnly anathematized it as reckless heresy13. Nevertheless, such heresy found its way into the Praefatio of the 1998 Teubner Ilias: Ilias materiam continet iamdiu per ora cantorum diffusam, formam autem contextumque qualem nos novimus tum primum attinuit, cum conscripta est; quod ut fieret, unius munus fuit maximi poetae14. The Iliad contains narrative matter that had already been circulated by oral epic singers; yet the quality of form and coherence which we know it attained at the time when it was written; that it could come about was the work of a single outstanding poet.

It is a testimony to the waning of the hegemony. Adam Parry had argued the same point. Under the hegemony Parryist orthodoxy could still dismiss his view out of hand. Yet with the hegemony in decline, it no longer can. It is thus a decisive signal for the re-opening of the debate on the nature of the link of the Homeric epos with oral poetry. In this debate I intend to intervene by arguing at length for the notion of the postoral Homer, supported by textual facts. a. ORAL THEORY & THE THEORY OF THE ORAL HOMER: A NECESSARY DISTINCTION Before I elaborate on postorality, a number of points need clarifying. First and foremost among them is the distinction between Oral Theory on the one hand and the Theory of the Oral Homer (or Parryism for short) on the other. I resume and elaborate here this distinction already adumbrated in my Formular Economy15. A seeming obstacle to drawing this distinction is A. B. Lord’s protest that “the phrase ‘oral theory’ with regard to the investigations into South Slavic oral epic by Parry and me is a misnomer”. As he rightly claims, “these findings do not constitute a ‘theory’; rather, they provide demonstrated facts concerning oral traditional

12

Finkelberg 2011: 487–89; 629–31; 936–39. (There are also entries with portraits of two archaeologists, C. W. Blegen and H. Schliemann). 13 Nagy 1992: 17–60 ~ Nagy 1996a: “Homeric Questions”. 14 West 1998: V: This is now fully elaborated in West 2011; see pp. 10–11 (“Proposition 4”). 15 Friedrich 2007: 28, also 9 note 1.

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poetry”16. Lord has a point, and an important one to boot, which cannot be emphasized enough in this age of theoreticism, when self-indulgent theorizing that is forced on texts tends to obscure rather than illuminate them. Yet the term ‘oral theory’ is not quite the misnomer that Lord makes it out to be. His own classic, The Singer of Tales, confirms my counter. Its two main divisions carry the titles “The Theory” and “The Application”. This does, however, not amount to an inconsistency on Lord’s part: the apparent contradiction is easily resolved: different uses of the term ‘theory’ are at work here. From the “demonstrated facts concerning oral traditional poetry”, a result of their field-work and first-hand experience with living oral poetry in the Balkans, Parry, Lord, and Notopoulos had drawn general conclusions as to the nature, style, narrative techniques, and outlook of oral poetry; developed a nomenclature; and formulated the outline of a poetics for analysing and interpreting oral poems. These general conclusions, along with nomenclature and poetics, constitute what appears in Singer of Tales as The Theory. Thus there arose Oral Theory or Oral-formulaic Theory, as the official name goes. It is theory in the sense of the methodical and systematic generalization from empirical evidence. Let us briefly state its main features: “an oral poem is not composed for but in performance”17. Lord’s famous aphorism pithily sums up his definition of oral poetry as “composed in oral performance by people who cannot read or write” and being “synonymous with traditional and folk poetry”18. The salient point is the configuration of Oral Theory’s chief categories performance, composition, reception, and transmission: performance before a live audience conjoins oral composition and aural reception with oral-aural transmission, fusing these four elements into one continuous process that is oral poetry. From this fusion derives oral poetry’s multiformity, central to the original Parry-Lord Theory of Orality. It arises from the fluidity of oral song. An often performed song is composed anew, i. e., re-composed, with each performance. Thus composition-in-performance should read re-composition-in-performance of a song that is in constant flux. During its oral-aural transmission, it undergoes mutations – minor ones or major ones depending on the circumstances and conditions of the re-performance. Its mutability gives way to stability only when a song is fixed in writing as a stable text through dictation or some mechanical recording. Recomposition-in-performance and the concomitant fluidity of an oral song imply the absence of memorization prior to performance on the part of the oral bard. Prior memorization would mean the recital of a premeditated and rehearsed song, which would suggest a fixed text – a notion foreign to oral poetry. Since it is the creation, respectively re-creation, of a poem, an “oral narrative is not, cannot be, memorized”19:

16 17 18 19

Lord 1995: 191; Nagy 1996a: 19 f. reiterates this. Lord 1960: 13 (emphasis in original text). Lord 1965: 591. Lord 1965: 592 (emphasis in original text).

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas Pure oral transmission involves not memorization but recomposition; it does not consider any text, i. e., any performance as an ‘original’ or in any way fixed. It results in a retelling, not in a reproduction. Each performance, or multiform, has its own validity and is unique, whether it be a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ performance of the song20.

Just as it “excludes verse composed for oral presentation”, i. e., a memorized text, the Parry-Lord concept of oral poetry excludes with equal force “verse that is pure improvisation”21: oral composition qua recomposition consists in the re-telling of an existing tale, not in its creation ex nihilo. It is the application of Oral Theory to the Homeric epics that gave rise to the Theory of the Oral Homer (= Parryism). It is theory in the sense of an hypothesis that has to prove its validity through both the evidence it can muster and the explanatory power it can offer. By drawing this distinction between Oral Theory and Parryism, I simply make explicit what is implied in Lord’s canonical book. In short, Oral Theory and the Theory of the Oral Homer qua Parryism are related to one another in the terms of the main division of Lord’s book, namely as theory to its application. This distinction appears to be more clearcut and straightforward than it actually is. Matters are far more complicated and need exploring. To begin with, in their genesis both theories were intricately intertwined; and, quite naturally, they still interact. The discovery of systematic formularity in Homer and of its traditional nature – the results of Parry’s two Sorbonne theses – had provided the decisive impetus for Oral Theory in that it had prompted Parry to turn to the modern oral singers of tales among the Southern Slavs for a study of analogous phenomena. Thereupon Oral Theory’s formation, articulation, and systematization evolved as a result of Parry’s, Lord’s, and Notopoulos’ field-work with living oral poetry in the Balkans, fortified by their reception of the work of scholars of folklorist studies in this area22. Armed with the insights, gained from their direct experience of a living oral tradition, the oralist triumvirate returned to the Homeric epos and, applying their discoveries to Homer, drew the “Yugoslav analogy”. It was this analogy, then, that gave rise to the Theory of the Oral Homer23. Their initial interpenetration notwithstanding, both theories, when taking a systematic form, as they first did in Singer of Tales, became two distinct, though related, entities. Oral-Formulaic Theory has been comparative right from its inception with The Singer of Tales drawing, in addition to the Yugoslav and Homeric traditions, on Beowulf, Song of Roland, and the Byzantine Digenes Akritas. It is the larger and more comprehensive of the two theories. Based, as it is, on the study of a plurality of oral traditions, it provides the general fundamental categories. In particular, it provides the criteria and test-methods to be applied to texts that we have 20 21 22 23

Lord 1965: 592–93. Lord 1965: 591 (emphasis added). Especially Mathias Murko 1929. Cp. Lord 1960: 144: “The formulaic techniques … in the Greek and South Slavic poetries are generically identical and operate on the same principles. This is the surest proof now known of oral composition, and on the basis of it alone we should be justified in the conclusion that the Homeric poems are oral compositions”.

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in written form but are assumed to have originated by composition-in-performance in order to ascertain whether or not they are oral in origin; and if so, oral in which sense. ‘Oral in which sense?’ This question hints at how much more complicated matters have become since the appearance of The Singer of Tales – and not only complicated but problematical to boot. This situation is, ironically, a consequence of the enormous impetus that Lord’s canonical book had given to the study of oral traditions. So strong an impetus has it been that Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy can speak without exaggeration of the “exponential growth of comparative studies in oral ‘literature’”24 in its wake. Oral Theory’s empirical basis grew through the accumulation not only of newly discovered oral traditions – more than one hundred! – from all over the world, but also of many diverse oral genres. A veritable embarrassment of riches! These riches are in part due to the uncritical extension of the notion of orality to everything that seems to be involving elements of improvisation and multiformity, including jazz and blues. As a result, it appears now well nigh impossible to bring all this material under one theoretical roof. The notion of orality, having grown so broad, is therefore at risk of losing all distinctiveness and turning vacuous. Without much pruning of the empirical material, oral-formulaic theory could thus become a victim of its own success. Until this problem is resolved, it is advisable for the purpose of the present study to stay with Lord’s basic division of oral poetry into three general classifications – ritual, lyric, and narrative – and focus on the third one with an emphasis on oral epic. Comparative Oral Epic has successfully established itself as a subdivision of Comparative Literature, with Oral Theory being for the most part based on oral epic narrative. Yet even if we thus delimit orality in order to obtain an operational theoretical framework, difficulties remain: the riches of oral narrative traditions are such that they force the questioning of key generalizations of Oral Theory as it was initially conceived in the canonical texts of Parry and Lord. The chief one at stake is the validity of composition-in-performance as a universal distinctive characteristic of oral poetry. In an important piece “What is Oral Literature Anyway?” Ruth Finnegan has pointed out, that oral traditions exist in which composition-for-performance prevails: their poets premeditate their songs as well as memorize and rehearse them prior to performance25. From Lord’s response, it appears that, while acknowledging the actuality of composition for performance in some oral traditions, he felt quite uncomfortable with it and did not regard it as being authentically oral: … our problem …, as Professor Finnegan pointed out, is the word “oral,” which causes us all kinds of difficulty. I don’t know how to get away from it, but I think there is a possibility that the kind of composition in which the singer makes up a song orally, and doesn’t commit it to writing, but commits it to memory, may not be oral composition, but rather written composition without writing26.

24 Mitchell-Nagy 2000: XVIII (Introduction to Lord 2000). 25 Finnegan in Stolz & Shannon 1976: 127–166. 26 Lord in Stolz & Shannon 1976: 176.

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Much later he returned to this for elucidation: In my paradoxical description of such poetry as ‘written composition without writing’, I was attempting to emphasize that the prolonged and to a very high degree premeditated nature of such composition and the strenuous efforts to transmit it to others by rote memorization resemble more closely a written than an oral mentality. To my mind, such poetry would appear to be ‘oral mainly in performance’27.

Oralitas recitatorum is Lord’s name for such “separation of composition and performance”28. But it is unwritten composition all the same: it would be oralitas poetarum as well. Lord’s is an attempt at coping with evidence that deprives Oral Theory’s key tenet of composition-in-performance of its claim to universal applicability. Since it is valid evidence, Oral Theory cannot but acknowledge the co-existence of both forms of oral composition – with composition-in-performance still prevailing as the general, though no longer universal, tenet. b. THE ALLEGED EVOLUTION OF PARRYISM Part I of my study will involve a critical examination of Parryism29 and its claims. Oral Theory in its Parry-Lord articulation, but with the modifications due to its broadened empirical basis, will provide the criteria as well as the critical tools for this examination. The critique will thus be strictly immanent: the Parryist Theory of the Oral Homer will be judged by Oral Theory’s criteria. My procedure will encounter the standard objection to any critique of a theory that has been around for some time: namely, that the critique will refer to an outmoded version, a superseded stage in its evolution. My project has already encountered such objection from Gregory Nagy30 after the publication of one of my preliminary studies that employed Parry’s and Lord’s criteria for determining the extent and quality of enjambment as an index oralitatis in the Homeric epics. My recourse to Parry’s terms and to Lord’s requirement of the tests of orality in this critical investigation – in short, my observing the principle of immanent critique – was decried as an attempt to imprison Oral Poetry Theory in the form it had reached in the sixties and seventies of the last century. With a change of metaphor, I was then accused of freezing Oral Theory and Parryism in categories long superseded by the evolution through which it is said to have advanced since the publication of Lord’s Singer of Tales in 1960. What Nagy had primarily in mind was, of course, his own evolutionary model of Homeric “text crystallization”. In short, the tacit implication of his critique of my approach was that the Parry-Lord discourse on oral poetry represents an outdated stage and obsolete form; and any critical approach 27 28 29 30

Lord 1995: 198. Lord 1995: 200; 195. ‘Parryism’ was established as a term, when Rosenmeyer introduced ‘Soft/Hard Parryism’ (Rosenmeyer 1965: 297) At a Homer colloquium in Toronto in 2000 through an extended attack on my Hermes article “Homeric Enjambment and Orality” (= Friedrich 2000).

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that draws its criteria from it is doomed to be outdated and obsolete as well. Like mine. He was also invoking Lord’s last two books in his condemnation of my approach. Most remarkable and somewhat bizarre here is the further implication that in his last books Lord should have declared Parry’s and his own oralist discourse obsolete! Lord does nothing of the sort in Epic Singers and Oral Tradition of 1991 and the posthumously published The Singer Resumes the Song of 1995. On the contrary, he restates and confirms in these books the original conception of Oral Theory and its application, the Theory of Homer’s orality. The 1991 book, a collection of articles published over the preceding decades, reaches as far back as 1953 with the important piece “Homer’s Originality: Oral Dictated Texts”. It elaborates the dictation hypothesis, originally suggested by Parry31, as a cornerstone in the Parry-Lord theory of Homeric orality: in Nagy’s view, it is its most obsolete component. Commenting in 1991 on his piece, Lord confirms his commitment to the dictation hypothesis: “although the case in the paper is somewhat overstated, I continue to believe firmly in its basic tenets”32. In the 1995 The Singer Resumes his Tale, the fundamental terms of Parryism’s Oral Theory are very much in force. They are assembled in the programmatic chapter 8, titled “Rebuttal”, in which Lord defends them against various criticisms. Most importantly, Lord reconfirms the importance of orality tests, another obsolete feature in the Nagyan perspective. Not only that: Lord even adds to the three existing tests (formula test, enjambment test, thematic test) a fourth one: the economy test or “test by thrift”33. Thus in its core elements, the Parry-Lord-Notopoulos conception of oral poetry has remained remarkably stable and consistent. The strategy of disarming any critical examination of Parryism by declaring the basic concepts of the original ParryLord model of Oral Theory obsolete cannot claim support from the last writings of Lord. If one is assuming that there was an evolution, with the connotation of advancement that rendered the original Oral Theory of the Parry-Lord school obsolete, then Lord was certainly not a party to it. This much is patent. Besides, what in the world should have made him declare his life’s work obsolete?!

31 32

33

Lord 1953 = Lord 1991: 38–48; Parry 1971: 451 f. Lord 1991: 4. – The notion of the dictating Homer had originated with Parry (as had the splendid title The Singer of Tales): see Parry 1971: 451: “The more I understand the Southslavic poetry and the nature of the unity of the oral poem, the clearer it seems to me that the Ilias and the Odyssey are very exactly, as we have them, each one of them the rounded and finished work of a single singer; though whether they are both the work of one singer I do not yet know. I even figure to myself, just now, the moment when the author of the Odyssey sat and dictated his song, while another, with writing materials, wrote it down verse by verse, even in the way that our singers sit in the immobility of their thought, watching the motion of Nikola’s hand across the empty page, when it will tell them it is the instant for them to speak the next verse”. Lord 1995: 200.

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c. THE DIFFERENTIATIONS WITHIN PARRYISM As a matter of fact, the much-vaunted evolution has not taken place. What did take place instead was a major process of differentiation within Parryism qua Theory of the Oral Homer – a consequence of Oral Theory’s growing empirical base. It gave rise to a variety of Parryist schools of thought and their competing views concerning the orality of the Homeric epic. Nagy’s evolutionary model represents just one of them, competing with other approaches offering quite different evolutionary models, e. g., those of Kirk and Skafte Jensen34. This is an opportune moment to map out, for future reference, the Parryist territory in Homeric studies by sketching its factions and their approaches in their main features – to be treated in greater detail as occasion and need arise. It is the first step in the critical assessment of Parryism. The emerging factions understand themselves as innovative secessions from the Parry-Lord school. The members of this school have by now attracted the sobriquet “Parry-Lord conservatives”. They represent mainstream Parryism within Homeric studies. Theirs is the most consistent application of the tenets of Oral Theory offering the most plausible version of the theory of Homeric orality. These are good reasons for deriving from it the criteria for a critical assessment of Parryism. Add to this the fact that its tenets are informed by the results of the schoolfounders’ first-hand experience with living oral poetry through their fieldwork in the Balkans. Such an advantage only a few present-day oralists can claim35 – which contrasts sharply to the breezy theorizing of armchair oralists that is now questioning a number of those tenets. It is also a good reason for privileging the Parry-Lord conception of Oral Theory and its Theory of the Oral Homer by making it the focus of the intended critical examination. Here is a brief recapitulation of its tenets as applied to Homer to highlight what distinguishes it from the seceding schools. The Parry-Lord school is principally unitarian. It assumes an actual poet by the name of Homer to have been a singer of tales, an aoidos, whose epic singing it views in analogy to that of the South-Slavic guslari. The ‘Yugoslav analogy’ places the Homeric epic in an oral tradition of composition-in-performance operating with a schematized diction by formula and stereotyped theme. Re-composing and re-performing keep Homer’s epics in constant flux: they are multiform poems attaining a different shape with every new performance, no matter how minor or major the variations may be. For his (re-) composition-in-performance the oral Homer relied on a thesaurus of metrically fixed formulas, as the basic unit of his diction was not the individual word but the formular word-group (= composition by formula); furthermore, he relied on a store of themes in the form of type-scenes (= composition by stereotyped theme), narrative patterns, and a thesaurus of poetic motifs and tales. All this was furnished by 34 35

Kirk 1962: 88–98; Kirk 1976: 130–31; Skafte Jensen 1980: 154 ff. – See on them Nagy 1996a: 99 ff; 110 ff.); they, too, like Nagy’s model, are speculative constructions, which are impossible to verify. M. Skafte Jensen, a maverick member of the Parry-Lord school, comes to mind who has done fieldwork in Albania (see Jensen 2011).

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the tradition of oral singing, in which he was bought up, enabling and facilitating his extemporizing versification in a difficult metre. Having absorbed all this as part of his training as an oral bard, he gave it fresh expression in his performances, and in the course of his career as an oral singer of tales enriched the tradition in all these aspects by making his own contributions. In the perspective of the Parry-Lord School, his fluid multiform song became a fixed uniform text, once it was recorded in writing. This is assumed to have come about through Homer’s dictation of his epics to a scribe. Once written down, his poems ceased to be multiform oral songs. Like any other written text, they became subject to the vicissitudes of the general transmission process. The transmission of the Homeric poems was first in the hands of rhapsodes, professional reciters, who, unlike the aoidoi, recited a fixed text not their own. The difference between creative aoidoi and reproducing rhapsodoi is a crucial tenet. This then is, in essence, the Theory of the Oral Homer as held by the Parry-Lord School. It is Parryist orthodoxy, if you will; but it is at the same time, for its coherence and clarity as well as for its empirical foundation, the most plausible model. Quite naturally, there are also differentiations within the Parry-Lord School. Margalit Finkelberg, for one, cancels the equation of orality and total formularity: a formular density of 90 to 100 percent, as Lord postulates, cannot be, in her view, the litmus test of orality. In declaring formular and non-formular elements as mutually complementary, she develops her own concept of formular economy in oral diction, which deploys formulas only for frequently recurrent ideas, themes, and narrative situations, but leaves for non-traditional matters a formula-free space for creating individual expressions36. – Another independent voice within the Parry-Lord school is Minna Skafte Jensen: she deviates from Parry-Lord orthodoxy in assuming composition for performance as well as in devising her already mentioned own speculative evolutionary model à la Kirk and Nagy for the textualization of the Homeric epics37. Gregory Nagy’s Oral-Performance School claims to do its evolutionary work in the spirit of the Parry-Lord model. It actually claims to be its logical extension as its natural next stage. Yet the “evolutionary model” Nagy offers for the genesis, textualization, and transmission of the Homeric epics38 deviates radically from the Parry-Lord model – to such a degree that it practically shares with it only the tenet of oral composition-in-performance. Nagy’s is a comprehensive and complex doctrine, rich in imaginative speculation, details of which will concern us later. Suffice it for the moment to highlight those features by which it deviates most signally from the Parry-Lord model. To begin with, in Nagy’s evolutionary model Homer ceases to be Homer, the individual poet who dictates his epics to a scribe in Lord’s model: he is both etymologized out of existence (‘Homeros’< oJm- plus ar- >‘conjoiner [of verses]’), and

36 37 38

Finkelberg 1989. Skafte Jensen 1980; 2011. First formulated in Nagy 1992, partially reprinted in Nagy 1996b: 29–63; see also ibid. 65–112. The main exposition is found in chs. 2 and 3 of Nagy 1996a. – For a striking critique of the doctrine of the multiform Iliad, see Finkelberg 2000: 1–11.

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mythologized into an “emblematic hero of heroic song”39, the font of oral epic. The Nagy School regards the Homeric poems as a corpus of authorless multiform texts: “a mass of multiple versions contained in the Homeric textual tradition”40. This is the resurrected analyst doctrine of multiple authorship recast in oralist terms (though sine auctoribus). In this perspective, the Homeric corpus of multiforms contained in Iliad and Odyssey was the creation of the Hellenic Oral Performance Tradition, comprising the epic singing of generations of face- and nameless oral bards. It resembles an oralist reprise of the Romantic view of dichtender Volksgeist (‘poetic folk-spirit’), incongruously shot through with modern and postmodern structuralist and poststructuralist doctrines of ‘process without subject’ and ‘death of the author’. Lord’s hypothesis of dictation by the author Homer, which is to account for the textual fixation of the Homeric epics, is eclipsed by Nagy’s hypothesis of “textcrystallization” – its chemical metaphor highlighting the connotation of ‘process without subject’. Basically, crystallization describes the Homeric text-fixation without the aid of writing41, moving from relative fluidity to relative rigidity, as the evolutionary result of a development in five main stages42. The crystallization of the Homeric text, a vast objective process, extends the Greek oral tradition from the early second millennium down to the Hellenistic age. While there is progressively less fluidity and more rigidity in the successive periods, each one of them preserved a degree of multiformity, rendering the Homeric epics inherently multiform and providing thus the groundwork for Nagy’s project of a multiform edition of Homer. In this evolutionary process, aoidoi and rhapsoidoi are equally involved: deriving the etymology of rhapsoidos from rJavptein, ‘to stitch’ + ajoidhv, ‘song’, Nagy proposes “that there is a corresponding parallelism between the concept of ‘Homeros’ (= ‘joiner’ [sc. of songs]) and rhapsoidos” (= ‘stitcher’ [of songs])”43. He thereby cancels the difference between creative aoidos and reproducing rhapsoidos, so crucial to the Parry-Lord School. Nagy’s protestations notwithstanding44, his evolutionary model deviates from the Parry-Lord model in fundamental ways. Designating Homer as the “monumental composer” of Iliad and Odyssey, Geoffrey Kirk’s model is as unitarian as the Parry-Lord School, yet differs from it in many significant respects. To begin with, Kirk does not think much of the ‘Yugoslav analogy’: according to Kirk, it provides much “that is helpful as well as a good deal that is obstructive to the understanding of how Homeric poetry works”45. In Kirk’s view, Homeric poetry, unlike that of the South-Slavic guslari, does not work on the principle of composition-in-performance. It is rather composition for 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Nagy 1996: 92. Nagy 2004: 76. Nagy 1996b: 108: “The term ‘cystallization’ used as a metaphor to describe the evolution of a Homeric text without the aid of writing …”. There is, in the later stages, intermittently some very limited use of writing, ancillary to performance. Nagy 1996a: 41–2; Nagy 1996b: 109–10. Nagy 1996b: 60. See Nagy’s response to the review of Poetry as Performance (=Nagy 1996b) by Barry Powell (BMCR 97.3.21) in BMCR 97.4.18. Kirk 1976a: 78. Kirk’s views here referred to are in Kirk 1960: 271–81; Kirk 1962: 55–101 and Kirk 1976a: passim, esp. 113–28.

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performance: the composer of the two monumental epics would premeditate, rehearse, and memorize his poems before recital, while “improvisation on any one occasion would in all probability be relatively light”46. In artistic terms Kirk’s oral Homer belongs in the company of Vergil and Milton rather than in that of the guslari47. Kirk repudiates the dictation theory as “fallacious” that must be “absolutely rejected”48. In its stead he postulates oral transmission of the Homeric text, the ipsissima verba of the poet, through rhapsodes as well as aoidoi for several generations, until Greek literacy had matured enough to record monumental compositions in writing: a hypothesis that is, in Martin West’s view, bizarre and downright fantastic49. The union of oral composition and oral transmission of the Homeric epic are embedded in Kirk’s own evolutionary model. He calls it the “life-cycle of an oral tradition”, distinguishing four stages (originative, creative, reproductive, degenerate) – an elegant, yet rather speculative construction. Closest to Geoffrey Kirk’s views are those of Oliver Taplin: he agrees with Kirk’s oral-composition-cum-oral-transmission model, also with his emphasis on composition-for-performance. He sensibly excludes from the transmission process the aoidoi for having poetic pretensions of their own that would most likely have interfered with Homer’s text50, thereby improving on Kirk’s hypothesis. Yet his view on oral composition-cum-transmission is as interesting as it is, to use West’s terms, bizarre and fantastic – and perhaps even more so; for Taplin assumes it was “aural recording and memorization by admirers or disciples”, forming some sort of fan-club that followed Homer wherever he performed – “a ‘tape-recorder’ type of follower or followers, who did their very best to preserve their master’s voice as perfectly as possible”. Later the rhapsodes, presumably the Homeridai, “were responsible for preserving the poem from Homer’s own performances down until the techniques and technology of writing on papyrus were up to the task of transcription”. The most interesting aspect of Taplin’s model is his turning the whole issue of ‘artistry/orality/literacy’ on its head. Between and during the many performances, Taplin’s oral Homer, said to be in “supreme structural control”, was continually revising and fine-tuning his text, which was “constantly nagging for improvement”, “think(ing) about ways of improving the poem, of better incorporating novel material, of eliminating material that was not so well integrated, planting, weeding, rearranging; so finally building up the very connections and shapings which the scripsists attribute to writing” (as do the oralists who deny them for oral composition). Such procedure Lord might have meant by his paradoxical phrase “written composition without writing”. Taplin goes to the extreme of declaring the aesthetic beauties that Parry had warned Homerists not to project onto Homer because they are not possible under the conditions of orality, as originating in the very conditions of 46 47 48 49 50

Kirk 1976a: 137. Kirk 1976a: 69. Kirk 1960: 279. West 1990: 36–37: “absonderlich” and “geradezu phantastisch”. He adduces Adam Parry’s “important essay ‘Have we Homer’s Iliad?’” (ibid.) as a cogent critique of Kirk’s model. On A. Parry’s critique of Kirk more below. Taplin 1992. All quotations in the following are found at Taplin 1992: 36, 37, 43 f.

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orality51. The oral Homer of Taplin hardly differs from Reinhardt’s and Aristotle’s literate qespevsio~ ”Omhro~52. Taplin does not devote much space to providing arguments or evidence for his forcefully presented and certainly original views on Homer’s orality: he devotes two pages to it and three pages to transmission, of which more than two thirds are given to polemics against the rival hypotheses, mostly against dictation theorists. All we get by way of argument is his skepticism as to the availability of the technology of writing in Homer’s time; plus an analogy from India: the faithful verbatim transmission of the 40,000 lines of the Sanskrit Rig-Veda over many generations. But this analogy is misleading, to say the least, as Martin West has pointed out; for as a sacred text the Rig-Veda belongs to a genre different from the heroic epic. It is as much in the nature of such sacred texts that they must remain unchanged as it is in the nature of the oral heroic epic to be multiform in the Lordian sense, as comparative studies of heroic epics from several traditions show53. Indeed, in the Hindi epic tradition the oral heroic songs exhibit such protean flux54. Thus the analogy is not only misleading but backfires as well. To assume orality for the Homeric texts in terms of both composition and transmission – a completely oral process – as Kirk and Taplin do, amounts to what one might call hyperoralism, giving off a whiff of oralist purism. The rather precious, aesthetically oriented oralism of John Foley’s model applies to Homeric composition the key terms immanent art and traditional referentiality55. ‘Referentiality’ is a rather unwieldy and not exactly pellucid term. What is meant is ‘resonance’. Indeed, ‘traditional resonance’ would be far more elegant, more lucid, and more apt. The aestheticism of Foley’s model seems to be turning Parryism on its head: “most fundamentally, the singer of tales in performance selects and uses a way of speaking not metri causa but artis causa”56. To remain within the purview of Parryism, this tenet should rather read ‘not only metri causa but also artis causa’. ‘Artis causa not metri causa’ has become a Foley-formula, frequently recurring in his opus magnum of 1999, Homer’s Traditional Art. Most interestingly, its aestheticism drives his position beyond oralism57 in that it has to 51 52 53 54 55

56 57

Taplin 1992 : 36 f. The reviewer of JHS surmises: “T. accepts the oral hypothesis without entertaining the consequences of that hypothesis” (Wyatt 1994: 180). Cp. Bowra 1952: 216–22; 368–70. There is even a special mnemo-technique for the Rig-Veda, West points out, to save the sacred text from corruption; while no such technique is needed for the heroic epics which are naturally multiform (see West 1990: 37, with reference to Pandey 1982: 58 f.). Foley 1991b: 7: “Traditional referentiality … entails the invoking of a context that is enormously larger and more echoic than the text or work itself, that brings the lifeblood of generations of poems and performances to the individual performance or text. Each element in the phraseology or narrative thematics stands not for that singular instance but for the plurality and multiformity that are beyond the reach of textualization”. Foley 1995: 213; Foley 1999: 12 (emphasis added). He even wants to “reverse the original priority of terms in the expression ‘oral tradition’. That is, ‘oral’ moves into the background while ‘traditional’ assumes a more prominent role in the foreground” (Foley 1999: XIII). This seems to go back to the beginnings of Parry’s theorizing:

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postulate the possibility of the Homeric diction being not a purely oral but an “oralderived” one (a notion to be explored later). Further divisions, even within the mainstream Parry-Lord school, derive from diverse attempts, often opposing one another, at solving Parryism’s most notorious problem – namely, how to arrive at a valid definition of its central concept, the formula. This problem will be traced in the next section in detail. The discernible general trend here, as we shall see, leads away from the concept of the crystallized formula even to the point of assuming composition by individual word instead of by formula. This trend has culminated in Nagler’s position that fuses a farrago of theories that range from Sanskrit philology via the Jungian archetype doctrine and Chomskyan structural linguistics to Wittgenstein’s theory of conceptual families and family-resemblance58. Its author’s own description of his theoretical construct as having a “frankly mystic tone” allows one to characterize this branch of Parryism as a mystical eclecticism. A generative process of deep-structural preverbal gestalts producing surface allomorphs replaces the Parryist systems of fixed formulas – a mysterious process, impossible to articulate due to the preverbal nature of its central concept. Nagler’s theorizing is an extreme instance of the infusion of extraneous theories into the Parryist discourse – quite in contrast to its founder’s proud claim to have followed Aristarchos’ hermeneutic principle of ‘explaining Homer from Homer’ (safhnivzein ”Omhron ejx ÔOmhvrou) by seeking ‘the solution from the diction’ (hJ ejk th`~ levxew~ luvsi~)59. d. ‘MULTIFORM PARRYISM’ – ITS IRRECONCILABLE DIVISIONS The differentiation within Parryism, with its proliferation of competing approaches and, as we shall see, of competing concepts of the formula, is as rich as it is diffuse and confusing. As a result, one is at a loss as to how to conceive of the true nature of Homeric orality. Did Homer’s oral poetry proceed by composition-in-performance or by composition-for-performance? Was the poet of the Iliad an actual aoidos or is ‘Homeros’ qua ‘conjoiner’ simply an archetypal emblem of oral song? Is his versification composition by fixed formulas or by single words, as some have it? Does the oral Homer select, when composing in performance, a way of speaking metri causa or artis causa? Is the Homeric text uniform or is it a multiform corpus? Was the Homeric text transmitted as a text fixed in writing through dictation; or was it, memorized by rhapsodes, the object of centuries-long oral transmission? Was this oral transmission in the hands of reproducing rhapsodes only or of creative aoidoi as well? Is there a principal difference between creative aoidos and reproducing rhapsoidos, or are both equally ‘conjoiners/stitchers of songs’? Thus the differentiation within Parryism has had the overall effect of transferring the multiformity of oral poetry to Parryism itself: modifying Nagy’s aphorism

58 59

he was dealing originally with Homer’s traditional style in the Sorbonne thèses of the 1920s, which he later identified as an oral style in the TAPhA articles in the 1930s. Nagler 1974: 4–5; 15. Parry 1971: 268; 271.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

on the Homeric text, one could speak of Parryism as ‘a mass of multiple versions contained in the Parryist theoretical tradition’. The diffuse and indeed incoherent portrait of Homeric orality emerging from the ensemble of the Parryist approaches reveals Parryism as permeated by irreconcilable divisions. It gives the impression of having dissolved into a diffuse plurality without a unifying frame. That is why its once powerful hegemony has become unsustainable; and, as a result, has been waning for some time – with the welcome consequence of lifting the closure on the debate of Homeric orality. e. SCRIPSISTS AND ORALISTS: LITERACY AS FETISH AND ORALITY AS IDOL In a programmatic essay of 1998, “The Homeric Poems As Oral Dictated Texts”, written right after the death of Lord and dedicated to his memory, Richard Janko describes the basic division in Homeric studies from the Parryist perspective: Against the mass of evidence on which the researches of Parry and Lord rest, fine scholars in the Unitarian tradition, like Reinhardt and Griffin, have counterpoised the subtle and elaborate construction of the Homeric epics, their excellence in depiction of character and their ‘literary’ qualities, as clear evidence that Homer must have composed with the aid of writing. And there the matter stands, with no clear path of reconciliation between the two sides. The paradox of such great literature – for we cannot call it anything else – in an oral formular style has inevitably provoked the compromise, his poems are so good that they must have been composed with the aid of writing: they are ‘oral-derived’. In fact this is not a reasonable and moderate compromise, but rests on the unexamined assumption, commonly made by literate and illiterate people alike, that written literature must be superior to oral literature. This is false: there is good and bad oral literature, just as there is good and bad written literature60.

There is much in Janko’s text that is more than just arguable; and I shall return to some of it in due course. Here I want to focus on what drives the Parry-Lord-School to near despair: the persistence in some quarters of Homeric studies of what Janko calls “the unexamined assumption” that written poetry must be superior to oral poetry and that therefore the poetic greatness of the Homeric epics requires the involvement of writing. For Homerists of this persuasion, Oliver Taplin has coined the deliberately ugly and polemical neologism “scripsist”61. This contemptuous epithet, designed to deride those unimaginative souls who are incapable of imagining Homer’s elaborate artistry without the benefit of writing, has by now gone the rounds among oralists as an indispensable part of Parryism’s polemical rhetoric. ‘Scripsists’ stand accused, in some cases rightly so, of fetishizing literacy as the sole source of all poetic artistry; whereas some of the very lettered oralists tend to make ‘literacy’, when used in connection with Homer, sound as if it were an infectious disease. The introduction of the term ‘scripsist’ into the debate has given rise to some profound ironies. One is that to a purist such as Taplin even the dictation theory, as espoused by Parry, Lord, and Janko, puts the Homeric epic in too close contact with 60 61

Janko 1998: 6 f. Taplin 1992: 36 f.

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literacy so that its inherent ‘scripsism’ could infect Homer’s pristine orality. In this hyperoralist view, the dictation hypothesis amounts to a shamefaced scripsism – with the result that staunch oralists such as Parry, Lord, and Janko find themselves in the company of ‘scripsists’ like Jasper Griffin and Karl Reinhardt. Ah yes, Karl Reinhardt – here lies another irony. He should easily qualify, in the oralist view, as the ‘arch-scripsist’ for his notorious provocative stance on oralism that is for ever rankling in the Parryist psyche62. It is therefore profoundly ironic that Taplin should have advanced his coinage in a book whose approach to the Iliad is to a large degree indebted to that of the ‘arch-scripsist’. Yet the greatest irony lies in the effect that Taplin’s coinage has had on the term ‘oralist’. It had the term change its complexion by relegating it to the status of correlative pendant to ‘scripsist’. Long before Oliver Taplin coined ‘scripsist’, Thomas Rosenmeyer had coined “Great Idol Orality”63: opposite the Charybdis of scripsist fetishizing literacy lies the Skylla of oralist idolizing orality. f. ‘PRISONNIERS DE L’ORALISME’ Idolatry of orality renders oralists, to borrow A. Ballabriga’s striking expression, prisonniers de l’oralisme64. Sold as they are on the axiom of Homer’s orality, oralists find themselves in the ‘prison house’ of oralism that imposes on them a corresponding frame of thought. It compels them to theory-driven postulates for the Homeric epic that contradict textual realities. Some of those postulates are bordering on the preposterous, as we shall see. The ‘prison house’ of oralism has done most serious damage to Parryism’s formular theory, manifest in the progressive dilution of its central concept, in which we can discern a veritable sacrifice to the “Great Idol Orality”. It is not the only sacrifice: as will become patent, other fatal consequences of the idolatry of oralism, such as ground-shifting, special pleading, along with the attenuation and dilution of basic categories in order to sustain the notion of the oral Homer, have rendered Parryism’s nomenclature riddled with equivocations, inconsistencies, and contradictions.

62 63 64

See above Note 9. Rosenmeyer 1965: 302. Ballabriga 1990: 28.

3. ‘HARD PARRYISM’ AND ‘SOFT PARRYISM’ – AN ORAL POETICS FOR HOMER? The initial division in the Parry-school was the broader one between orthodox Parryism and revisionist Neo-Parryism. It is better known by Thomas Rosenmeyer’s breezy terms “Hard Parryism” and “Soft Parryism”65. He coined them when discussing the nature of the oral formula. Yet they connote larger issues such as poetic originality and artistry, or conversely their necessary absence under the conditions of oral composition-in-performance. Today the term ‘Hard Parryism’ refers chiefly to Parry’s original model of Homeric orality, which tied the oral singer strictly to the apron-strings of his tradition. Here are some of Hard Parryism’s notorious pronouncements to this effect: Without writing the poet can make his verses only if he has a formulaic diction which will give him his phrases all made, and made in such a way that, at the slightest bidding of the poet, they link themselves in an unbroken pattern that will fill his verses and make his sentences66.

This account sounds almost like the automatic writing of surrealism. As “an author who has no individual style”67, the oral Homer of Hard Parryism can put into verse only those ideas which are to be found in the phrases which are on his tongue, or at the most he will express ideas so like those of the traditional formulas that he himself would not know them apart. At no time is he seeking words for an idea, which has never before found expression, so that the question of originality in style means nothing to him68.

And on the question of individual style Parry writes: In treating of the oral nature of the Homeric style we shall see that the question of a remnant of individuality in Homeric style disappears altogether69.

Hard Parryism’s oral Homer is a highly skilled, yet artistically unassuming craftsman. The rough and tumble of composition-in-performance leaves little, if any, room for artistry, poetic individuality and originality; ditto for complex characterization and large-scale structural design. He is deftly using the formular and thematic thesauri, along with the narrative techniques, which the Tradition has put at his disposal. His tradition aids the singer’s oral versemaking technically as much as it confines it artistically. The “Oral Law” reigns; and in its realm authorial control is an unknown notion. The controlling forces that are operative are due to the exigencies of composition-in-performance – necessity, utility, function, habit, and the “mechanics of the

65 66 67 68 69

Rosenmeyer 1965: 297: “we must distinguish between two Parryisms, the hard kind and the soft kind”. Parry 1971: 317 (emphasis added). Parry 1971: 137. Parry 1971: 324. Parry 1971: 317

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formula”70. That is why Parry had warned Homerists that there is, in reading Homer, “the danger of looking too closely and finding beauties where they are not”71. Hard Parryism has become a bit of an embarrassment for the aestheticallyminded oralists of Soft Parryism. As an antidote, some Soft-Parryists have endowed their oral Homer with all the artistic qualities that the pen-poets possess; and in the process have found unkind words for the founder of their school. They generally deplore what they call the “repellent rigidity”72 of Parry’s first model. Some go to the extreme of explaining its genealogy in terms that are most unflattering to the founder: it was the pernicious influence of the “primitivist”, “functionalist”, and “collectivist” Zeitgeist of the 1920s and 1930s that is said to have informed Parry’s first model73. But such strictures on Parry are hardly apt, and they are grossly unjust to boot. Parry’s first model is based on his first-hand observations of the conditions, under which rapid versification during performance took place in the oral traditions of the Balkans. Its exigencies, along with the absence of authorial control and the impediments to artistic refinement they entail, make up the concrete conditions under which the unlettered singer composes. Soft Parryism tends to go to the other extreme and to turn Hard Parryism upside down, patent in Foley’s formula ‘artis causa not metri causa’. Soft Parryism’s oral Homer is blessed with unencumbered creativity as well as refined artistry as any pen-poet is; instead of being tied to and controlled by the Tradition, he is described as its sovereign master, just as Mozart and Beethoven were the sovereign masters of their musical traditions74. Soft Parryism has replaced the Hard-Parryist model with a model that postulates for the oral Homer all the poetic attributes of a Vergil and a Milton whom some Soft-Parryists, Kirk for one, regard as the true fellow-poets of the oral Homer rather than the South-Slavic guslari. This shift would cancel Parry’s “Yugoslav analogy”, on which the assumption of Homer’s orality is largely predicated. If the oral Homer is like Vergil and Milton, and unlike the oral bards of the Balkans – what explanatory power would the assumption of Homeric orality offer? To put it bluntly: none whatsoever! At any rate, the aestheticizing tenor of Soft Parryism amounts to a complete and unaccounted-for volte-face within Parryism in matters of criticism. Soft-Parryists want to have their cake and eat it too: to conceive of Homer as both an oral bard and the equal of Vergil and Milton amounts to a serious incoherence in the Parryist argument. Adding to the general confusion, Hard and Soft Parryism are occasionally overlapping: their division is not as clear-cut as it is usually portrayed. They come at times in baffling, yet interesting mixtures, as mainstream Parryism is situated be70 On “oral Law” and “mechanics of the formula”, see Combellack 1965: 49; Combellack 1959: 198. 71 Parry 1971: 418. This view reflects the strong influence of M. Jousse who had postulaled a fundamental dichotomy between oral utility and literate artistry: Jousse 1925, 21990. On M. Jousse’s influence on Milman Parry, see A. Parry 1971: XXII f; Austin 1975: 18 ff.; Shive 1987: 14. See also Holoka’s review of Jousse’s republished book (Holoka 1992: 58 f.). 72 Hainsworth 1968: 18. 73 Taplin 1986: 41. 74 Homer as the “Mozart” of the Oral Tradition: Whitman 1965: 88 and 112; as its “Beethoven”: Russo 1968: 277–8.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

tween them. To begin with, it was Parry himself who inaugurated Soft Parryism in the area of formular theory, softening his original strict concept of the formula by expansion to allow the oral Homer some creative range in composition-by-formula. His successor Lord carried this softening much further and, as we shall see later when discussing developments in formular theory, made Soft Parryism the dominating force in this area. Yet this shift was not the end of Hard Parryism. It is still a persistent, though usually a latent and unacknowledged force, showing up occasionally in unlikely places. One such place, as will become patent presently, is Oral Poetics. Both Hard Parryism and Soft Parryism have their virtues and their vices. In all fairness, the much maligned Hard Parryism can be credited with grasping the actual conditions of composition-in-performance in oral poetry. But applied to Homer, it misses the artistic-poetic realities in his texts. Soft Parryism does justice to these realities but voids, as we shall see, the notions of oral and traditional. Instead of complementing one another, Hard Parryism and Soft Parryism are perforce at loggerheads – one more of the contradictions and inconcinnities of Parryism. And herein lurks an aporia waiting to be revealed, analysed, and resolved. At any rate, the division of Hard Parryism and Soft Parryism, though somewhat eclipsed by the rich differentiations within Parryism, is still covertly operative. It comes into the open when the question of an Oral Poetics for Homer arises. a. ORAL POETICS Here, too, a distinction is in order, analogous to that between Oral Theory and Theory of the Oral Homer. One has to distinguish between Oral Poetics in general, a component of the former; and an Oral Poetics for Homer, a component of the latter. Neglect of this distinction may result in considerable confusion. Early on Parry had stated the need for a new canon of criticism: “we are compelled to create an aesthetics of traditional style”, Parry wrote, on which he elsewhere elaborated: In the light of so many compelling proofs (sc. of the traditional nature of the Homeric style), what do we do with the aesthetic principles which Lucian put forth, and which critics like Boileau and Voltaire analysed and taught, the guiding principles still of our own literature? We must eschew them entirely when we study Homer75.

Once Parry had identified the traditional style as an oral style, the need for an oral poetics was thought to become urgent. For Parry, there was no difference between oral poetics in general and oral poetics for Homer. While the general notion of oral poetics is beyond dispute among oralists, an oral poetics for Homer is a controversial matter among them. Thus, for clarity’s sake alone, the distinction perforce must stand.

75

Parry 1971: 21; 144 (emphasis added).

‘Hard Parryism’ and ‘Soft Parryism’ – An Oral Poetics for Homer?

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b. ARISTOTELIAN POETICS VERSUS ORAL POETICS OF THE EPIC The life and times of the Oral Poetics bear witness to the most profound division in Parryism. Parry’s discovery of systematic formularity in the diction of Iliad and Odyssey was said to signal the end of the traditional comparison of Homer with Vergil and Milton. It is the kind of comparison, Parryists claimed, that obscures rather than illuminates, because it compares apples with oranges. Worlds separate Homer, composing by word of mouth, from Apollonios and Vergil who composed with pen in hand, or dictated to another’s pen, as blind Milton did. So the Parryists bid Homer part company with the pen-poets of the western canon and join the oral singers of tales in the Balkans and wherever oral poetry is still alive to this day. It gave rise, as we previously noted, to the new branch of literary studies: comparative oral epic. Far from being a primitive pre-stage to written literature, oral poetry is sui generis, requiring therefore its own canon of criticism. As Albert Lord wrote: Surely, one of the vital questions now facing Homeric scholarship is how to understand Oral Poetics, how to read oral traditional poetry. Its poetics is different from that of written literature because its technique of composition is different76.

When Notopoulos took the first step in answering Parry’s call for an “aesthetics of traditional style”77, he offered a “prolegomenon to the formulation of (…) a nonAristotelian poetics”78. Why non-Aristotelian? The deadlock of the Homeric Question, it was argued, had arisen in the first place from misreading and misjudging Homer on the basis of an inadequate poetics – Aristotle’s that is. Designed as it was as a canon of criticism for written literature, Aristotle’s Poetics inevitably became a procrustean bed when applied to the oral poetry of Homer. The Parryists were quick to finger the central concept of organic unity in Aristotle’s Poetics, as the source of “procrustean criticism”79 that was said to dominate the controversy of Unitarians and Analysts. On this view, the Unitarians had stretched Homer’s oral poems in procrustean fashion until they fitted their Aristotelian unitary frame; and the Analysts had done the same to them until they broke into the pieces of multiple authorship. Thus the Oral Poetics became a non-Aristotelian enterprise. Lord, like Parry himself a Soft-Parryist in formular theory, is a determined Hard-Parryist in the matter of an Oral Poetics for Homer. He took a further step and stressed its anti-Aristotelian (and Hard-Parryist) nature: we should cease, he wrote, exercis(ing) our imagination and ingenuity in finding a kind of unity, individuality, and originality in the Homeric poems that are irrelevant. Had Homer been interested in Aristotelian ideas of unity, he would not have been Homer, nor would he have composed the Iliad and Odyssey80.

A passage in Lord’s canonical exposition of Oral Theory and its application is in the same anti-Aristotelian and Hard-Parryist vein. It is an instructive outline of some of the principles of Oral Poetics and therefore justifies extensive citation: 76 77 78 79 80

Lord 1968: 1. Parry 1971: 21. Notopoulos 1949: 1. Notopoulos 1949 passim. Lord 1960: 148.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas An oral poet spins out a tale; he likes to ornament, if he has the ability to do so, as Homer, of course, did. It is on the story itself, and even more on the grand scale of ornamentation, that we must concentrate, not on any alien concept of close-knit unity. The story is there and Homer tells it to the end. He tells it fully and with leisurely tempo, ever willing to linger and to tell another story that comes to his mind. And if the stories are apt, it is not because of a preconceived idea of structural unity which the singer is self-consciously and laboriously working out, but because at the moment when they occur to the poet in the telling he is so filled with his subject that the natural processes of association have brought to his mind a relevant tale. If the incidental tale or ornament be, by any chance, irrelevant to the main story or to the poem as a whole, this is of no great matter; for this value is understood and appreciated by the poet’s audience81.

The anti-Aristotelian tenor is most discernible in the italicized phrases dissociating oral poetry from the concept of organic unity. In his own outline of an oral poetics Notopoulos had already replaced it by ‘inorganic unity’82 as the core concept of an oral poetics. Now, the general impression is that the call for such an oral poetics has never been fully answered. Yet on several occasions leading Parryists have enunciated its main features. What is lacking is a synthesis, a systematic presentation of it. In offering such a synthesis, I cull the main features from their writings and organize them using as the primary headings Aristotle’s constitutive parts of literary mimesis: mythos / plot; ethos / character; lexis / diction. For the presentation of my synthesis, I apply Bertolt Brecht’s method of opposing tables by which he distinguished Aristotelian drama from the drama of his epic theatre83. Here they are used to contrast the Aristotelian poetics of the epic with the oral poetics84. c. CHART: ARISTOTELIAN POETICS VERSUS ORALIST POETICS OF THE EPIC ARISTOTELIAN POETICS OF THE EPIC

ORALIST POETICS OF THE EPIC MYTHOS/PLOT

ORGANIC UNITY

INORGANIC UNITY

The work an integral totality: structural hypotaxis

The work the sum of its parts: structural parataxis

Integral plot, with complex & compressed time-structure

Chronographic linear plot

Integrity of the whole

Perfection of parts through ornamentation

Unity of action and coherent plot

Multiplicity of actions and ‘flexible plan of themes’85

81 Lord 1960: 148 (emphasis added). 82 Notopoulos 1949: 5 f.; 7. 83 B. Brecht, “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre”, in Brecht on Brecht, ed. J. Willett (New York 1964) pp. 33–41; the tables, pp. 37–8. 84 They are culled from the following: Notopoulos 1949; 1951; 1964; mainly from Lord 1960; 1951; 1953; Hainsworth 1970; Nagy 1976; 1990; 1992. 85 Lord 1960:99; cp. also Hainsworth 1970: 91–94.

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ARISTOTELIAN POETICS OF THE EPIC

ORALIST POETICS OF THE EPIC

Hierarchy of themes and episodes constituting the plot

Isonomia of themes and episodes, both being of equal interest, status, importance86

Subordination of episodes to plot-constituting themes

Co-ordination of themes and episodes

Causal connection of parts

Cumulative connection of parts, with framing device of ring composition

Parts mutually dependent on, and consistent with, one another

Independence and discreteness of parts

‘Purgation of the superfluous’: concentration on the necessary detail

Oral horror vacui & amor pleni87: ornamentation with abundance of details

Schema-free deployment of themes: recurrent motifs for artistic purposes

Schematized themes – ‘typical scenes’, repeated passages

Inconsistencies are flaws

Inconsistencies are unavoidable

Digressions incidental or having specific esthetic purpose

Digressions essential

ETHOS/CHARACTER Characterization essential: careful and refined ethopoiia

“Characterization meaningless”88

Characterization interweaves the typical and Agents are traditional and generic types the individual as well as the universal and the particular LEXIS/DICTION Individual style, free narrative; its basic units are individual words

Traditional style, schematized diction; its basic units are word-groups, i. e., formulas

Choice of expression ‘artis causa’, guided by esthetic considerations

Choice of expression ‘metri causa’, dictated by metrical needs and formular economy

Epitheton significans (‘mot juste’)

Epitheton ornans the rule; epitheton significans the exception

Differentiated diction

Uniform formular diction

Repetition of phrases avoided unless deployed for literary/rhetorical effect and/or thematic purposes

Repetitions are ubiquitous, functional, and essential

Hypotactic syntax (hypotaxis) with prevalence of necessary enjambment

Paratactic syntax (parataxis) with prevalence of adding enjambment

86 87 88

Hainsworth 1970: 98. Notopoulos 1957: 65–97. Notopoulos 1949: 22. – Cp. also Page 1955: 142 f.: “Subtlety of soul, complexity of character, true portrayal of personality, for these we must wait until the practice of the art of writing affords the poet the necessary leisure and the necessary means for reflexion …”. They are “alien to the oral technique of composition”.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

ARISTOTELIAN POETICS OF THE EPIC

ORALIST POETICS OF THE EPIC

TEXT/COMPOSITION/TRANSMISSION Fixed stable text

Fluid text

Uniform text

“Multiform text”89

Composition for performance

Composition-in-performance

Performance as recital of fixed text

Performance as re-composition of poem

Poem existing in manuscripts

Poem existing in (re)performance(s)

Textual variants: authentic vs. corrupt readings

Variants: equally valid witnesses of different performances

Independence from tradition / a free relation to tradition

“traditional referentiality”90

TRADITION/AUTHOR/AUDIENCE Author = autonomous esthetic subject: authorial control of his work

Oral Singer = nameless agent of performance tradition

Author is creator – audience is recipient

Symbiosis of singer / audience in creative act

Poetic invention

Handling of given thematic tradition

Literary motif / topos

Traditional theme

Individual shaping of motif

Elaboration of traditional themes by ornamentation FORCES AT WORK

Poetic freedom / spontaneity / individuality

Necessity / routine / habit91 under the tradition’s “oral law”92

Literary artistry

Oral utility93

Michael Silk has called “the quest … for a distinctive ‘oral poetics’ a wild goose chase”94 – meaning that the oral poetics is chimerical. But my tables show that it is not chimerical at all. It may read like Aristotle’s Poetics stood on its head; but it is the valid extension of the Parry-Lord Theory of oral versification to the level of poetics. Its categories patently reflect the ties that bind the oral bard to his tradition; they reflect the exigencies of composition-in-performance as well as the limitations that they necessarily impose on the oral poet’s art. The oral poetics has an empirical air about it, as it embodies the experiences of Parry, Lord, and Notopoulos as field89 Cp. Lord 1960: 152: “a pliable protean substance”. 90 Foley 1991b: 7 (see aboe p. 28, n. 59), also going by the name of “metonymic referentiality” in Foley 1995: passim (see index s. v.). 91 Lord 1960: 130: “the oral poet thinks in terms of … formulas and formula patterns. He must do so in order to compose”. 92 Combellack 1965: 49. 93 This is Jousse’s fundamental dichotomy (Jousse 1925, 21990; see above p. 38 n.77). 94 Silk 1987: 26.

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workers studying the living oral poetry in the Balkans and Crete. In short, the oral poetics can claim theoretical as well as empirical authentication. An epic that conforms to the oral poetics is Avdo Medjedovic’s The Wedding of Smailagic Meho95. To which degree it would apply or not apply to the Homeric epics is a very moot point among oralists. d. ORAL POETICS FOR HOMER: ‘HONOR’D MORE IN THE BREACH THAN THE OBSERVANCE’ The Oral Poetics is patently Hard-Parryist. Its foremost advocate Albert Lord, Soft Parryist on the formula, was an unabashed Hard Parryist in matters of literary criticism. The Oral Poetics was first put to effective use in the demolition of the exalted picture of the poetic demiurg Homer, which traditional unitarianism had painted, informed by Aristotle’s qespevsio~ ”Omhro~. Frederick Combellack took upon himself the thankless task of enforcing, in the realm of criticism, the inexorable “oral law”96, which, it was claimed, governs Homer’s as well as any oral singer’s poetic universe: its instrument, the “mechanics of the formula”97, was said to make for a uniform style allowing at best minimal, if any, individuality, originality, and artistic finesse. Any such qualities which unitarians claimed to have discovered in Homer were quickly dismissed as being in the eyes of their discoverers only. The same goes for differentiated and refined characterization. Convinced that “one result of Milman Parry’s work on the Homeric style has been to remove from the literary study of the Homeric poems an entire area of normal literary criticism”98, Combellack set out, in article after article and in review after review, to purge Homeric studies of the procrustean criticism that, in the oralist perspective, had led to the paralysis of the Homeric Question. The tenor of this kind of criticism stresses what an oral Homer cannot do. Yet the Oral Poetics was designed for the more constructive task of providing a fresh appreciation of Homer now that he had been declared an oral poet. It was to effect nothing less than a turning-point in Homeric criticism: a radically fresh approach, unencumbered by the legacy of the unitarian and analyst schools’ procrustean criticism. How, then, does the Oral Poetics perform when put to this constructive task? The answer is: not particularly well. Oralists seem strangely inhibited in applying it regularly and consistently in their actual criticism. A conspicuous case in point is one of its first architects. In another programmatic article99, Notopoulos cites Th. Kakridis’ distinction between two types of large-scale epic: the ‘chronographic epic’ characterized by the clarity and simplicity of its linear and ‘paratactic’ arrangement of the incidents in their chronological order; and the ‘dramatic, integral 95 96 97 98 99

See Friedrich 2002: 49–54. Combellack: 1965: 49. Combellack 1959: 198. Combellack 1959: 193. Notopoulos 1964: 40 f.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

epic’ distinguished by the complexity of its compact structure. Kakridis here elaborates and elucidates what Aristotle’s Poetics says about the difference between the cyclic epics and Homer100. Related to our antithetical tables, the chronographic epic fits largely the epic that Oral Poetics outlines; while Kakridis’ dramatic-integral epic, exemplified by the Iliad, answers to the concept of the epic as conceived in Aristotle’s literate poetics. Now, were Notopoulos following the canon of his non-Aristotelian oral poetics, he should be expected to chide Kakridis for his views as yet another deplorable example of subjecting the oral Homeric epic to procrustean criticism. But no, he does nothing of the sort. Quite the reverse, he accepts what Kakridis says hook, line, and sinker. He even goes as far as to concede that Aristotle’s Poetics, otherwise denounced as the source of procrustean criticism, is “valuable … for grasping the dramatic character of the Homeric epics” – a concession he qualifies by hastily adding that his concession “does not give ground for basing an Oral Poetics on it”101. He makes no effort to show how his acceptance of the dramatic character of the Homeric epics – the Aristotelian view – would jibe with his anti-Aristotelian oral poetics for Homer. Of course, it does not jibe. If Notopoulos is right about the oral poetics (as he undoubtedly is); and if Aristotle and Kakridis are right about the structural make-up of the Iliad (as they undoubtedly are), then the Homeric epic appears to be beyond the ken of Oral Poetics. With inorganic unity as its central concept102, the Oral Poetics cannot account for the dramatic character and integral structure of the Iliad – a point explicitly conceded by another oralist, as we shall presently see. This is perhaps the reason why so many Homerists, after having approvingly gestured in the direction of the oral Homer, go on applying the Aristotelian rather than the Oral Poetics. Greatly alarmed at all this, Albert Lord warned: unless Homerists are willing to understand oral poetics and learn from the experience of other oral poetries … ‘oral’ is only an empty label and ‘traditional’ is devoid of sense. Together they form merely a façade behind which scholarship can continue to apply the poetics of written literature103.

Lord certainly has a point. Cedric Whitman, for one, first declares himself a Parryist as orthodox as they come: “Homer’s mode of composition seems to be, from beginning to end, strictly that of the oral poet”; then proceeds by applying the canon of the New Criticism104. Yet even with Lord himself, the literary critic and the theorist of oral composition are occasionally at odds with one another. Lord the perceptive literary critic often registers a degree of artistry in Homer which the strict theorist Lord as the 100 Kakridis 1949: 89 ff. This will be discussed in detail later. 101 Notopoulos 1964: ibid. 102 A concept of unity of which Norman Austin says that it “barely reaches the grammar school level of conception and execution” (cp. Austin 1975: 4). 103 Lord 1968: 46. 104 Whitman 1958. The quotation is found on p.79. See Lord 1960: 154–56 on Whitman, esp. 155: “The trouble with Whitman’s ‘creative artist’ is that, in spite of the fact that he is said to compose entirely as an oral poet, he is not in the tradition; he is not an oral traditional poet. And oral poets who are not traditional do not exist” (emphasis in quoted text).

‘Hard Parryism’ and ‘Soft Parryism’ – An Oral Poetics for Homer?

47

proponent of the oral poetics could hardly account for, such as conflation of themes, compression of time-scale giving rise to dramatic compactness of the epic action, and the reference to outside tales105 – phenomena that hardly jibe with what is said to be feasible under the conditions of oral composition-in-performance. The dramatic quality of the Homeric epics is indeed the great stumbling block for applying the categories of the oral poetics. That is perhaps the main reason why Kirk and Taplin not only dispute the necessity of an oral poetics but reject it outright. “Do we need a special ‘oral poetics’ in order to understand Homer?” Kirk asks in the title of his first Grey lecture; and his answer is a resounding No: in his view it is not just unnecessary but even undesirable, as it carries the danger of doctrinaire, simplistic, and inflexible views on the nature of oral poetry. As Kirk thinks little of the ‘Yugoslav analogy’, his revisionism argues that Homeric poetry and its working are better understood by “resurrecting the familiar comparison with Virgil and Milton” – a comparison in which Homer, according to Kirk, not only holds his own in matters of poetic artistry and finesse, but on occasion proves the better106. Taplin’s views on the matter are similar. He repudiates the notion of an oral poetics for Homer even more vehemently. He goes, as we have seen, to the extreme of declaring the very aesthetic beauties that Parry had warned not to project onto Homer because they are not possible under the conditions of orality, as originating in the very conditions of orality107. Taplin’s oral Homer, said to be in “supreme structural command”, is, as already noted, indistinguishable from Reinhardt’s literate Homer and Aristotle’s qespevsio~ ”Omhro~. This is the height of confusion in the oralist camp. Most astounding is that a Lordian like Janko should share the views of Kirk and Taplin on the undesirability of applying the oral poetics to Homer: Nor do we need a new oral poetics to interpret Homeric plot-construction, characterization and standard conventions, because the poetics to which we are accustomed, based so much on epics like Vergil’s or Milton’s, tragedies like Sophocles’, or on theorists like Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus, take Homer as their starting-point, their model, and their guide. On the larger scale Homeric poetics are simply those of classical literature and ancient literary theory, which is why traditional approaches to the epics have worked so well; while those aspects of the poems that have seemed problematic, giving rise to such theories as ‘Homer nodding’ or multiple authorship, find their explanation in the work of Parry and Lord108.

Ambiguity and doubt mark the Parryist Bryan Hainsworth’s reflections on the question of an oral poetics for Homer. In his view, “the unresolved problem” is the “contrast between the dramatic poetry of Homer which so impressed Aristotle [Poetics 1459 a30] and his basically oral technique”109. Hainsworth is profoundly ambivalent about the oral poetics: on the one hand, “a simple transfer of the methods of criticism 105 Lord 1968: 159 ff. and 187–189. See esp. p. 159 where Lord notes about Zeus referring to the nostos of Agamemnon in Odyssey I that such a reference to an outside tale is a feature “highly sophisticated and unusual for oral epic” – a feature found throughout the Iliad in the mythological paradeigmata, see Friedrich 1975: 83, and p. 186, n. 192 for the literature. 106 See Kirk 1976: 69, 85, 69, 91, 97. 107 Taplin 1992: 36 f. 108 Janko 1998: 11. 109 Hainsworth 1969: 31(emphasis added).

48

The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

from written to oral literature is too naïve”; on the other hand, “the greater architecture” of the Homeric poems, appearing “to be unlike typical oral poetry … is more like drama and therefore more amenable to the canons of orthodox (i. e., Aristotelian, R. F.) criticism”. “Aristotle’s distinction of mythos and epeisodia introduces an element of status, as if the digressions were less important than the indispensable elements”, while “the plan of episodes in most oral poems is paratactic, that is the themes strung together are of equal status, interest and importance”. Yet “Aristotle has an awkward knack of being right”. If Homer deserves “a special niche … in criticism, it would be in virtue of this quality: the intuition that the compression of the time-scale and the selection of a single basic motif is more dramatically powerful than a prolonged linear narrative”110. We are back at Kakridis’ distinction between Homer’s dramatic epic and the chronographic epic of the Kyklos. Hainsworth tries to strike some sort of balance: “the more detailed and specific the criticism, the more relevant is the theory of oral composition”, e. g., the judgement on the use of a given epithet for a hero; but, he goes on, “the conception of an Achilles or Odysseus has very little to do with the question whether their creator composed by word of mouth or pen in hand”. Yet this cannot be called a balance. All the questions Hainsworth raises remain up in the air. – In his important 1970 essay “The Criticism Of An Oral Homer” (and elsewhere) Hainsworth is implying that an oral poetics is useful for certain aspects of the diction (lexis). But as to what matters most – plot structure (suvstasi~ tw`n pragmavtwn, mu`qo~) and characterization (hjqopoiiva), in either of which the aesthetic and intellectual substance of the Homeric epics resides – the bad old Aristotelian Poetics will do, while the good new oral poetics fails the Homerist. Less tactfully put, the oral poetics is of little exegetical use. What Hainsworth suggests is some sort of division of labour. At the level of diction (lexis), Hainsworth insists, oral poetics can illuminate the formularity of Homer’s diction. While higher criticism belongs to an Aristotelian poetics, the microphilology of formulary diction belongs to an oral poetics. A formulaic lexis, then, is the kingdom of the oral poetics where it comes into its own. Here is deemed to lie its forte: the illumination of those features of the Homeric diction that set it off from the diction of written epic poetry. – In conclusion, the attempt to establish a new canon of Homeric criticism based on an Oral Poetics, once announced with great fanfare, does not seem to have been a very great success. With Kirk’s resurrection of the traditional comparison of Homer with Vergil and Milton, we have come full circle: Homer is restored to his former company of the pen-poets, from which Parry and Lord had removed him to join the oral singers of tales. To return, by way of Homeric ring composition, to the Procrustes metaphor: when oralists accuse the unitarian and analyst schools of procrustean criticism, they have in mind only one bed of Procrustes. Here it is useful to recall that Procrustes was the happy owner of two beds. In their polemics, Aristotle’s Poetics figures as Procrustes’ long bed, on which unitarians and analysts alike are said to have stretched the Homeric epic until it either fitted it or broke into pieces. The oral poetics, if applied, would obviously have the effect of Procrustes’ short bed, on which 110 All quotations at Hainsworth 1970: 93–4; 98, 94, 95.

‘Hard Parryism’ and ‘Soft Parryism’ – An Oral Poetics for Homer?

49

Homer is being downsized to fit its criteria. This is what one is forced to conclude from Notopoulos’ inconsistency in the application of the oral poetics to Homer; from Hainsworth’s doubt about the range of its exegetical power; from Janko’s and Kirk’s certainty about its undesirability; and from Taplin’s contempt for the whole idea. The artistry and originality Janko, Kirk, and Taplin claim for their oral Homer has traditionally served as an argument for a literate Homer; and Parryists have always been quick to debunk them as chimerical, existing only in the eyes of their unitarian beholders.

4. THE PARRYIST TESTS OF ORALITY Given Parryism’s extensive differentiation into rivaling approaches, the question arises: on which model to focus the critical examination? The basic choice seems to be between models espousing composition-in-performance and those espousing composition-for-performance. The choice to be made appears to be obvious: composition-in-performance was central to the oral tradition, from which the Homeric epic sprang. Its outstanding feature, the schematization of diction and thematic structure, forms the core tenet of the Parry-Lord model of oral poetry in general and Homeric orality in particular. The Parry-Lord model proves to be quite consistent in relating these components – schematized diction and schematized theme – but the rival model of Kirk does not. Kirk’s espousal of composition-for-performance grants priority to premeditation, rehearsal, and memorization over improvisation: these three factors do not quite square – indeed are at odds – with the heavy weather he makes of schematization, when arguing the orality of the Homeric epics. For schematization is intelligible only in terms of composition-in-performance. Thus the Parry-Lord-Notopoulos model offers itself as the logical choice of object for our critical examination. Apart from that, it represents mainstream Parryism, grounded in its founders’ first-hand experience with living oral poetry. Defining oral composition-in-performance as composition (1) by schematized formula, (2) by schematized or standardized theme, and (3) by parataxis and nonperiodic enjambment, Lord had devised, as we recall, “corroborating test(s) for oral composition” that correspond to these three defining characteristics: (1) the formula test, also known as the ‘litmus test of orality’; (2) the thematic test; (3) the enjambment test; and a further one, added later: (4) the economy test, or the test by thrift 111. These are the tests that a text has to pass to be certified as an oral text. Corroborating tests of orality are needed for all the works of the past claimed to have been orally composed, as they are available in the only possible form in which they can be known to us, namely as written texts. Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey represent the obvious case in point. Oralists taking the orality of the Homeric poems for self-evident truth need reminding of the factum brutum that their view amounts to no more than a hypothesis. As such it is in need of corroborating evidence. During the millennia of their transmission the Homeric epics have always passed for literate texts. Thus in order to claim them for their corpus of oral poetry, oralists bear the burden of proof (onus probandi): they must demonstrate that the Homeric texts originated as oral compositions before they were fixed in writing. This burden, in turn, adds another burden of argument: oralists must also explain (onus explicandi) how such initially oral 111 Lord 1960: 130–32; 141–47; “test by thrift” or economy test: Lord 1995: 200. See also on the tests of orality Janko 1982: 19; 30–33. – Formula test as “litmus test of orality”: Notopoulos 1964: 19.

The Parryist Tests of Orality

51

compositions have become the written texts as which they have come down to us. Oralists are, for the most part, blissfully unaware of these burdens. Not so Lord: to meet the onus explicandi, he offers the dictation theory; to meet the onus probandi, he devised the tests of orality. He thereby provided the necessary methodological framework for the whole debate over Homer’s orality. Yet his tests of orality have never been applied in any systematic or methodical way to Homer, though Lord believes that he had done just that within ten pages112. As he claims in The Singer of Tales: We have now applied the three sets of tests that we recognize as valid in determining whether any given poem is oral or not. The Homeric poems have met each of these tests113.

Now what has Lord actually done when subjecting, within ten pages, the Homeric epics to the tests of orality? He has done (a) a formula analysis of the first 15 lines of the Iliad, the result of which he extrapolated without further ado to the over 27,000 Homeric verses; (b) the analysis of the instantiations of one typical scene as oral theme (that of assembly in the Iliad) – again extrapolating its result to the whole of the Homeric theme-structure; and (c) showing that the Homeric epics have a higher frequency of non-periodic enjambment than the written epics of Apollonios and Vergil. In view of his perfunctory and cavalier way of going about the tests of orality, Lord’s claim – “we now realize fully that Homer is an oral poet”114 – is an extraordinarily audacious one, unsupported as it is by sufficient evidence and lacking method, and thus untenable. When applying the tests, one has to consider that there is both a qualitative and a quantitative aspect to the argument for Homeric orality. (1) Demonstrating the occurrence of schematized formulas in the Iliad provides the qualitative component, as this genuinely oral feature has them differ in kind, i. e., qualitatively, from repetitions in written texts. The quantitative component would be the demonstration of a very high frequency of such formulas in Homer. The same applies to the other tests: (2) the demonstration of the presence of typical scenes, i. e., schematized themes, in the Homeric epics (= qualitative argument) again requires support by showing a large extent of their use to prove oral schematization of the Homeric thematic material (= quantitative argument). (3) Noting, as Parry and Lord do, that adding enjambment occurs more frequently in Homer than in pen-poets such as Apollonios and Vergil amounts to a meaningful argument only if it can also be shown to be the prevailing form of enjambment in Homer. (4) To have demonstrated the working of formular economy in the name-epithet formulas (= qualitative argument) would prove the orality of Homeric diction only if it can also be shown as being pervasive in the whole of Homeric diction (= quantitative argument). Trying to prove Homeric orality in this way would call for extensive testing. Lord’s ten pages that he devotes to the tests of orality fall far short of this standard. Thus the tests have not even been applied properly to the Homeric epics, to say nothing of the claim that they have passed them. 112 Lord 1960: 141–47; 291–93. 113 Lord 1960: 147 (emphasis added). 114 Lord 1960: 147.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

The resumption of the tests of orality for Homer will have to focus on the two decisive characteristics of oral poetry: schematization – both in terms of diction and theme – and parataxis. Thus the orality tests must be embedded in the investigation of either characteristic. The use of formulas and their organization in systems of economy and extension make up the oral schematization of diction; thus the formula test (1) and economy test (4) go together in its investigation. – Likewise the thematic test (2): it must be part and parcel of the investigation into the schematization of thematic structure in Homer. – Enjambment, involving as it does the question of sentential syntax in Homer, widens the enjambment test (3) to the inquiry into the extent of parataxis and hypotaxis in the Homeric narrative. a. THE FORMULA TEST: FORMULAR LANGUAGE AND SCHEMATIZED DICTION Lexis is the true province of Parryism’s oral poetics where it shows its forte and comes into its own: therefore the investigation will first focus on Parryism’s formular theory and its notion of schematized diction. It offers the strange tale of an enterprise that starts out with a splendid achievement and ends, after several decades of theorizing, in an impasse. This process has deprived both Oral Theory and the Theory of the Oral Homer of what they once had possessed – a clear definition of one of their central terms, the formula. To date, this sad tale has never been told consistently in its entirety, let alone been critically analysed115. It will be told here as one of the preliminaries to the formula test. For it is imperative to understand how this predicament of Parryism has come about by tracing the development of formular theory from its triumphant beginning to its present sorry state. This section will perforce be somewhat voluminous. Beside tracing Parryism’s microphilology of the formula, several other matters require discussion prior to the test. These are: Parry’s first model of schematized diction, its success and its problems; the status of the epithet and of the mot juste; a critical anatomy of the ParryLord formular analyses as the overture to the critical account of Parryist formular theory; and finally hapax legomena as the principally non-formular unschematized words in Homeric diction. a1. Parry’s Epochal Discovery and Its Problems Here it is necessary to elaborate what has been only sketched briefly at the opening of this section. Oral poetry as composition by formula has as its basic unit the wordgroup instead of the single word. It ranges in size from the two-word formula to the formular verse. The oralist enterprise started out with a clear and comprehensive concept of its central term, when Milman Parry defined the oral formula first in his French thèse as 115 For a first attempt, see Friedrich 2011.

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The Parryist Tests of Orality

une expression qui est régulièrement employée, dans les mêmes conditions métriques, pour exprimer une certaine idée essentielle116.

The English version, by avoiding the vagueness of the term expression, is more precise: A group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea117.

The pregnancy of its formulation requires the unpacking of the definition’s connotations. ‘Regularly employed’ means first of all the frequency of use, i. e., multiple repetition. If a phrase is repeated only once, it counts as a ‘simple repeat’, not a formula. Simple repeats occur in any form of poetry, whether oral or written; so they cannot serve to prove orality. ‘Metrical conditions’: this part refers to the subdivisions of the hexameter, marking through its breaks the metrical spaces that a formula must fill for completing metre and sense, verse and sentence. These determine the formula’s metrical shape and placement within the hexameter. There are four principal types of nounepithet formulas, corresponding to the four principal breaks of the hexameter, its caesurae and diaereses, establishing the four principal metrical spaces these formulas have to fill, and thus constituting the ‘metrical conditions’, under which they are employed, e. g.: 1 (5- ++ 6- -) (bucolic diaeresis to verse end) di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~

2

3

4

(++ 5- ++ 6- -)

(+ 4- ++ 5- ++ 6- -)

(1- ++ 2- ++ 3-)

(weak caesura to verse end)

(hemiepes)

poluvtla~ di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~

diogenh;~ ∆Oduseuv~

(4th-foot

caesura to verse end)

poluvmhti~ ∆Odusseuv~

The ‘essential idea’ Parry describes thus: What is essential in an idea is what remains after all stylistic superfluity has been taken away from it. Thus the essential idea of the words h\mo~ d∆ hjrigevneia favnh rJododavktulo~ ∆Hwv~ is ‘when day broke’, that of bh` d∆ i[men is ‘he went’; that of to;n d∆ au\te proseveipe is ‘said to him’; and … that of poluvtla~ di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ is ‘Odysseus’118.

More precisely put, the ‘essential idea’ of poluvtla~ di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ is ‘Odysseus as nominative subject’ (= ‘Odysseus’nom). Similarly, the ‘essential idea of ∆Acilh`a povda~ tacuvn is ‘Achilleus as direct accusative object’ = ‘(Achilleus’acc). Parry stresses the ‘metrical usefulness’ of the formula as crucial, when he comments:

116 Parry 1928: 16 = Parry 1971: 13. 117 Parry 1971: 272. 118 Parry 1971: 13–14;

54

The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas The word group is employed regularly when the poet uses it without second thought as the natural means of getting his idea into verse. The definition thus implies the metrical usefulness of the formula … When the element of usefulness is lacking, one does not have a formula but a repeated phrase which has been knowingly brought into the verse for some special effect119.

The four principal-type formulas for expressing the essential idea ‘Odysseus’nom will serve again for exemplification. When the oral poet, improvising in hexameters, has to complete verse and sentence by expressing the essential idea ‘Odysseus’nom, he has at his disposal the formula di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ for filling the metrical space after the bucolic diaeresis (1); the formula poluvmhti~ ∆Odusseuv~ for filling the metrical space after the “4th foot caesura” (2); and the formula poluvtla~ di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ for filling the metrical space after the ‘weak caesura’ (3). When, on the other hand, ‘Odysseus’nom has to open the verse and cover the metrical space of the ‘hemiepes’ section, the poet has diogenh;~ ∆Oduseuv~ at hand (4). It is doubtlessly a considerable aid during composition-in-performance to have ready a set of four metrically different name-epithet formulas for expressing the one given essential idea such as ‘Odysseus’nom under all the four possible metrical conditions. Parry discovered that the Homeric epic has such sets of principal type formulas (1–4) for all its main personnages, both human and divine. Here is an excerpt of his famous table120: 1

2

3

4

(5- ++ 6- -)

(++ 5- ++ 6- -)

(+ 4- ++ 5- ++ 6- -)

(1 - ++ 2- ++ 3-)

(bucolic diaeresis to end)

(4th-foot caesura to end)

(weak caesura to end)

(hemiepes)

di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~

poluvmhti~ ∆Odusseuv~

poluvtla~ di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~

diogenh;~ ∆Oduseuv~

faivdimo~ ”Ektwr

koruqaiovlo~ ”Ektwr

mevga~ koruqaiovvlo~ ”Ektwr

”Ektwr Priamivdh~

Palla;~ ∆Aqhvnh

glaukw`pi~ ∆Aqhvnh

qea; glaukw`pi~ ∆Aqhvnh

Palla;~ ∆Aqhnaivh

di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~

povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~

podavrkh~ di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~

–

povtnia ”Hrh

leukwvleno~ ”Hrh

bow`pi~ povtnia ”Hrh

–

119 Parry 1971: 272–73 (emphasis added). 120 Parry 1971: 39. For a few characters there are only three principal-type formulas. – Note that not all formulas consist of the standard combination of name/noun plus adjective(s). There are numerous variations. The epithet in the oral formula need not always take the form of an adjective. Occasionally another name, as in Palla;~ ∆Aqhvnh, or a patronymic as in {Ektwr Priamivdh~, may be used instead of the adjective; or an apposition combining noun and adjective, as in qea; glaukw`pi~ ∆Aqhvnh, or two nouns, as in a[nax ajndrw`n may stand for the epithet; or paraphrases such as Tudevo~ uiJJov~ or h{rw~ ∆Atreivdh~ may constitute a formula. Cp. Parry 1971: 20 n.1.

55

The Parryist Tests of Orality

1 (5-

++

2 6-

-)

(++

5-

++

3 6-

-)

(+

4-

++

5-

4 ++

6-

-)

(1 -

++

2-

++ 3-)

cavlkeo~ “Arh~

crushvnio~ “Arh~

brihvpuo~ o[brimo~ “Arh~

–

–

kreivwn ∆Agamevmnwn

a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnwn

h{rw~ ∆Atreivdh~

Tudevo~ uiJov~

kratero;~ Diomhvdh~

boh;n ajgaqo;~ Diomhvdh~

–

As already stated, Parry’s most significant achievement was his discovery that these sets of principal type formulas constitute systems with definite qualities. Here the well-known categories of extension (also dubbed ‘scope’, ‘length’, or ‘complexity’) and economy (occasionally named ‘thrift’ or ‘simplicity’) come into play as the twin qualities of the systems, operating as their organizing principles. These can now be elucidated in concrete detail as to their mode of operation in the oral formular apparatus and as to their central significance for the Theory of the Oral Homer. This formular apparatus, with which the tradition furnishes the oral singer, is designed to facilitate rapid versification during performance. It does so by providing complete or nearly complete systems of all principal-type formulas for expressing given essential ideas (such as ‘Odysseus’nom, ‘Hektor’nom, ‘Athene’nom) under all (or nearly all) the relevant metrical conditions. This is what Parry refers to by extension. On the other hand, the formular apparatus should, for mnemonic reasons, avoid overload by keeping the number of necessary formulas as low as possible. Thus, in order to be optimally useful to the oral singer improvising in hexameters, the formular apparatus must not only be large but also thrifty – not only extensive but also economic. The economy of a system, Parry writes, “lies in the degree in which it is free of phrases which, having the same metrical value and expressing the same idea, could replace one another”121. Economy thus aims at the avoidance of metrical doublets. For instance, a metrical doublet is found in the pair ∆Acilh`i> a[nakti/ojlow/` ∆Acilh`i.> It impairs the economy of the ‘Achilleus’dat system: both formulas express the same essential idea ‘Achilleus’dat; are of the same metrical shape (++ 5- ++ 6- -); and could therefore replace one another. They thus constitute a breach of the principle of formular economy. In short, a system, such as that for ‘Odysseus’nom, is optimally extensive as well as optimally economic in that it offers, for the expression of a given essential idea, one formula each for all principal metrical conditions – but one formula only. It is in this way that a maximum of metrical needs is met with a minimum of formulas. It is economy in the full sense of this category: a maximum of effect achieved by a minimum of means. What distinguishes an oral diction is thus not simply extensive formularity, but extensive formularity controlled by the principle of economy. Parry’s preferred term 121 Parry 1971: 276.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

for such systematization of diction is, as already noted, schematization (hence the synonymous use of ‘schematization’ and ‘systematization’). A schematized diction, with formular economy operating as its main force, is therefore the decisive characteristic, the hall-mark of oral composition-in-performance. Parry arrived at his original model of schematized oral diction before he conceived of the Homeric epics as oral poems. His model grew out of his Homeric studies in his Paris thèses, informed and guided by the Aristarchean hermeneutics of safhnivzein ”Omhron ejx ÔOmhvrou (‘explaining Homer from Homer’)122. At that stage Parry, the Homerist, was analyzing what he called a traditional diction. It was when he turned Parry, the Comparatist, that he discovered analogous phenomena in the diction of the South-Slavic oral singers of tales. He drew the ‘Yugoslav analogy’, thereby going beyond the Aristarchean principle, and concluded that the schematization of Homer’s traditional diction could best be explained in terms of composition-in-performance – in short, as an oral diction. It was this conclusion that gave rise both to Oral Theory and to Parryism as the Theory of the Oral Homer. What is it that renders Parry’s discovery epochal? Parry’s classical definition of the oral formula is more than just a matter of nomenclature. With its connotations of schematized diction along with its categories of economy and extension, it not only offers in a nutshell a concept of oral composition; it also determines its differentia specifica that distinguishes it, we remember, in kind from written composition: such schematization, so useful in oral composition in performance, would be in written composition a pointless and counterproductive encumbrance. Now the very fact that it all originated from Parry’s Homeric studies prior to the Yugoslav analogy firmly lodges oral schematization within Homeric diction. This fact means nothing less than the discovery of the oral tradition within the Homeric epic, thereby establishing its indisputable link to oral poetry. Its nature, however, as already noted, is still to be determined and this is one of the aims of the present study. b1. Lowly Status of the Epithets For all its explanatory power and elegance, Parry’s model has its problems. Its success came at a price. It was the epithet that had to pay it by being assigned a lowly status – a corollary of Parry’s notions of the ‘essential idea’ and of formular economy. Both these notions have shaped to a large extent his reasoning on the epithet. This reasoning took its point of departure from the ancient scholia’s distinction between epitheta ornantia (deployed kovsmou cavrin) and epitheta significantia (deployed ouj kovsmou cavrin ajlla; prov~ ti)123. From this, Parry derived his basic division of the epithets into ornamental (or fixed) epithets and particularized epithets. In his description of the essential idea as that “what remains after all stylistic superfluidity has been taken away from it”, the epithets in the ornamental formula poluvtla~ di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ exemplify that ‘stylistic superfluidity’: Odysseus is often referred to 122 Parry 1971: 268; 271. 123 See e. g. Schol. HMQS ad Od. 2. 94.

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as brilliant and much-suffering in contexts, where his brilliance and suffering have no direct bearing on the epic action. Such ornamental epithets are said to be indifferent to their contexts. By contrast, their counterpart, the particularized epithets, “pertain directly to the action of the moment”124, i. e., are concordant with, and relevant to, their immediate context. As an example Parry adduces ∆Odusseuv~ … poluvtropo~ (Od.10. 330), used by Kirke, just defeated by the versatile Odysseus in her attempt to change him into a pig. Parry’s other example is ∆Acilh`a pelwvrion (at Il. 21. 527 and 22. 92) deployed in a context, in which, in Parry’s view, the hero’s hugeness is relevant125. The ornamental epithets Parry subdivided further into generic and distinctive ones. Generic epithets are shared by two or more characters (e. g. di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~ / di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ / di`o~ ∆Alevxandro~ / di`o~ uJJforbov~) or collectivities (e. g., di`oi ∆Acaioiv / di`oi eJtai`roi); by contrast, distinctive epithets are peculiar to only one character (e. g., povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~ / poluvtla~ ∆Odusseuv~) or a specific collectivity (e. g., kavrh komovwnte~ ∆Acaioiv / ejrivhre~ eJtai`roi)126. The generic and distinctive epithets in the numerous ornamental formulas, being context-neutral, are said to aid the singer in completing the metre of the verse, while the epithets in the few particularized formulas, being context-specific, help the singer complete both the metre and the meaning of the verse127. The epithets of the ornamental formulas represent ‘stylistic superfluidity’ in the description of the ‘essential idea’; hence their lowly status in the Parryist model. It is important to grasp the full extent of their lowly status in Parry’s oralist discourse. In the four name-epithet formulas for ‘Odysseus’nom (di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ / poluvmhti~ ∆Odusseuv~ / poluvtla~ di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ / diogenh;~ ∆Oduseuv~) semantic relevance is said to reside solely in the name as the carrier of the essential idea. Their ornamental epithets, in turn, are viewed as having the purely metrical function of lengthening prosodically the name so that it can meet the metrical conditions under which it is to be deployed128, e. g., poluvmhti~ enlarges ∆Odusseuv~ [+ --] metrically to scan [++ - ++ -- ] so that it fits into the space between fourth-foot caesura and 124 Parry 1971: 55–56. 125 There is much more to this formula. For a full interpretation of this particularized formula, see Friedrich 2007: 100–1. 126 Strictly speaking, the subdivision generic/distinctive should also apply to the particularized epithets and formulas: it is implied, when Parry declares pelwvrio~ to be a particularized epithet in formulas for no less than five different characters (Achilleus, Aias, Hektor, Ares, Periphas – see Parry 1971: 157–58), whereas poluvtropo~ goes exclusively with Odysseus. In the implied subdivision, pelwvrio~ would be generic, poluvtropo~ distinctive. But Parry would have opposed such a distinction, because “either the epithet pelwvrio~ is a generic epithet of a hero and always ornamental, or it is always particularized in each of the 10 cases of its use” (Parry 1971: 157; emphasis added). This is predicated on Parry’s tenet of the mutual exclusion of ornamental and particularized interpretations of epithets, which will be critically analysed below. 127 Parry 1971: 119–24, 145–53 (‘the generic epithet’), 153–65 (‘the particularized epithet’); the latter is said to “pertain directly to the action of the moment” (Parry 1971: 55–56), i. e., interact with the context. There will be more on the particularized formula in Part II. 128 Parry 1971: 165: “The technique of the epithets … is solely designed to help the poet to fit a noun into a line of six feet; once the noun has been fitted in and the line is complete, the epithet has no further function” (emphasis added).

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verse-end. Parry here generalises Hermann Düntzer’s surmise that epithets were chosen or formed primarily for their metre rather than their meaning129. Yet Parry goes much further than that. When an epithet becomes ornamental, Parry holds, “its meaning loses any value of its own” by “merging” with the names or nouns “in the expression of a single idea”: poluvmhti~ merges with ∆Odusseuv~ in the expression of the single essential idea ‘Odysseus’nom, just like pteroventa merges with e[pea in the expression of the single essential idea ‘words’acc. In the ornamental formula the epithet is fixed in that it has “become so involved with the idea of the substantive that the two can no longer be separated”: it is not merely conjoined with, but has “become fused” with the name “into what is no more … than another form of the name”130. With the ornamental formulas declared to be convenient metrical variants of the names, their epithets, by losing their semantic force, become metrical fillers: those four principal-type formulas for Odysseus are all said to be metrically different yet semantically identical versions of the one ‘essential idea’ ‘Odysseus’nom, ready-made for being deployed according to the metrical needs of the singer in rapid versification irrespective of the context. In the last analysis, Parry’s notion of the ornamental formula entails that the vast majority of the epithets are not merely indifferent to context but virtually meaningless. Their loss of meaning was to account for the fact that Achilleus as grammatical subject (= ‘Achilleus’nom) is regularly ‘swift-footed’ after the fourthfoot caesura (povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~) and after the weak caesura (podavrkh~ di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~)—no matter whether he is storming against the enemy at Il. 20. 445: tri;~ me;n e[peit∆ ejpovrouse podavrkh~ di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~,

or is standing up to speak in the assembly at Il. 1. 58; 19. 55: toi`si d∆ ajnistavmeno~ metevfh povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~,

or is seated in his hut conversing with his guest Priam at Il. 24. 559: to;n d∆ a[r∆ uJpovdra ijdw;n prosevfh povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~,

or is lying idly among his ships at Il. 2. 688: kei`to ga;r ejn nhvessi povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~.

In Parry’s model, it is the principle of economy that is at work here: to complete these hexameters by the essential idea ‘Achilleus’nom, the economic imperative of composition-in-performance would allow only one formula each after either caesura, to be deployed regardless of whether or not the epithets podavrkh~ and povda~ wjkuv~ are concordant with the immediate context. In his model the formulas’ utility for rapid versification – their raison d’être – resides in the epithets’ very loss of semantic force – in their meaninglessness. For it allows the oral singer to concentrate on adapting the semantic carriers of the essential ideas, the names and nouns, 129 Düntzer 1864/repr1979: 100–107, esp. 107: “… bei der Wahl und bei der Bildung der stehenden Beiwörter … [war] das metrische Bedürfnis hier in erster Reihe … und nur höchst selten die Rücksicht auf den Sinn von Einfluß …”. – Parry 1971: 124–25 (on Düntzer). 130 Parry 1971: 127; 305 (emphasis added).

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to the metrical conditions under which they are being deployed – without having to worry about the appropriateness or relevance of the epithets to the context. In the oralist frame, then, schematization of diction, with its categories of economy and extension, is to a large degree predicated on the epithet’s loss of semantic force. The internal logic of the oralist frame is impressive. Yet it is not necessarily the last word on the epithets. Their lowly status was bound to cause controversy and a challenge to the oralist frame. It did so both inside and outside the Parryschool131. One obvious objection would be: why have distinctive epithets at all, if their being fixed to names and nouns renders them meaningless? If the ornamental epithets represented merely metrical function without semantic force, then, according to the law of formular economy, names and nouns that scan the same should share the same epithets for the principal sections of the hexameter132. To illustrate this by way of a reductio ad absurdum: after the fourth-foot caesura, “Arh~, ”Hrh, Nevstwr, ÔHwv~, ”Ektwr, mnhvsthr, all scanning [--], could – and should according to the law of economy – share for this given metrical space one epithet (and one only), say, leukwvleno~: if, as a fixed epithet, it were indeed meaningless and a mere function of metrical convenience, we should expect after the fourth-foot caesura “Arh~ leukwvleno~, ”Hrh leukwvleno~, Nevstwr leukwvleno~, ”Ektwr leukwvleno~ ktl. Quelle horreur! The sheer absurdity of it all shows that the ornamental epithets cannot be meaningless. Nor are they altogether context-indifferent. They are better described as being to a degree neutral to the specific narrative situation, in which they are deployed. Their relative neutrality renders them contextually versatile, and thus metrically convenient. But that does not render them meaningless. Even Lord concedes a “vestigial meaning” that the ornamental epithets retain133. Yet they retain much more than that. For one thing, epithets, even the ornamental-generic ones, can be (and frequently are) true to the character of the hero or to the quality of the object to whose names they are attached134, as they do, for instance, in the formulas ptolivporqo~ ∆Odusseuv~, ∆Acillh`a ptolivporqon, wjkeve~ i{ppoi; and in this respect they do signify. For another, they have a modicum of contextual meaning as well. What had Parry assume their lack of meaning was their alleged total indifference to context. But this assumption is an overstatement. As Norman Austin has pointed out, the immediate context to which an ornamental epithet is pertinent is the character or the object, with which it is conjoined: “before metrical convenience comes into play the context (here the name) first exercises control in permitting certain epithets and barring others”135 – permitting, for example, koruqaiovlo~ but barring leukwvleno~ for Hektor, and vice versa for Hera.

131 See for instance Whallon 1961; Vivante 1982; Amory Parry 1973; Austin 1975; Erbse 1994; Friedrich 2007. 132 See Austin 1975: 40. 133 Lord 1960: 65–6. 134 On epithets true to character, see Whallon 1969: passim. 135 Austin 1975: 260 n. 32.

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Inasmuch as the characters and objects are part of the narrative context, the ornamental epithets are part of it, too, if only obliquely so. The ancient scholia are quite instructive about how we are to understand the epitheta ornantia in various circumstances and situations of the epic action to which they bear no direct but only a mediated relation through their association with the names or nouns. The ornamental epithet may denote what is naturally (fuvsei) true of, and belongs to the specific character (ijdiovth~) of, a person or an object; or what is generally (kaqovlou) valid in them, irrespective of particular circumstances (ouj tovte)136. Thus swiftness of foot belongs to Achilleus’ nature (physis) or his specific character or individuality (idiotês) so that his being povda~ wjkuv~ is true in general (katholou), no matter whether the heroic sprinter pursues an enemy, takes the floor to speak in the assembly, sits in his hut singing the klea andrôn, presides over funeral games, or discourses with Priam. The same applies to the ornamental epithets in formulas such as wjkeve~ i{ppoi, nhvessi qoh/`sin or bevlo~ wjkuv. c1. Too Rigidly Drawn Distinctions Another problem with Parry’s theory of the epithet and formula is the rigidity with which he differentiates between ornamental/particularized on the one hand, and ornamental-generic/ornamental-distinctive on the other. These differentiations are important for analysis and thus are of considerable heuristic value. But Parry’s model turns them into dichotomies of mutually exclusive entities. Most pronounced in this respect is Parry’s verdict that one must “recognize the principle that an epithet used in a given noun-epithet formula cannot sometimes be ornamental, sometimes particularized: it must always be either the one or the other”137. But it surely can be both! Let us first trace Parry’s verdict – how it derives from his account of the genesis of traditional systems of noun-epithet formulas: We observed that every epithet must originally have been particularized. By the same token, it must at some time in its existence have been distinctive. In order to become ornamental it must at some point have been constantly used with one noun. Later, when it had become purely ornamental and the poet hardly gave thought to its signification, it could be applied to another noun by a process of analogy in which its signification played little part138.

Let us unpack this remarkable proposition by using the epithet ptolivporqo~ as an example. According to Parry’s account, its evolution from particularized to an ornamental-generic epithet must have taken the following course: first used with particularized meaning, i. e. ‘pertaining directly to the epic action of the moment’, for a hero when he was actually sacking a city. Then repeatedly used with one hero, say, Achilleus, the sacker of 23 cities in the Troad (Il. 9. 328–9), even when he was not 136 See, for instance, schol. A (kaqovlou) and schol. bT (fuvsei) ad Il. 8. 555; and schol. EHPV ad Od. 6. 74 (fuvsei). Cp. Erbse 1994: 258–59. 137 Parry 1971: 156 (Parry’s emphasis). 138 Parry 1971: 184 (emphasis added).

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sacking a city at the moment, it became ornamental-distinctive. Furthermore, when applied also to Odysseus and Ares, it finally became ornamental-generic or, as Parry would put it, purely ornamental, merging with the names Achilleus, Odysseus, and Ares, and forgoing in the process its semantic force. Having forgone its semantic force by this merger forever, ptolivporqo~ can never, so the doctrine holds, be used again with a particularized meaning. In the final stage, the formulas with ptolivporqo~ enter into the evolving formular noun-epithet systems (as ∆Odusseu;~ ptolivporqo~ into the nominative system for Odysseusnom, and as ∆Acillh`a ptolivporqon into the accusative system for Achilleusacc): here ptolivporqo~ can only function as an ornamental epithet, fused, as it is, with the names to form a metrical variant of them. “We are thus led to conclude”, Parry writes, that no noun-epithet formula which certainly forms part of a traditional system of noun-epithet formulas can contain an epithet whose meaning is particularized. And this conclusion should be categoric, should admit no exception139.

Once ornamental, always ornamental! As the epithets becoming increasingly ornamental grow indifferent to their contexts, so grows, in Parry’s account, the indifference of poet and audience to their signification: Parry actually thought that Homer’s listeners were as indifferent to the epithets as the epithets were to their contexts. The listeners’ indifference, their “insensibility” to the ornamental epithets, Parry held, was a “relative indifference”; they expected them as indispensable for imparting an heroic air to the narrative: “for Homer and for his audience alike, the fixed epithet did not adorn a single line or even a single poem, as it did the entirety of heroic song”140. The only signification that Parry’s model concedes to the epithets beyond their metrical usefulness is to credit their formulas with “an element of nobility and grandeur, but no more than that”141. They were to adorn epic poetry by helping create an heroic atmosphere. That is why the audience, despite its reported indifference and insensibility to their presence, would critically notice their absence – but their absence only. As Parry wittily put it, “Homer’s listeners demanded epithets and paid them no attention …”142. Thus Parry’s account interestingly postulates that in the initial stages of an oral tradition epithets are more true to character (i. e., distinctive) and more relevant to the epic action (i. e., particularized) than in its advanced maturative stages143. In other words, the development of elaborate formular systems is predicated on the epithets’ decreasing distinctiveness and diminished relevance to their narrative contexts – in short, on their progressive loss of meaning! Parry’s account implies that epithets and their formulas were expressive, nuanced, and signifying at the outset of the oral tradition, and had lost these qualities when the tradition reached its maturity, manifest in the emergence of systems and of a schematized diction. 139 140 141 142 143

Parry 1971: 130. Parry 1971: 137. Parry 1971: 127. Parry 1971: 137. Parry’s assumed process is counter-intuitive to Whallon 1979: 23, who thinks it was quite the reverse.

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Now this account is most probably valid for an oral tradition and in line with oral theory. It displays an undeniable inherent logic. Yet it is at odds with the poetic practice in the Homeric epic. There is no reason why, in appropriate contexts, an ornamental epithet should be incapable of reawakening its semantic force and then display a particularizing meaning. In Homer this is already the case when an ornamental-distinctive epithet happens to occur in a context to which it is relevant, as it does in the formula podavrkh~ di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~ at Il. 20. 445: tri;~ me;n e[peit∆ ejpovrouse podavrkh~ di'o~ ∆Acilleuv~.

When Achilleus is storming against the enemy, his swiftness of foot does “pertain directly to the action of the moment”: the formula and its epithet are concordant with the context. They thus behave in this verse as a particularized epithet and a particularized formula, while in other occurrences when swift-footed Achilleus stands, sits or lies down, they are ornamental. Such momentary particularizing is often dismissed as an accidental aesthetics. But the fact remains that we have here an epithet used in a noun-epithet formula which is ‘sometimes ornamental, sometimes particularized’ – the very phenomenon that Parry’s oralist reasoning judged to be impossible in an oral tradition. It was, we recall, presented as a conclusion said to be ‘categoric’ and ‘admitting no exception’. Yet the Homeric epic does admit exceptions; thus the conclusion is far from categoric. A striking case in point is the behaviour of ptolivporqo~ / ptolipovrqio~. In the Iliad it is used four times for Achilleus, twice for Odysseus, and one time each for Ares, Enyo, Oileus, and Otrynteus. In the Odyssey it is used eight times where it goes exclusively with Odysseus. It is thus, in Parry’s model, a certified ornamental-generic epithet, incapable of ever being particularized. But adhering to Parry’s divisions and leaving it at that would be, though technically correct, missing much of Homer’s art of the epithet. The distribution of this epithet among the names alone should give one pause: fourteen times applied to two accredited city-sackers, and only one time each to four other characters! Most significant is its exclusive use for Odysseus in the Odyssey: Martin Schmidt has convincingly argued that by introducing Odysseus in the proem as the destroyer of Troy (Troivh~ iJero;n ptoliveqron e[perse: Od.1.2) and by reminding in Book IV the audience of the stratagem by which he achieved it, the Odyssey uses ptolivporqo~ as a distinctive epithet for its principal character. This distinctiveness could also be argued for its application to Achilleus and Odysseus in the Iliad. Schmidt concludes, pace Parry, the inherent co-existence of generic and distinctive uses in Homeric epithets144. Yet there is more. For the sake of survival, Odysseus has been forced by the circumstances in the Cyclops’ cave to efface temporarily his heroic self by calling himself Ou[ti~, Nobody. After the successful escape from, and revenge on, Polyphemos, he has to restore his heroic name and identity. He does so by triumphantly revealing himself as the famous hero of the Trojan War, whose fame is that of the city-sacker of Troy, ∆Odusseu;~ ptolivporqo~ (Od. 9. 504)145. This particular144 Schmidt 1983: 7. 145 Od. 9. 504: favsqai ∆Odussh`a ptolipovrqion ejxjalaw`sai: see on this Friedrich 1991: 27; Friedrich 1987: 131. – For its use as particularized epithet with Achilleus at Il. 21. 550, see

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izing use of what oral theory technically classifies as an ornamental-generic epithet is not an accidental aesthetics. It is conscious poetic design. The Homeric art of the epithet frequently cuts across the lines of Parry’s classificatory system that strictly and categorically separates generic from distinctive epithets, and ornamental from particularized epithets. Parry himself had defied on occasion the rigidity of his classificatory system, as he did in the case of pelwvrio~: though technically an ornamental-generic epithet, used as it is with five different names, he interpreted it as a particularized epithet in each of its ten uses146. In his own exegetical practice Parry thus conceded the coexistence of ornamental and particularizing uses of epithets in Homer which he denies in his theory. What clinches the argument is that it even applies to d`io ` ~. Di`o~ is the poster child for the ornamental-generic epithets, joined as it is with a record number of different names, 32 in fact, plus numerous nouns. Yet, as Martin Schmidt has shown, the constellation of events in Iliad XXII to XXIV – Achilleus’ killing of Hektor and the subsequent mistreatment of his corpse – triggers a manifestation of its semantic force in the formula ”Ektora di`on147. Schmidt adduces Achilleus’ victory paean at Il. 22. 393–94: hjrovmeqa mevga ku`do~: ejpevfnomen ”Ektora di`on, / w/| Trw`e~ kata; a[stu qew`/ w}~ eujcetovwnto). On this passage Schmidt pertinently comments: “Here di`o~ is expressly accentuated through the words that follow, Hektor thus being distinguished as di`o~ from the others”148. At 22. 370 the poet makes a point of the Achaeans admiring fuh;n kai; ei\do~ ajghtovn of Hektor’s corpse: with this accentuation the epithet in ”Ektora di`on, the object of Achilleus’ shameful treatment, reasserts its semantic force at Il. 22. 395; 23. 24; 24. 22 and 50, particularly in connection with the phrases describing Achilleus’ disgraceful actions: ”Ektora di`on ajeikeva mhvdeto e[rga (22.395; 23.24); ”Ektora di`on ajeikivzein (24.22); ”Ektora di`on … / i{ppwn ejxavptwn peri; sh`m∆ eJtavroio fivloio / e{lkei (24.50–52). Already the juxtaposition of di`on and ajeikeva/ajeikivzein as contrasting terms, to which Ameis-Hentze on Il. 22. 395 draw attention, restores semantic force to this quintessentially generic epithet149. As a result, ”Ektora di`on, technically an ornamental formula, turns out as behaving in all these cited Iliad verses as a distinctive as well as a particularized formula, giving the lie to the dogma of ‘once ornamental, always ornamental’. d1. The Homeric Epithet and the mot juste The schematized diction of oral poetry, governed by the imperatives of utility and thrift, not only aids the unlettered singer’s composition-in-performance, but also limits expression. His composition is perforce confined to what the systems offer Shive 1987: 100. 146 Parry 1971: 157–58. On the use of this epithet as particularized when applied to Achilleus at Il. 21. 527; 22. 92), see Friedrich 2007: 100–1. 147 Schmidt 1983: 9–10. 148 Schmidt 1983: ibid. “Hier wird wohl di`o~ ausdrücklich durch das Folgende akzentuiert, Hektor also als di`o~ aus den anderen herausgehoben.” 149 On all this see Schmidt 1983: ibid. – On di`o~ cp. also Erbse 1994: 260–1.

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and allow. Such confinement is brought home when Parry discusses the notion of the mot juste150: If a poet is to use the mot juste, the word carefully chosen as the best one, he must have a mind free from all cares of versification, since the mot juste, as criticism has defined it, is chosen purely for its sense. From this point of view, any concession to metre impairs the precision of the poet’s thought151.

The pen-poet’s quest for the mot juste, his daily routine, would be an unaffordable luxury for the oral singer. For his mind can never be free of the cares of versification, faced as he constantly is with the peril of metrical breakdown. Thus stylistic justesse does not go with oral composition. Parry’s implied verdict is that oral poetry rules out the quest for the mot juste. This verdict should apply to the Homeric epic as well, assumed as it is by Parry to be oral. Yet with the notion of the particularized epithet, Parry has unawares let the mot juste slip into his reasoning on Homeric diction. Parry’s particularized epithet – that “particular word” which “the poet is deliberately choosing in view of the immediate context” and which “pertains directly to the action of the moment”152 – is the mot juste in all but in name. That is why in Parry’s view there is only a handful of particularized epithets and formulas in Homer – so small in number that they serve as the exception proving the rule of their rarity. Parry was all too aware of the inclination of modern readers of Homer – scholars and general readers alike – to ascribe a particularized meaning to epithets and formulas. But this is forbidden fruit. The temptation to become an “ardent champion of the particularized meaning”153 has to be resisted. In Parry’s view, such temptation is due to inexperience and unfamiliarity with traditional oral diction. Less charitably put, giving in to such temptation is amateurish. As a remedy Parry urges the modern reader to aspire to that insensitivity, insensibility, and indifference to the signification of epithets, which Homeric audiences had allegedly acquired. An odd advice to give for the study of poetry! It is the height of Hard Parryism, informed as it was by Marcel Jousse’s doctrine of the fundamental dichotomy between oral utility and literate artistry154. Parry was confident that the modern reader, having once too often encountered formulas like nhu`~ qohv referring to a ship drawn up on the beach or at anchor or wrecked, would in time be cured of his inclination towards particularizing interpretations. He would “acquire an insensibility to any particularized meaning of the epithet, and this insensibility becomes an integral part of his understanding of Homeric style”155. In this way he would then graduate from amateur to the status of competent reader of Homer, just like the Homeric audiences became competent hearers when they “demanded epithets but paid them no attention”. 150 151 152 153 154 155

Parry 1971: 133. Parry 1971: 133. Parry 1971: 155–56 Parry 1971: 130 See above. Parry 1971: 127.

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Yet it was not to happen that way – not even within the Parryist camp. On the contrary, under headings such as the ‘artistically weighted epithet’, the ‘judicious use of the epithet’, or ‘the contextually apt formula’, the particularizing interpretation of epithets and formulas became all the rage156. As a result, the mot juste – deemed impossible for composition-in-performance, as it is convincingly argued within the framework of Oral Theory – entered the exegesis of the Homeric epic. Opposition to this development was vigorous and fierce: Lord fulminated, joined by Hainsworth, against what he called the fallacy of the artistically weighted epithet, both of them revealing thereby their residual Hard Parryism157. But to no avail: the Homeric epithet was not only freed in various ways from its lowly status that Oral Theory had assigned to it, but was shown to attain, as mot juste, frequently to the height of stylistic justesse158. e1. An Anatomy of the Parry-Lord Formula Analyses After extrapolating from his discovery of schematization among the noun-epithet formulas to the whole of Homeric diction, Parry embarked on formula analyses of the first 25 verses of either Homeric epic to demonstrate their high formular density. These analyses yielded a further extrapolation (a corollary of his first one): the result of his formular analyses of these 50 opening verses of both epics was extrapolated to the total of 27,508 Homeric verses. Formular density, as we recall, is said to be the “litmus test of orality” (Notopoulos). Lord called it, as we have seen, the 156 There are various modes in which the ornamental epithets have meaning and aesthetic function beyond their metrical usefulness: the ‘invocation of the heroic’, and the expression of essential aspects of persons and objects (their physis, idiotês and the katholou in them, as the scholia suggest; on this cp. Erbse 1994), being just two among several. – Occasional reactivation of the semantic force even of generic epithets, as the cited article by Martin Schmidt shows, is another (Schmidt 1983). Anne Amory Parry (Amory Parry 1973), from within the Parryist camp, broke the ice and made a strong case for what Austin has called the artistically weighted epithet; before her, Whallon 1969. Paolo Vivante’s study of the epithets vigorously stresses their poetic power that ranges from giving colour to the epic style (the epithets as “the brushstrokes of Homeric composition”, as Stephen Scully has felicitously put it) to illuminating and occasionally awakening a latent power in the objects (Vivante 1982, Scully 1990). – Other studies of the epithets have made a strong case for artistically weighted epithets in Homer by showing them interlocking in “contextual fields”, as Stephen Scully has paradigmatically shown for the cluster of epithets and formulas related to the various aspects of the ‘sacred polis’ (Scully 1990: 69–80 [Ch. 5: ‘City Epithets and Homeric Poetics’]), while Norman Austin has shown it for the epithets in the formulas for the members of Odysseus’ oikos stressing their intelligence, and David Shive for the epithets for Achilleus (Austin 1975; Shive 1987). 157 Lord 1960: 65–66: stressing “usefulness and necessity in composition as the essential considerations in studying formulas and the whole formulaic style” Lord re-asserts the orthodox Parryist tenor and warns of (and ridicules) the “pathetic fallacy” in looking for the artistically weighted epithet in oral poetry when an “innocent epithet” is attributed “a pathos felt only by the critic”. – Cp. also Hainsworth 1978: 41–50. 158 See the section “Escaping the System: the Pursuit of Justness of Expression” in Friedrich 2007: 83–84; 90–93; esp. 93–128 (= section “The Phrase Juste: Case Studies”).

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formula test of orality (of which Parry’s was the first) to be carried out by quantitative “formula analysis”, said to be “able to indicate whether any given text is oral or literary”159. Parry’s analysis had come up with a formular density of 60 percent; revising Parry’s analysis of Il. 1. 1–15 Lord reached a formular density of 90+ percent160. His tacit extrapolation of this result to the total of Homeric verses prompted him, as we have seen, to declare that the Homeric epics had passed the formula test of orality161. Parry’s and Lord’s procedure constitutes a violation of basic statistical rules. In no way can the initial 15 verses of the Iliad serve as a representative sample for its more than 15,000 Iliadic verses, nor can the 25 opening verses of either epic serve as representative samples for over 27,000 Homeric verses. Obviously, Parry and Lord were not concerned about statistical rules; as well they might, since their procedure was in line with Oral Theory: oral poems have a uniform formular diction so that a passage of any length could serve as a representative sample. The serious flaw in the Parry-Lord procedure lies not so much in the violation of statistical rules as in its inherent petitio principii. For their procedure already presumes what is to be proved by the formula test, namely the oralist tenet of uniform formular diction for Homer. The conclusion is already in the premiss. The belief among oralists that “on statistical grounds alone … Homeric poetry was fundamentally oral poetry”162, is largely based on the claim that Parry’s and Lord’s analyses have demonstrated the nearly total formularity of its diction. A critical dissection of their analyses of the first ten Iliadic verses will show that there is much more that is problematical than the violation of statistical rules and circular reasoning163. At the opening of their analyses, both Parry and Lord cite the classical definition of the formula to serve as criterion: “a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea”164. It articulates the notion of the oral formula, connoting, as it does, schematization as its organization in systems of extension and economy. It is or should be the chief criterion for identifying word-groups as oral formulas. In this notion of the formula resides, as Hainsworth has pointed out, the admirable “objectivity and rigour” – and one should add the originality and elegance – of Parry’s reasoning. What the formular test is to demonstrate is not “that Homer is too full of formulae to be anything but oral”, but that his “diction is different in kind and not merely in degree from that of studied poetry”, and by virtue of its organization is “characteristic of Homer and only of Homer” and “explicable only in terms of a prolonged and oral tradition. I refer to the familiar qualities of extension and economy”165. 159 Lord 1960: 130. 160 Parry 1971: 301–4; Lord 1960: 143; 291–93. 161 Lord 1960: 14. 162 Nagler 1967: 274. 163 It is for the sake of clarity and brevity that I confine my analysis to the first 10 verses in either analysis. These lines provide sufficient material for raising the essential points. 164 Parry 1971: 272; cf. Lord 1960: 4; 30. 165 Hainsworth 1964: 157 (emphasis added).

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Similarly Richard Janko states: “simple formularity does not prove orality; the formulae must be examined in terms of the qualities Parry named extension and economy”166. Extensive formularity governed by economy would provide both the quantitative and the qualitative evidence for the orality of a diction, because its repetitions differ from those of a literate diction in both number and kind. The points Hainsworth and Janko make cannot be vigorously enough emphasized in view of the exclusively quantitative reasoning into which Parry, Lord, and with them most Parryists have slipped. For the proof of Homeric orality the schematized formula should be the trump card. My anatomy dissects, as is the nature of anatomies, Parry’s analysis into different stages. First let us see how far the trump card will carry his analysis towards having Homeric diction pass the litmus test of orality:

5

10

Mh`nin a[eide, qeav, Phlhiavdew ∆Acilh`o~ oujlomevnhn, h} muriv∆ ∆Acaioi`~ a[lge∆ e[qhke, povlla~ d∆ ijfqivmou~ yuca;~ “Aidi proivayen hJrwvwn, aujtou;~ de; eJlwvria teu`ce kuvnessin oijwnoi`siv te pa`si, Dio;~ d∆ ejteleiveto boulhv, ejx ou| dh; ta; prw`ta diasthvthn ejrivsante ∆Atreivdh~ te a[nax ajndrw`n kai; di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~. Tiv~ t∆ a[r sfwe qew`n e[ridi xunevhke mavcesqai; Lhtou`~ kai; Dio;~ uiJov~: o} ga;r basilh`i colwqeiv~ nou`son ajna; strato;n w\rse kakhvn, ojlevvkonto de; laoiv …

The underlined phrases meet all the criteria of the schematized formula – regular employment; metrical shape and placement; membership in systems of economy and extension; expression of a given essential idea. The problem is the dearth of such genuine oral formulas. In their ensemble they would constitute a formular density of just 15 percent – a far cry from passing the litmus test of orality! At the next stage Parry used the solid line much more generously to include all verbatim repetitions in the class of oral formulas:

5

10

Mh`nin a[eide qea; Phlhiavdew ∆Acilh`o~ oujlomevnhn, h} muriv∆ ∆Acaioi`~ a[lge e[qhke povlla~ d∆ ijfqivmou~ yuca;~ “Aidi proivayen hJrwvwn, aujtou;~ de; eJlwvria teu`ce kuvnessin oijwnoi`siv te pa`si, Dio;~ d∆ ejteleiveto boulhv ejx ou| dh; ta; prw`ta diasthvthn ejrivsante “Atreivdh~ te a[nax ajndrw`n kai; di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~. Tiv~ t∆ a[r sfwe qew`n e[ridi xunevhke mavcesqai; Lhtou`~ kai; Dio;~ uiJov~: o} ga;r basilh`i colwqeiv~ nou`son ajna; strato;n w\rse kakhvn, ojlevvkonto de; laoiv …

A much improved picture emerges: formular density has risen threefold from 15 to 45 percent. This rise is due to Parry’s tacit extension of the definition of the formula to include any verbatim repetition. Nearly half of them are simple repeats (6 out of 13). Here is an analytical list of all the word-groups with Parry’s solid underlining (number of repetitions in brackets): 166 Janko 1982: 20.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

Schematized formulas: Phlhiavdew ∆Acilh`o~ (7x) a[nax ajndrw`n (37x) di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~ (55x) ∆Atreivdh~ [te] (6x) Dio;~ uiJov~ (9x)

(II) Repeated phrases:

oujlomevnhn, h{ (3x, twice as oujlomevnhn, h|)|/ “Aidi proivayen (2x; cp. ∆Ai>dwnh`i proi>avyein at Il. 5. 190)

(III) Simple repeats

a[lge∆ e[qhke (1x) povlla~ d∆ ijfqivmou~ … “Aidi proivayen (1x) Dio;~ d∆ ejteleiveto boulhv (1x) xunevhke mavcesqai (1x)

ejx ou| dhv (1x, not a formula) qew`n e[ridi (1x, neither phrase nor formula, but incidental juxtaposition)

In Parry’s notation, the class of straight formulas comprises phrases ranging from those repeated 55 times to those repeated only once; and includes what Parry’s Note on Method excludes: “chance groups of connective words”, such as ejx ou| dhv, as these express relations, not essential ideas167. In fact, Parry marks as a straight formula everything that looks like a verbatim repetition – even an accidental juxtaposition such as qew`n e[ridi, which is seemingly occurring twice as a phrase in Homer: tiv~ t∆ a[r∆ sfwe qew`n e[ridi xunevhke mavcesqai; (Il. 1. 8) tovsso~ a[ra ktuvpo~ w\rto qew`n e[ridi xuniovntwn (Il. 20. 66)

But qew`n and e[ridi do not constitute a phrase, let alone a formula, in either verse. In both occurrences of this juxtaposition, the words qew`n and e[ridi go each semantically and grammatically with other words: in Il. 1. 8 qew`n with tiv~, and e[ridi with mavcesqai; in 20.66 e[ridi with the participle xuniovntwn, of which qew`n is the subject168. Is marking a chance juxtaposion as a straight formula more than just a case of Parry nodding? Lord does the same in his analysis so that one suspects that it is method. If so, this method would make a mockery of the notion of the formula expressing an essential idea. In fact, it would make a mockery of the notion of the formula itself. At any rate, it is the first step in the declining relevance and ultimate abandonment of the expressed essential idea as an integral component in Parryism’s formular theory. Yet even the inclusion of simple repeats, a mere juxtaposition, and a chance group of connectives results in a formular density of not higher than 45 percent. Given this dilemma, it is not difficult to imagine the next stage: the broadening of the notion of formula beyond verbatim repetition. Enter “the other kind of formula”: “that which is like one or more [sc. word-groups] which express a similar idea in more or less the same words”169. Parry’s prime example is ojlevkonto de; laoiv ~ ajretw`si de; laoiv. 167 Parry 1971: 275. ‘Note on Method’. 168 Friedrich 1988: 476–77. 169 Parry 1971: 275.

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Both word-groups are said to resemble one another sufficiently in syntax, metre, and partial wording so that formular status can be conferred on them – despite their occurring only once in Homer. Unique phrases begin to pass for formulas. Parry goes on: we may say that any group of two or more such like formulas make up a system, and the system may be defined in turn as a group of phrases which have the same metrical value and which are enough alike in thought and words to leave no doubt that the poet who used them knew them not as single formulas but also as formulas of a certain type170.

These ‘formulas of a certain type’, combining constant and variable terms, are said to belong to a formular substitution system or pattern, which, by substituting the variables, creates new formulas. Note that, by calling such a pattern a system, Parry introduced with the ‘other kind of formula’ also another kind of formular system. The system made up of this kind of formulas does not connote the categories of extension and economy. Equivocation concerning the central terms formula and system has thereby entered Parryism’s reasoning on oral diction. The “other kind of formulas” was later dubbed “formulaic expressions”171. In contradistinction to the straight formulas requiring exact repetition and marked by a solid line in the formula analyses, the “formulaic expressions”, requiring only partial repetition, are marked by broken underlining of the variant element. Here is, in its third and final stage, Parry’s analysis of Il. 1. 1–10:

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10

Mh`nin a[eide qea; Phlhiavdew∆ Acilh`o~ oujlomevnhn, h} muriv∆ ∆Acaioi`~ a[lge∆ e[qhke, povlla~ d∆ ijfqivmou~ yuca;~ “Aidi proivayen hJrwvwn, aujtou;~ de; eJlwvria teu`ce kuvnessin oijwnoi`siv te pa`si, Dio;~ d∆ ejteleiveto boulhv ejx ou| dh; ta; prw`ta diasthvthn ejrivsante ∆Atreivdh~ te a[nax ajndrw`n kai; di`o~∆ Acilleuv~. Tiv~ t∆ a[r sfwe qew`n e[ridi xunevhke mavcesqai; Lhtou`~ kai; Dio;~ uiJov~: o} ga;r basilh`i colwqeiv~ nou`son ajna; strato;n w\rse kakhvn, ojlevvkonto de; laoiv …

The introduction of the ‘other kind of formula’ has further improved the picture: all underlined elements in this passage amount to a rise of its formular density from 45 to 65 percent. Yet such formular density is still not sufficient for passing the litmus test of orality. That is why Lord revised Parry’s analysis of Il. 1. 1–15. Now, if 65 percent is not good enough, what, then, are the quantitative criteria a text must meet in order to pass the formula test of orality? Here is Lord on this matter: An oral text will yield a predominance of clearly demonstrable formulas (sc. straight formulas, RF), with the bulk of the remainder ‘formulaic,’ and a small number of nonformulaic expressions. A literary text will show a predominance of nonformulaic expressions, with some formulaic expressions and very few clear formulas172.

170 Parry 1971: 275 (= Parry 1930: 85). 171 See, for instance, Lord 1960: 144. 172 Lord 1960: 130 (emphasis in text).

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As to percentages, Lord gives some indication in his 1968 essay: drawing on his experience from his field-work with the living oral poetry of Yugoslavia, Lord concludes that a pattern of 50 to 60 per cent formula or formulaic, with 10 to perhaps 25 per cent straight formula, indicates clearly literary or written composition173.

From Lord’s oblique way of stating the quantitative criterion one has to infer that an oral text must show a formular density of well above 80 percent. More likely, it is 90+ percent, judging from the result of Lord’s revision of Parry’s formula analysis of Il. 1. 1–10174: Mh`nin a[eide qea; Phlhiavdew∆ Acilh`o~ oujlomevnhn h{ muriv∆ ∆Acaioi`~ a[lge∆ e[qhke povlla~ d∆ ijfqivmou~ yuca;~ “Aidi proivayen 5

hJrwvwn, aujtou;~ de; eJlwvria teu`ce kuvnessinoijwnoi`siv te pa'si, Dio;~ d∆ ejteleiveto boulhv ejx ou| dh; ta; prw`ta diasthvthn ejrivsante ∆Atreivdh~ te a[nax ajndrw`n kai; di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~. Tiv~ t∆ a[r sfwe qew`n e[ridi xunevhke mavcesqai;

10

Lhtou`~ kai; Dio;~ uiJov~: oJ ga;r basilh`i colwqeiv~ nou`son ajna; strato;n w\rse kakhvn, ojlevvkonto de; laoiv …

Every line is fully marked as formular (solid line) and formulaic (broken line) except for one half-line, eJlwvria teu`ce kuvnessin in v.4. Lord’s analysis results in a formular density of 95 percent. It is far above Parry’s 65 percent, and this is due to Lord’s more generous conferring formular status on phrases and whole lines. Lord’s habit of double underlining gives the impression of a strange overdetermination of Homeric formularity! It seems to compensate for the dearth of straight formulas. A case in point is the double underlining of verse 6: ejx ou| dh; ta; prw`ta diasthvthn ejrivsante

The first underlining marks verse 6 as formulaic on the grounds that it is repeated in Hom. H. Merc. 313 in that both verses share grammatically, metrically, and phonetically an analogous pattern175: aujta;r ejpei; ta; e{kasta diarrhvdhn ejrivdainon …

They are both temporal clauses; have the same caesura; and their second halves resemble one another phonetically. They have a common term (tav). The second underlining confers the status of straight formula to a ‘chance group of connectives’ 173 Lord 1968: 24 (emphasis added). 174 His analysis of Il. 1. 1–15 is presented as Chart VII at Lord 1968: 143; the “supporting passages from the Homeric corpus” (Lord 1968: 144) are given in the notes to Chart VII at Lord 1968: 291–93. 175 Lord 1968: 292 [16].

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(ejx ou| dh;, 1x), and to an adverbial expression (ta; prw`ta), neither the expression of an ‘essential idea’. Another case in point for highlighting Lord’s generous conferral of formular status is the underlining of oijwnoi`siv te pa`si in v. 5 as syntactically and metrically analogous to ajntibivoi~ ejpevessin (Il. 2. 378) and problh`ti skopevlw/(Il. 2. 396): all three are unique expressions, lumped together to be declared formulaic by virtue of purely formal analogies176! Lord’s reasoning on the formula will occupy us in more detail later. These two examples are to give a first impression of how Lord’s analysis arrived at its stunning 90+ percent of formular density. The final assessment of the Parry-Lord formula analyses qua formula test of orality will have to wait until Parryism’s formular theory has been traced and analysed in its entirety, and the prevalent trend in its development fully explored. What is striking is an extraordinary concern with quantity; while the categories, in which resides the qualitative difference of the oral formula from repetitions in literate texts – extension and economy – have been entirely lost sight of. b. THE MICROPHILOLOGY OF THE FORMULA: A CRITICAL ACCOUNT What follows is a comprehensive synopsis of the developments within Parryist formular theory. I shall try to make it as succinct as the subject allows. A critical assessment will conclude it177. – The general trend is the expansion of the notion of oral formula. This is how Soft Parryism came into being178 – by no means a postParry phenomenon, inaugurated as it was by Parry himself, who in other respects remained a staunch Hard-Parryist. With Parry’s first model of formular composition attracting increasingly the labels of rigidity and restrictiveness, Soft-Parryist formular theory aimed at softening and broadening the concept of formula. It was to become more flexible and comprehensive, on the grounds that it would confer a measure of creativity on the oral Homer at the level of diction that Parry’s original model denied him. The essence of the formula is repetition, which is only seemingly a simple and unproblematical category. What is it that is repeated in the 81 times that the Homeric phrase poluvmhti~ ∆Odusseuv~ occurs? Semantically it is the wording containing the content, the ‘essential idea’ (‘Odysseus’nom.); formally and structurally it is parts of speech (noun/adjective), grammar (nominative), and syntactical function (subject); metrical shape and placement in verse (++ 5- ++ 6- -). As a schematized Homeric formula it shows frequency of repetition, i. e., it is ‘regularly employed’ within the framework of a system organized by extension and economy. In their ensemble, these elements constitute the original meaning of the terms oral formula and formular system. They represent the complete compass of the notion of repetition and 176 Lord 1968: 292 [14]. 177 It is an elaboration of my contribution “Formelsprache” to the Homer-Handbuch (Friedrich 2011: 45–64.) 178 Cp. Rosenmeyer 1965: 297–8.

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thus provide the criteria for assigning the term formula to a word group. The development within formular theory consists in a progressive diminuition of these criteria, bringing about the expansion of the notion of formula. Let us trace this development in its various stages. The initial ones concern the straight formula. There is, first, the inclusion of the mobile formula, the formula without a fixed position in the verse, such as ajntiqew`/ ∆Odush`i> (6x) both at the opening (Od. 1. 21; 6. 331; 22. 291) and closing of the verse (Il. 11. 140; Od. 2. 17; 13. 126) – a reasonable and thus unproblematical expansion. – Next, as we have seen, is the admission of simple repeats such as a[lge∆ e[qhke (Il. 1. 2; 22. 422) and povlla~ d∆ ijfqivmou~ (Il. 1. 3; 11. 55) to the class of formulas, among them mere juxtapositions of semantically and grammatically unrelated words, e. g. qew`n e[ridi (Il.1.8; 20.66); provfrwn e[pesin (Il. 1. 77 & 150), and chance groups of connectives like ejx ou| dh; (Il. 1. 6; Od. 14. 379) expressing a relation instead of an idea. – Furthermore, single words repeated in the same metrical position, e. g., oujlomevnhn (4x), are admitted to the class of straight formulas. Thus broadened, the notion of straight formula comprises all and everything that is or seems repeated verbatim; and it does so indiscriminately, ranging from the frequently deployed schematized formula to the simple repeat, and from whole lines to single words. The next decisive step was Parry’s introduction of the “other kind of formula”. Consisting as it does of constant and variable components, this kind allows the substitution of one term. Lord gave this new creature a ‘habitation and a name’ by grounding it in formulaic substitution patterns or systems and by naming it formulaic expression. The substitution patterns serve as generative mechanisms for creating new formulas by substituting the variables within a common syntactical-metrical framework. Parry’s prime example of a formulaic expression (ojlevkonto de; laoiv ~ ajretw`si de; laoiv) yields this substitution pattern and shared frame: Framework: Pred.4 ++5-++ Subj.6- ojlevkonto } de; laoiv ajretw`si

The members of this pattern are said to resemble one another – and thus attain formular status – in that they share at least one term (the constant) along with the same syntax, metrical shape and position in verse. What they do not share is the expression of a common essential idea. In this instance, the meaning of the variables (the predicates) diverge in opposite directions (‘perished’, ‘prosper’); besides, the meaning of the shared term laoiv differs (‘armies’, ‘people[s]’) in both word-groups. They are, pace Parry, not at all “alike in thought and words”. This form of substitution implies that the formulaic expressions it engenders are alike primarily in syntactical and metrical structure; and only minimally, if at all, in content and meaning. This implication precludes the expression of a shared essential idea. Consequently, from this point on in the development of Formular Theory, the notion of the essential idea expressed by the formula falls by the wayside. The elements of repetition are reduced to (1) partial content (the constants); (2) parts of speech; (3) syntax; (4) metrical shape and value; and (5) metrical position.

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Lord then made the formulaic substitution pattern the principal focus of Formular Theory. As a generative mechanism it forms, as it were, the engine for fashioning new formulas on the pattern of established ones, eclipsing in significance both the schematized and straight formulas: there is some justification for saying indeed that the particular formula (sc. the schematized and straight formula, RF) itself is important to the singer only up to the time when it has planted in his mind its basic mold. When this point is reached, the singer depends less and less on learning formulas and more and more on the process of substituting other words in the formula patterns179.

Lord elaborates further: Although it may seem that the more important part of the singer’s training is the learning of formulas from other singers, I believe that the really significant element in the process is rather the setting up of various patterns that make adjustment of phrase and creation of phrases by analogy possible180.

He conceives of the generative mechanism in terms of creative freedom: Each singer has a group of formulas that forms the basis of his style. These change but seldom; on them he patterns others. … All other formulas vary greatly in their susceptibility to change at the hands of a single singer. As Parry noted, the changes follow the patterns of the stable formulas, because the singer thinks in those patterns. Nevertheless, the singer has freedom to create new phrases and he does so. Thus the singer has scope for his creative powers on the formula level181.

This conception makes for elegant theorizing. But let us have a closer look at the practice, when applied to Homer. In this substitution pattern or system, the criteria (common term, same syntax, same metre) are strictly adhered to: ”Hrh, prevsba “Artemi, povtna

} qeav

In the respectful invocation of a goddess one may even discern the hint of a shared idea. This example is a convincing case of creating a new formula (“Artemi, povtna qeav, 1x) in analogy to a proven one (”Hrh, prevsba qeav, 4x). Yet when Lord extends this substitution pattern by adding more unique phrases sharing the vocative qeav, the criterion of shared syntax disappears and there is no longer any hint of a shared idea: ”Hrh, prevsba (4x) “Artemi, povtna (1x) mh``nin a[eide (1x) } qeav gignwvskw se (1x) tw`n aJmovqen ge (1x) 179 Lord 1960: 36 (emphasis added). 180 Lord 1960: 37 (emphasis added). – Cp. Lord 1960: 43: “New formulas are made by putting new words into old patterns”. 181 Lord (first 1953); 1991: 41 (emphasis added). Cp. also Lord 1960: 43: “… the creating of phrases is the true art of the singer on the level of line formation, and it is this facility rather than his memory of relatively fixed formulas that marks him as a skillful singer in performance”.

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It is by virtue of just sharing one term and the metrics with the proven formula ”Hrh, prevsba qeav that the other three additional unique phrases are said to attain formulaic status. This is a further move in the relaxation of criteria for the category of formula. Yet it is by no means the last one. Lord’s “creation of phrases by analogy” signals a decisive step in the development in formular theory: the analogical formula that can do without a shared term. Lord took his cue from a suggestion of Parry. Commenting on his expansion of the formula in his formula analysis of Il. 1. 1–15, Parry had stated: But there are more general types of formulas, and one could make no greater mistake than to limit the formular element to what is underlined … Teu`ce kuvnessin is like dw`ken eJtaivrw/ (R 698, Y 612)182.

Arranged as a substitution pattern, teu`ce kuvnessin ~ dw`ken eJtaivrw/ exemplify the type of formula that consists entirely of variables: Pred.5-+ Objdat+ 6- teu`ce kuvnessin ~ dw`ken eJtaivrw/

Yet Parry had only suggested this equation as a possibility. He did not act on it in his analysis: for some unknown reason, both he and later Lord left teu`ce kuvnessin (Il. 1. 4) unmarked. Nevertheless, Parry’s suggestion proved to be ominous. It anticipated the further development of formular theory and guided its direction. The formula, which consists entirely of variables, not only prefigures but already embodies Lord’s “analogical formula”, Notopoulos’ “formula by analogy”, and Russo’s “structural formula”183. Despite the different names, they denote basically the same: the essential criterion of formula, repetition, is now met by the similarity of structure alone. They only differ in the criteria for repeated structure. The focus of Formular Theory has shifted from the semantic to the structural. Lord’s patterns of analogical formulas still require strict metrical and syntactical repetition: Ndat1.- ++.2-Adat++ 3- + ~ oijwnoi`siv te pa`si ~ ajntibivoi~ ejpevessin ~ problh`ti skopevlw/184

Yet Notopoulos’ “formula by analogy” – “created by analogy to existing formulas”185 – does without the criterion of ‘same syntax’. Repetition is here purely metrical: ++ 6- ~ qouvrido~ ajlkh`~ (21x) ~ ejuvktiton Aijpuv (1x) ~ teivcea Qhvbh~ (2x) 5-

182 183 184 185

Parry 1971: 313 (emphasis added). Lord 1960: ch. III; Notopoulos 1962: 337–68; Russo 1963: 35–47; 1966: 219–40. Lord 1960: 143 note 2 and 292 note 14. Notopoulos 1962: 354.

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~ kampuvla kuvkla ~ oi[nopa povnton ~ o[brimon e[gco~ ktl.186

Not only word-groups but also single words that occur in the same metrical position can make up patterns of ‘formulas by analogy’ that do not even require repetition of grammatical structure: Ptcp 1 - ++ 2oujlomevnhn ~ lusovmeno~ ~ aJzovmenoi ~ keklimevnh ~ deiknuvmeno~ ktl.187

Russo’s concept of the “structural formula” derives directly from Parry’s ominous suggestion: he takes up and then extends Parry’s structural equation of teu`ce kuvnessi ~ dw`ken eJtaivrw/: Pred.5-+ Objdat+ 6- teu`ce kuvnessin (1x) ~ dw`ken eJtaivrw/(2x) ~ lh`ge covloio (1x) ~ devcqai a[poina (2x) ~ e[lsai ∆Acaiouv~ (2x)188

As with Notopoulos’ formula by analogy, same syntax as a criterion has been abandoned here, too. What these word-groups share and what confers on them the status of formula is solely metrics and parts of speech. Single words, too, can also form systems of structural formulas, if they share metrical value and position, even if occurring only once: ejrcomenavwn (Il. 2. 88) teiromevnoio (Il. 11. 841) ejmbebaw`ta (Il. 5. 199)189

This seems the most extreme point of abstraction and expansion the concept of formula has reached. Yet Nagler goes one better by driving the general trend to its ultimate conclusion: he has the formula dissolve into a general linguistic constellation of “gestalt” and “allomorphs”. These gestalts reside in the collective subconscious of the tradition and its singers and, being preverbal, are graspable only intuitively, if at all. The allomorphs are their various linguistic incarnations and verbal articulations, taking shape in the oral singer’s performance. What appear to be preexistent fixed formulas such as di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ are in actual fact the spontaneous instantiations of the preverbal gestalts, newly created with each occurrence! The 186 187 188 189

Notopoulos 1962: 356–57, n. 60. Notopoulos ibid. Russo 1966: 238. Russo 1966: 238.

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formula is now conceived as a nexus of rhythmic, phonetic, and semantic elements, existing in potentia as preverbal gestalts in the subconscious, and in actu as allomorphs that have been incorrectly deemed to be fixed formulas. ‘Preverbal’ equals ‘ineffable’. Hence the “frankly mystical tone”190 that Nagler admits characterizes his discourse. It is an amalgam of theories and doctrines of the most divergent provenance: gestalt psychology, Sanskrit philology, Jungian doctrine of the archetypes, Chomskyan structuralist linguistics, Levi-Straussian structuralist myth analysis, and the Wittgensteinian notion of conceptual family resemblance. Nagler has been celebrated as being at the cutting edge of contemporary theorizing. As a paradigmatic illustration of its application to the Homeric text it suffices to trace Nagler’s extension of two phrases, which Parry treated as formulas created by verbal punning: a;mfhvluqe(n) {

hJdu;~ ajutmhv (Od. 12. 369) qh`lu~ ajuthv (Od. 6. 122)191

This is how Nagler extends it: ajmfhvluqen hJdu;~ ajutmhv (Od. 12. 369) a;mfhvluqe qh`lu~ ajuthv (Od. 6. 122) ajmfiv m∆ ∆Odussh`o~ talasivfrono~ i{ket∆ ajuthv (Il. 11. 466) e[mph~ ej~ gai`avn te kai; oujrano;n i{ket∆ ajutmhv (Il. 14. 174) qh`lu~ ejevrsh (Od. 5. 467) qeivh dev min ajmfevcut∆ ojmfhv (Il. 2. 41) deinh; de; qeeivou givgnetai ojdmhv (Il. 14. 415) bow`nd∆ w}~ givgneto fwnhv (Od. 12. 396) ajkouveto lao;~ ajuth``~ (Il. 4. 331) e{kaqen dev te givnet∆ ajkouhv (Il. 16. 634)

Nagler claims that these “like-sounding phrases” form a “highly suggestive associational pattern of sound and sense”. He views their similarities as family resemblances that render their ensemble a sort of Wittgensteinian conceptual family (Begriffsfamilie)192. They are said to be ultimately joined together in some unspecified way by being the allomorphs of an underlying undifferentiated preverbal gestalt. All this theorizing is hard to follow: Nagler’s talk of the nexus of sense, rhythm, and sound notwithstanding, the alleged family-resemblance of these ‘likesounding phrases’ is for the most part grounded purely in sound or, in his words, their “phonemic corresponsions”. As to sense and metrical rhythm they diverge widely. They are ‘like-sounding’ alright, but nothing more. With Nagler’s translation of the category of formula into the gestalt/allomorph constellation, the focus of formular theory has finally shifted away from the semantic as well as from the structural to the merely phonetic193.

190 191 192 193

Nagler 1974: 1–5. Parry 1971: 72–3. Nagler 1974: 4 f. and 15. Cp. Finkelberg 2004: 238–40.

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a1. ‘Oralist Alchemy’ What has caused this development? Formular theory had gained a momentum of its own, propelled by the need for ever more and newer formulas. The lay-hunters (Liederjäger) of the classical analyst schools have found their successors in the oralist formula-hunters. The unrestrained formula-hunt arose from quite a concrete problem. Its name is formular density, or rather, the lack thereof. More precisely, it is the problem of the alarmingly high frequency of unique expressions in Homer. Since, as Bryan Hainsworth has critically observed, the degree of formular density depends on how one defines the formula, the problem is easily resolved: “the status of formula is … extended to cover uniquely occurring phrases which are of the same ‘type’ as proved formulas. The picture is thereby much improved”194. Commenting on the substitution systems used in his formula analysis, Parry observes: “the systems which were given to show the utility of repeated expressions in Homer were often made up of phrases found only once in the two poems”195. “Found only once”: this description applies in particular to the members of Lord’s various substitution systems. It seems incongruous that the ‘utility of repeated expressions’ for oral versemaking should be demonstrated by systems made up of unique expressions. Parry explains and justifies such incongruity by the argument from under-representation: One must never forget that the results of any analysis of this sort are conditioned by the hazard that has given us under the name of Homer not quite twenty-eight thousand verses. If we had a greater or smaller number, we should have underlined either more or fewer expressions when we analyzed the first verses of the Iliad and of the Odyssey. If we had even twice as much of Homer’s poetry as we have, the proportions between the repeated expressions, the closer types of formula, and more general types, would be much changed, and we should very often find that Homer was using a formula a second time where, as far as our evidence goes, he is only using a formula which is like another196.

Parry is thus arguing that these expressions are only seemingly unique and are in fact under-represented formulas. Just as the rich tradition of Hellenic oral epic singing is under-represented by the two Homeric poems, Hesiod’s works, and the fragments of the cyclic epics, so are many formulas by occurring only once. These unique expressions are then treated as formulas in disguise, as it were. Now, in view of over 27,000 extant Homeric verses, the talk of under-representation has provoked an amused Norman Austin’s ironic comment that it must be “the result of cataclysmic extinctions of epic hexameters”197. The ‘argument from under-representation’ amounts to an argument from silence. As Maurice Pope remarks in connection with the claimed under-representation of formulas: it is “tantamount to saying that, though the theory is not supported by the existing evidence, it would be 194 Hainsworth 1964: 155–6. 195 Parry 1971: 312–13 (emphasis added). 196 Parry 1971: 313. – This is how Martin West characterizes, with mild irony, the argument from under-representation: “… almost everything is formulaic; even something that occurs only once in Homer would very likely turn out to be formulaic if only we had all the hexameter poetry that ever existed” (West 2011: 50). 197 Austin 1975: 12.

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supported by new evidence if only it were to come to hand”198. Nevertheless, underrepresentation cannot be ruled out altogether, nor can the argument from silence, given the situation concerning evidence in Homeric studies. If specifically applied and with restraint, they may be legitimately assumed. Yet when invoked indiscriminately and applied across the board, whenever sufficient evidence is lacking, the arguments from under-representation and from silence create the impression of special pleading. Let us return to the substitution system of phrases sharing the vocative qeav as the common term – the prototype of such systems. We had studied it only in part and now view in its entirety199. Lord extends here Parry’s equation mh`nin a[eide qeav ~ gignwvskw se qeav: mh`nin a[eide (1x) gignwvskw se (1x) su;n soiv, di`a (1x) tw`n aJmovqen ge (1x) a[llo ti d;h; su; (1x) ajrgalevon se (1x) su;n soiv, povtna (1x) “Artemi, povtna (1x) ”Hrh, prevsba (4x)

} qeav

Eight of these nine phrases are unique expressions: by being arranged with the one proven formula ”Hrh, prevsba qeav into a substitution system, these unique expressions become instant formulas! These phrases at least share one common term (qeav). The substitution systems of the “analogical formulas” and “structural formulas” no longer require a common term. With their much laxer criteria they prove even more productive: “many new ‘formulae’ will be uncovered … if we tacitly change the sense of ‘formula’ from a repetition of words to a repetition of structure”200. It is such mass-proliferation of formulas that yields the 90+ percent formula density of Lord’s analysis of Il. 1. 1–15. What is at work here can perhaps be described as some sort of ‘oralist alchemy’ turning the base metal of unique expressions into the gold of formulas. We can now proceed to the verdict on the Parry-Lord analyses qua formula test. The eventual formular density of 90+ percent, predicated as it is on such an extremely diluted and in many cases voided notion of the formula, is surreptiously obtained. Or to put it differently in the words of a critical oralist: “the statement that the epics are nine-tenth formulae is likely to be vacuously, and so uselessly, true”201. Needless to say, but stated all the same: the Homeric epics have not passed the litmus test of orality as claimed by Lord on the basis of the Parry-Lord formula analyses. The following chart sums up the developments in Formular Theory from Parry to Nagler and highlights their general trend. 198 199 200 201

Pope 1985: 8. Lord 1960: 291. Hainsworth 1968: 16. Hainsworth 1964: 157 (emphasis added).

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b1. Chart: Development of Formular Theory NAME

EXAMPLES

REPEATED ELEMENTS

(1a) Schematized formula (Parry)

povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~ (60x)

Full content; syntax; parts of speech; metre; position in verse; frequent use; organization in system of ecoomy and scope

(1b) Mobile formula (Parry)

a[nax ajndrw`n (44x) in different metrical positions

Full content; syntax; parts of speech; metre; frequent use

(2a) Any repeated phrase (including mere repeats)

a[lge∆ e[qhke (2x)

Full content; syntax; parts of speech; metre; metrical position

(2b) single word in same metrical position

oujlomevnhn (4x at beginning of verse)

Full content; syntax; parts of speech; metre ; metrical position

(3a) formular expression (Parry)

ojlevkonto (1x) } de; laoiv ajretw`si (1x)

Partial content; syntax; parts of speech; metre; metrical position

(3b) formular pattern (Lord)

a[lge∆ {

(4a) analogical formula (Lord)

oijwnoi`siv te pa`si (1x) ~ ajntibivoi~ ejpevessin (1x)

Syntax; parts of speech; metre; metrical position

(4b) formula by analogy (Notopoulos)

gai`an e[cousin (1x) ~ ku`do~ o[pazen (1x)

Partial syntax; parts of speech; metre; metrical position

(5a) structural formula: word-group (Russo)

a[lge∆ e[dwke (3x) ~ ajndri; mavcesqai (1x) =N-+V+-+|

Parts of speech; metre; metrical position

(5b) structural formula: single word (Russo)

ejrcomenavwn (1x) ~ teiromevnoio (1x) ~ ejmbebaw`sa (1x) ktl. = ptc. - + + - + |

Parts of speech; metre; metrical position

(6)

A generative mechanism replacing repetition of content and structure

Gestalt/allomorph (Nagler)

e[pascon (1x) e[conta (1x)

Partial content; partial syntax; parts of speech; metre; metrical position

Seeing an able-bodied povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~ dwindle away to a skeleton-like A++ 5- + N+ 6--, one is momentarily reminded of Aristophanes’ Frogs: there Euripides forces a rigorous diet on the tragic diction bloated by Aischylos’ stylistic gourmandizing to make it useful again (Ran. 939 ff.). Yet what the Parryists do to the hapless formula of epic diction is far more drastic. They subject it to forced emaciation which passes into galloping consumption and issues in Nagler’s act of euthanasia: he has the formula breathe its last and enter the heaven of general linguistic structures and phonological corresponsions.

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Oralists, at any rate the Soft-Parryists among them, see this development in a less Aristophanic light. Rightly so, for the microphilology of the formula is no laughing matter. The purpose of its expansion is advertised as a dynamic conception of formularity that frees the oral bard from the shackles of an all-powerful tradition: it is to allow him creative freedom at the level of diction by handing him a generative mechanism for fashioning new formulas – lofty goals indeed. Yet the chart attests to something far less lofty. It reveals the progressive dilution and increasing vacuity of the concept of formula. With each stage in its expansion, the criteria for repetition and resemblance diminish further. What remains in the end is metrical sameness; and in Nagler’s conception, where resemblance is reduced to ‘phonemic corresponsion’, not even that. With the focus of formular theory shifting from the semantic to the structural, and then to the merely phonetic, it is quite consistent with the inherent trend in formular theory that in the end the formula should dissolve as an entity. c1. The Erosion of Oral Substance The uncontrolled expansion of the formula not only threatens the total ruin of Parryism’s formular theory, but obliterates also the principal difference between an oral and a written diction. To clinch the argument, let us turn to Parry’s contrasting comparisons of Homer with the pen-poets Apollonios and Vergil and their use of name-epithet phrases, e. g., ajrhvio~ ∆Ihvswn, h{rw~ Aijsonivdh~, pius Aeneas, pater Aeneas, Troius Aeneas, Aeneas heros, optimus armis Aeneas, fidus Achates etc. Parry succeeded in making a convincing case that there was a qualitative difference: the name-epithet phrases in the pen-poets lack the Homeric organization in systems of extension and economy202. But such difference in kind, in which resides the oral substance of the schematized formulas, dissolves into thin air when it comes to the substitution systems of formulaic expressions, and analogical as well as structural formulas. In his aptly titled essay “The Fallacy of the Structural Formula”, the Parryist William Minton has demonstrated that the metrical and grammatical placement of individual words and phrases – that is what the structural formula boils down to – is present in equal measure in both the Homeric epics and in Apollonios’ Argonautica: hence, “if Homer were to be adjudged an oral poet solely on the basis of these structural formulae, Apollonios would have to be placed at his side”203. In short, the “metrical-grammatical approach to the constitution and placement of word-groups and individual words” that make up the substitution systems of the ‘structural formula’ “cannot establish the oral character of a poem and should never be associated 202 Parry 1971: 24–36. For the Roman poet Parry emphasizes “the absence in Virgil of anything that might constitute a system of noun-epithet formulae” (33); “it would be impossible to establish, in terms of the noun-epithet formulae of Aeneas, a system characterised at once by great extension and great simplicity” (34). 203 Minton 1965: 245.

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with the terms ‘formula’ and ‘formulaic’”204. This is to say that the substitution patterns that create what is dubbed the “structural formulas” are not peculiar to oral poetry but common to Greek hexametric poetry in general. The fallacy of the structural formula erases the very qualitative difference between the Homeric and Apollonian dictions on which Parryism’s argument for the oral Homer turns. The same applies to Parry’s comparison of Homer with Vergil. Maurice Pope was the first to show the similarity of Homeric and Vergilian substitution patterns205: skh`ptron teu`ce∆ aijgivd∆ } e[cwn stevmmat∆ e{lko~

tela sceptra lora arma ipsa

} tenens

In fact, they are so common in Vergil that, in his commentary on the Aeneid, R. G. Austin has named them “Vergilian patterns”206. They are indistinguishable from the substitution patterns said by Parry and Lord to attest to oral composition, e. g.: ++ Adj2- ++ Adj3monstrum horrendum (IV.181) ulmus opaca (VI.283) porta adversa (VI 552) } ingens tectum angustum (VII.170) saxum antiquum (XII 697) N1-

Patterns of this kind abound in the Vergilian corpus of hexametric poetry. As to the ‘formulas’ of the analogical and structural varieties, it would be even easier to identify numerous ‘systems’ in Vergil, since here no common term is required. One only has to thumb through the first pages of the OCT Aeneid in order to see that they are legion. Taking avertere regem from Aen. I. 38, we can see how it forms an “analogical system” with expressions of the same metrical and syntactical pattern: inf.-pred.- 5- ++ dir. obj.6- submergere ponto exurere classem componere fluctus

Given the much laxer criteria for the ‘structural formula’, one could add to this analogical system imponet honorem, and in this way enlarge the ‘analogical system’ to a system of ‘structural formulas’: V-5- ++ 6N- imponet honorem submergere ponto exurere classem componere fluctus 204 Ibid. 205 Pope (1963) repr1979: 357. 206 R. G. Austin 1977: on Aen. VI. 283. – For similar formulaic patterns in other Latin hexametric poetry, see Goold 1965: 1–107 for Ovid; Conrad 1965: 195–258 for Roman epics from Ennius to Vergil; and Ingalls 1971: 228–236 for Lucretius (on the latter see below).

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

Here is another instance of Vergilian ‘analogical formulas’: pred. 5- ++ dir. obj. 6- conderet urbem ingeret Albam stringeret ensis navigat aequor temperat iras verteret arces

Take from it conderet urbem and combine it with condere gentem/volvere casus, and you obtain a system of “structural formulas”: conderet urbem condere gentem volvere casus

Add to this other phrases from the previous system, and observe its analogical formulas morph into structural formulas in this substitution system: V5-++ N6-conderet urbem condere gentem ingeret Albam stringeret ensis navigat aequor temperat iras verteret arces volvere casus

One could play this game endlessly. It shows how easy it is to demonstrate the presence of such bogus formulas in pen-poets like Vergil: every time one enlarges an analogical pattern to a structural pattern, one confers ‘formular status’ of this kind on ever more uniquely occurring phrases. To conclude, the substitution patterns and their inherent generative mechanisms in Homer are not peculiar to oral poetry. They are a general phenomenon of hexametric composition with a quantitative scanning, whether oral or written. In fact, substitution patterns and generative mechanisms are not even confined to hexametric poetry: they constitute the very way language works in general – be it oral or literate, prose or poetry. Lord himself hints at this in an odd way: “the method of language is like oral poetry, substitution in the framework of grammar”207. As a prisoner of oralism, Lord sees it through the oralist prism which has him reverse and confuse genus and species. It is, of course, the other way round: oral poetry’s substitution patterns are instances of the substitution patterns operative in natural languages. Had Lord correctly stated ‘oral poetry works like language in general, substitution in the framework of grammar’, it would have defeated his purpose. Substitution in the framework of grammar operates in prose no differently than it does in Homeric and Vergilian hexametric poetry, e. g.:

207 Lord 1960: 35 f.

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Oralists an idol of orality } make { Scripsists a fetish of literacy

The attempt to make the Homeric epics pass the litmus test of orality through the expansion of the formula has been worse than an exercise in futility. It has backfired and ruined Parryism’s formular theory. There can be no doubt that its culmination was Parry’s discovery of the oral formula in Homer. The culmination came at its outset. After that, it was downhill all the way. The tragedy of the rise and fall of the oral formula calls for some comic relief. A satyr-play is in order. It will take the form of a reductio ad absurdum. To clinch my argument that the expanded formula levels the difference between Homeric diction and the diction of written hexametric poetry, I offer a formula analysis of the Aeneid’s proem à la Parry and Lord. If this analysis should be perceived as an exercise in frivolity, I should apologize to the manes of Vergil. But it is not altogether frivolous. The frequent occurrence of formular substitution systems in Vergil resembling those in Homer justifies such an experiment. At any rate, mine would not be the first formula analysis of a Roman hexametric text. An accredited Parryist has already done such a formula analysis of a passage in Lucretius208. Its purpose is hard to fathom: surely, it was not to “extend the sovereignty of the great idol Orality” (Rosenmeyer209) to Lucretius – as Notopoulus and others had tried to extend it to the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod? One should assume that a successful formula analysis of a pen-poet’s text in the Parry-Lord manner would play into the hands of the critics of the Parry-School: it is something in the nature of scoring in one’s own net. Whatever the purpose may have been, it provides a welcome precedent. In the following formula analysis of Aen. I. 1–11, I shall restrict myself to the concepts of the formula and the formulaic used by Parry and Lord in their analyses. I shall mark both verbatim repetitions, corresponding to Parry’s and Lord’s full formulas, and word groups forming “Vergilian patterns” and corresponding to Parry’s and Lord’s formular substitution patterns. This approach excludes from my analysis the analogical and structural formula-types of Notopoulos and Russo210. A Formula Analysis of Aen. I. 1–11 in the Parry-Lord Manner Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris 1 3 2 4 Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit 5 7 6

208 Ingalls 1971: 228–236. 209 Rosenmeyer 1965: 302 on the attempts of claiming Hesiod, Callinus, Solon, and hexameter dedications for the corpus of oral poetry. 210 The numbers in the analysis refer to the apparatus that lists the supporting passages in the Vergilian corpus (to be found in the Appendix II at the end of the book): they are all found in the same metrical position as the phrases marked in the analysis; they are generally taken from the Aeneid, with the very few ones taken from the Georgics (=G) and Eclogues (=E).

84

The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas litora – multum ille et terris iactatus et alto 8 9 10 11 vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram, 12 13 14 15 16 multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem 17 18 19 20 inferretque deos Latio – genus unde Latinum 21 23 22 24 Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae. 25 26 27 Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso 28 29 30 quidve dolens regina deum tot volvere casus 31 32 33 insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores 34 35 36 impulerit. Tantaene animis caelestibus irae? 37 38 39

The solid and broken underlinings cover well above 90 percent of the analysed passage. Had I admitted the analogical formula and structural formula to this analysis – as Lord’s analysis occasionally does – the coverage could have been over one hundred percent, as my analysis would have shown many more of Lord’s double and triple underlinings. The result is rather bizarre: an analysis using the criteria of Soft-Parryist Formular Theory produces the same formular density in the diction of the pen-poet Vergil as the Parry-Lord analyses in the diction of their oral Homer. Given how easily and quickly Parryists equate a high degree of this kind of formularity with orality, we should now conclude – but perish the preposterous thought! Yet we can say what Minton has said about Apollonios with regard to the structural formulas: if Homer were to be adjudged an oral poet solely on the basis of the results of the Parry-Lord formular analyses, Vergil would have to be placed at his side211. To conclude this sad tale: the frequent occurrence of generative substitution patterns in both the Homeric and Vergilian diction, and the ease with which one can demonstrate an equal formular density in both poets by the Parry-Lord method, brings to mind K. Meister’s notion of epic Kunstsprache, epitomized in K. Witte’s

211 Cp. Minton 1965: 245 (above note 203).

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dictum that “the language of the Homeric epics is the creation of the epic verse”212. In other words, it is the shaping power of the hexameter that produces with considerable frequency in all ancient hexametric poetry such structures which oralists dub formulas by analogy213. In this respect our experiment is only in part a reductio ad absurdum. For we can draw a constructive conclusion from it: the features of the Homeric diction, marked by the broken lines as formulaic and having an analogy in the Vergilian diction, are better explained in terms of the exigencies of the hexameter (Witte) rather than in terms of the exigencies of oral composition in performance (Parry). The oralist explanation could even be said to lead us astray: it would force us to draw from the formula analysis of Aen. I. 1–11 the patently absurd conclusion of Vergil’s orality. Occurring as they do in hexametric poetry, both oral and written, the substitution patterns and the analogical/structural ‘formulas’ represent prosodic structures, occasioned by the constraints imposed on versification with a quantitative metre that is difficult, demanding, and complex at all times and in all genres in which it is in use. One should therefore cease declaring them formulas and treat them instead as prosodic regularities, inherent in the ancient hexameter as such, whether oral or written. The quantitative proofs of Homer’s orality so far offered are, to apply Hainsworth’s harsh verdict, vacuous. Thus Homer’s text has failed the formula test of orality. Yet this failure does not prove it necessarily as a literate text. It is therefore preferable at this point to call the outcome inconclusive. To this inconclusiveness I shall return later. The harshest critique of the progressive dilution and increasing vacuity of the concept of formula has come from the Parryist camp214. This critique has given rise to alternative approaches. Their general tenor is, on the one hand, to focus on the repetition of matter rather than of structure; on the other, to play down the importance of the fixed formula, going occasionally to the extreme of even questioning its existence. c. ATTEMPTED REMEDIES: ALTERNATIVE NEW APPROACHES Phraseological Analysis – John Foley concedes that the formula test, in its past and current practiced forms, cannot prove oral provenance for the Homeric epics215; and that unlike the Yugoslav texts collected by Parry and Lord, which are “unambiguously oral texts”, the Homeric epics are of “finally uncertain provenance that 212 Witte 1913: col. 2214: “Die Sprache der homerischen Gedichte ist eine Schöpfung des epischen Verses”. 213 Parry had accepted Witte’s dictum with the proviso that it was ultimately the exigencies of oral versification that gave the hexameter this shaping power over the diction. Yet Parry’s proviso would apply only to the schematized formulas. 214 First and foremost, as noted, from Hainsworth, Minton, and Finkelberg; also from Bakker (see below). 215 Foley 1990: 4.

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nonetheless show oral traditional characteristics”. Hence his already quoted characterization of the Homeric epics as “oral-derived texts”216. Despite his skepticism, he continues formular testing, though in a new key. For ascertaining the formular density of the Homeric texts, Foley tries a novel approach: “phraseological analysis”. In contrast to ‘formula analysis’, it works with the hemistich instead of the formula as the analytical unit. Accordingly, he measures the formular density of a text not by the percentages of formulas and formulaic expressions, as Parry and Lord did, but by the percentages of formular hemistichs and full verses. A hemistich is judged to be formular when repeated once verbatim in the same epic. Let us have a closer look at what repetition means in Foley’s phraseological analysis of Od. 5. 424–444.: ei|o~ oJ tau`qæ w{rmaine kata; frevna kai; kata; qumovn tovfra dev min mevga ku`ma fevren trhcei`an ejpæ ajkthvn. e[nqa kæ ajpo; rJinou;~ druvfqh, su;n dæ ojstevæ ajravcqh, eij mh; ejpi; fresi; qh`ke qea; glaukw`pi~ ∆Aqhvnh: ajmfotevrh/si de; cersi;n ejpessuvmeno~ lavbe pevtrh~, th`~ e[ceto stenavcwn, ei|o~ mevga ku`ma parh`lqe. kai; to; me;n w}~ uJpavluxe, palirrovqion dev min au\ti~ plh`xen ejpessuvmenon, thlou` dev min e[mbale povntw/. wJ~ dæ o{te pouluvpodo~ qalavmh~ ejxelkomevnoio pro;~ kotulhdonovfin pukinai; lavi>gge~ e[contai, w}~ tou` pro;~ pevtrh/si qraseiavwn ajpo; ceirw`n rJinoi; ajpevdrufqen: to;n de; mevga ku`ma kavluyen. e[nqa ke dh; duvsthno~ uJpe;r movron w[letæ ∆Odusseuv~, eij mh; ejpifrosuvnhn dw`ke glaukw`pi~ ∆Aqhvnh: kuvmato~ ejxanaduv~, tav tæ ejreuvgetai h[peirovnde, nh`ce parevx, ej~ gai`an oJrwvmeno~, ei[ pou ejfeuvroi hji>ovna~ te paraplh`ga~ limevna~ te qalavssh~. ajllæ o{te dh; potamoi`o kata; stovma kallirovoio i|xe nevwn, th`/dhv oiJ ejeivsato cw`ro~ a[risto~, lei`o~ petravwn, kai; ejpi; skevpa~ h\n ajnevmoio: e[gnw de; prorevonta kai; eu[xato o}n kata; qumovn: …

430

440

To begin with, it comes as a surprise to learn that this passage has a formular density of 81 percent at the level of hemistichs and of 19 percent at the level of the full verse217. It is not clear what this calculation means for the overall formulaic density. One hundred percent? Hardly: after all, six hemistichs and one full verse in Foley’s analysed passage have no underlining and must therefore be judged formula-free. Be that as it may – what is problematical here are the method and criteria by which these hemistichs and verses are declared to be formular. It is striking that almost half of the underlinings mark single words. Upon closer examination, it 216 Foley 1990: 5: “a manuscript … of finally uncertain provenance that nonetheless show[s] oral traditional characteristics”. See also his entry “Oral-Derived Text” in Finkelberg 2011 (Foley 2011: 603). In Foley 1991: 6 n.12, he speaks of “transitional or oral-derived texts”. ‘Oral-derived text’ is akin, as we have seen, to Russo’s characterization of Homer’s diction as a “traditional, orally-evolved style” (Russo 1966: 234; Russo 1976: 33–4; emphasis added). As I have already indicated, the terms ‘oral-derived’ and ‘orally-evolved’ point in the direction of postorality. 217 See Table 18 “Formulaic Density Statistics for Odyssey 5. 424–44”: Foley 1990: 143.

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turns out that it is sufficient for a hemistich to attain formular status on the strength of sharing merely one word in the same metrical position with a hemistich in another verse: it then counts as “verbatim repeated”. Thus palirrovqion dev min au\ti~ at Od. 5. 430 is formulaic by virtue of sharing palirrovqion in the same position with a second hemistich palirrovqion fevre ku`ma at Od. 9. 485. The two hemistichs share metre and this one word, but differ basically in both syntactical structure and meaning. Describing therefore the relation between both hemistichs as ‘verbatim repetition’ certainly stretches the term. The same applies to the other 13 hemistichs made formulaic by virtue of sharing a single word with one or several other hemistichs. It is by such generous granting of formular status to half-verses that Foley’s phraseological analysis arrives at a formulaic density of over eighty percent at the level of hemistichs in this passage. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: the same oralist alchemy, but with different means, seems to be at work here that we have found working in the Parry-Lord substitution systems of the formulaic expression218. This is hardly a remedy for the malaise of Parryism’s Formular Theory. The Flexible Formula – Countering the formula-hunters’ inflationary notion of the formula, Bryan Hainsworth introduced, with reference to Arie Hoekstra’s work on the matter219, the concept of the “flexible formula”. The simplest instance of formular flexibility is the mobile formula, found in more than one position in the verse, e. g., a[nax ajndrw`n (occurring at both + 3- - 4- and + 4- - 5-) or ajntiqew`/ ∆Odush`i> (found at both the opening and closing of the verse). With the mobile formula, the metrical and grammatical shape remains intact. Yet flexibility in Hainsworth’s model goes much further and extends to metrics, grammar, and syntax. He rightly insists that “the essence of a formula is repetition”, and that “in literature, as opposed to the sciences, the repetition is normally of the matter and not of its arrangement”220. Consequently he defines the formula as a “repeated wordgroup”, in which “the use of one word create[s] a strong presumption that the other would follow”221. Unlike Parry’s schematized formula, Hainsworth’s oral formula, being flexible by definition, does not require verbatim repetition. Defined as ‘repeated word-group’, it excludes from the definition single words in fixed metrical position. With the flexible formula it is the semantic core – the repeated content – that is the constant, while the formal-structural elements of repetition – metrical shape and position, grammar, syntax – become the variables. For instance, a high degree of mutual expectation exists between nhu`~ and melaivnh222. The hypothetical 218 In a footnote Foley states that his “analysis has as its goal only a diagnostic examination of formulaic theory”, and is not to be taken as “a determination of orality on the basis of formulaic density”; cf. Foley 1990: 140, note 23. 219 Hoekstra 11964, 21969. 220 Hainsworth 1968: 35 221 Hainsworth 1968: 36. 222 However, melainavwn/melainw`n also creates a perhaps less strong supposition that ojdunavwn should follow (3x); and forms of mevla~ combine frequently with other nouns such as nuvx, khvr, gai`a etc.

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word-group *nhu`~ melaivnh occurs in the Homeric epic in a series of variations forming an extensive system: melainavwn ejpi; nhw`n (+ 4- + + 5- + + 6- -) melainavwn ajpo; nhw`n (+ 4- + + 5- + + 6- -) ajpo; nhw`n u{yi melainavwn (++ 2- + + 3- + + 4- + + 5-) nhi`; melaivnh/(5- + + 6--) ejn nhi? melaivnh/(- 5- + + 6- -) su;n nhi? melaivnh/(- 5- + + 6- -) para; nhi? melaivnh/(+ + 5- + + 6- -) nh`a mevlainan (5- + + 6- -) ajna; nh`a mevlainan ejpi; nh`a mevlainan peri; nh`a mevlainan

} (+ + 5- + + 6- -)

nh`a + - + mevlainan (1- + … + 3- +) nh`o~ ejussevlmoio melaivnh~ (3- + + 4- + + 5- + + 6- -) nh`o~ ejeikosovroio melaivnh~ (3- + + 4- + + 5- + + 6- -) ejpi; nh`o~ ejussevlmoio melaivnh~ (+ + 3- + + 4- + + 5- + + 6- -) megakhvtei nhi; melaivnh/(+ + 4- + + 5- + + 6- -) ktl.

This series runs almost the whole range of possible variations. Such variability is predicated on Hainsworth’s principal act of liberation that freed the formula from Parry’s ‘metrical conditions’: once the formula had thrown off this yoke, it could, qua flexible formula, roam the hexameter in its numerous variations (e. g. megakhvtei nhi; melaivnh/: Il. 8. 222; 11. 5)223. These modifications can also occur in combination: expansion + declension + inversion as in melainavwn ajpo; nhw`n. Hainsworth’s reasoning on Homeric versification allows flexibility and schematization, flexible formula and schematized formula, to coexist. The systems of the fixed schematized formulas represent the tradition and must be regarded as preHomeric in origin, while the flexible formula is Homeric. Their coexistence is apparently a felicitous union of innovation and creativity on the one hand (flexibility), and of tradition and convention on the other (schematization). But the union does not seem to be an altogether happy one. Parry’s schematized formulas begin to be seen in a negative light, when Hainsworth decribes them as the “consequence of ossification of more flexible systems at points of frequent use”224. Yet on the whole, the theory of the flexible formula is an attractive one as it provides a much more adequate description of Homeric versification than the Parry-Lord theory. Above all, it is a welcome antidote to the uninhibited expansion of the category of formula that robs it of content and meaning. 223 Hainsworth 1968: 84: possibly nhi; melaivnh/was first expanded to megakhvtei> nhi; melaivnh/, and then contracted to megakhvtei> nhiv. 224 Hainsworth 1968: 113 (emphasis added).

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Yet rendering all structural elements variables lands the flexible formula in the opposite extreme – that of boundless variability. Its flexibility is predicated on the cancellation of an essential oral element: the intimate tie of formula and metre, the very starting point of Oral Theory. It goes against the central tenet of Parryism: in rapid versification during performance “the formula is useful only so far as it can be used without changing its metrical value”225. Hence the question: is this concept of formula still within the realm of orality and Oral Theory? There are two considerations that militate against its oral nature. In discussing the fusion of formulas, occurring often in combination with separation, inversion, declination, and enjambment, Carolyn Higbie makes an interesting point: flexibility undermines or even destroys the identity of a formula. The numerous possible variations, especially when used in combination, can change it beyond recognition. More than that: “a flexible formula carries in itself the seed of its own destruction”226. It tends to dissolve, as its component terms become entities in their own right. Might it therefore not be more reasonable in cases of Homeric wordgroups, designated as flexible formulas and subjected to multiple modifications and variations, to speak of composition by individual word rather than by formula? This description is strongly suggested by the frequent occurrence of the phenomenon dubbed ‘flexible formula’ in written composition. Here Hainsworth himself, unawares, provides a clue. When he combatted the “vice of the structural formula”, arguing that “with a concept such as this we can find ‘formulae’ in Ovid and Virgil as easily as they have been found in Hesiod or the Hymns”, he cited in support George Goold’s article “Amatoria Critica”227. Goold has identified recurrent patterns in the Ovidian hexameter exactly like the ‘structural formulas’ uncovered in Homer (and in Apollonios). Yet Goold’s piece delivered more than Hainsworth had bargained for; for Goold has also uncovered in the pen-poet Ovid groups of various phrases expressing the same idea, which exhibit an undeniable resemblance to the flexible formulas of Hainsworth’s oral Homer. In fact, the two are indistinguishable from one another. Take Goold’s prime example, the variations of the idea ‘to roam in the fields’, errare per agros/in agris (0)228: (0) errare per agros/in agris: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) 225 226 227 228

per agros / errasse (Met. 7. 534 f.) solis errabat in agris (Ars 2. 473) suis erravit in agris (Met. 2. 490) mediis erravit in arvis (Met. 15. 100) arva pererrat (Met. 12. 209) arva pererrantur (Am. 2. 165) errat qui maximus agris (Met. 3. 714) Latios errat vesana per agros (Met. 14. 422) errandum lato spatiantibus arvo (Met. 4. 87) erratis laeti vescuntur in agris (Fast. 3. 655) latosque vagata per agros (Met. 10. 477)

Parry 1971: 274. Higbie 1990: 167–68. Hainsworth 1969: 20; Goold 1965. Goold 1965: 24. The numbering and arrangement are mine.

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This list exemplifies the various modifications of Hainsworth’s flexible formula. The pen-poet exploits them up to the hilt. To begin with, the word errare can be said to ‘create a strong presumption’ that the word ager in some form will follow. The word-group then occurs with all the possible variations Hainsworth postulates for the flexibility of the formula: mobility within the verse; inflection; inversion of word-order; expansion; splitting and separation of key terms; the replacement of terms by synonyms; and syntactical adaptation to different contexts; even possible fusion with another word-group. Thus, when Hainsworth argues against the ‘vice of the structural formula’ that with such a concept one “can find ‘formulae’ in Ovid and Virgil as easily as they have been found in Hesiod or the Hymns”, then this statement applies with equal force to his own flexible formula. Take, for instance, a word-group expressing one of the Aeneid’s main themes, bellum gerere (0). Its many variations are those of an Hainsworthian flexible formula: (0) bellum gerere (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

bella gero (Aen. 1. 48) bella geram (Aen. 9. 279) bellum ingens geret (Aen. 1. 263) quis bella gerenda …? (Aen. 7. 444) bellum cum gente gerendum (Aen. 3. 235) bellum cum gente gero (Aen. 11. 113) bella manu letumque gero (Aen. 7. 455) bella viri pacemque gerent (Aen. 7. 444)

Flexible formulas abound in the proem of the Aeneid: (0) arma canere

(1) arma virumque cano (Aen. 1. 1) (2) arma virum pugnasque canebat (Aen. 9. 777)

(0) Lavinia terra

(1) Laviniaque …/litora (Aen. 1. 2–3) (2) Lavinia … arva (Aen. 4. 236)

(0) iactari undis (1) (2) (3) (4)

iactati undis (Aen. 1. 442) ignotis iactetur in undis (Aen. 10. 48) iactatos aequore toto (Aen. 1. 29) terris iactatus et alto (Aen. 1. 3)

(0) vis divina

(1) caelestum vis magna (Aen. 7. 432) (2) Parcarumque dies et vis inimica (Aen. 12. 150) (3) vi superum (Aen. 1. 4)

(0) saeva Iuno (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

saevae memorem Iunonis (Aen. 1. 4) saevae nutu Iunonis (Aen. 7. 592) atrox Iuno (Aen.1. 662) aspera Iuno (Aen. 4. 526) Iunonis acerbae (Aen. 1. 668)

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(0) ira divina (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

ira deorum (Aen. 11. 443) ira deum (Aen. 3. 215; 11. 233) ira magna deum (Aen. 5. 706) ira concessere deum (Aen. 8. 40) Iunonis ob iram (Aen. 1. 4) Iunonis et irae (Aen.1. 130) Iunonis gravis ira (Aen. 5. 781) Tantaene animis caelestibus irae? (Aen. 1. 11) numinis irae (Georg. 4. 453)

(0) bello pati

(1) multa … bello passus (Aen. 1. 5) (2) pugnando vulnera passi (Aen. 6. 660) (3) Martia … pugnando vulnera passi (Aen. 7. 182)

(0) condere Romam

(1) dum conderet urbem (Aen. 1. 5) (2) Romanam condere gentem (Aen. 1. 33) (3) Mavortia condet/moenia (Aen. 1. 276–7)

(0) numen laesum

(1) quo numine laeso (Aen. 1. 8) (2) pro numine laeso (Aen. 2. 183)

(0 regina deorum

(1) regina deum (Aen.1. 9; 7. 620) (2) divom incedo regina (Aen. 1. 46)

(0) insignis pietate vir (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

insignem pietate virum (Aen. 1. 10) pietate insignis et armis (Aen. 6. 403) ambo insignes praestantibus armis hic pietate prior (Aen. 11. 291 f.) pietate gravem ac meritis … virum (Aen. 1. 151) pariter pietate vel armis/egregius (Aen. 6. 769 f.)

(0) ferre labores (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

tantos … ferre labores (Aen. 12. 635) tantos perferre labores (Aen. 12. 177) duros mille labores / …… / pertulerit (Aen. 8. 291–3) tot adire labores (Aen. 1. 10) quantos primus patiare labores (Aen. 12. 33) tantos … superare labores (Aen. 3. 368)

Where does this analysis leave us? The long and the short of it is that Hainsworth’s flexible formula, undoubtedly being the most productive innovation in oral theory since Parry’s discovery of the schematized formula, is not peculiar to oral composition. Rather, it is inherent, just like the ‘structural formula’, in the expression of Greek and Latin in hexameter form229.

229 This statement is a deliberate echo of Hainsworth’s words on the structural formula: structures that “seem to be inherent in the expression of Greek in hexameter form” (Hainsworth 1969: 20.

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Severing the intimate tie of formula and metre has Hainsworth surrender – in the name of flexibility and creativity – all structural features to the play of variation. Variation, however, is a concern of the pen-poet rather than of the oral singer. Being thereby emancipated from the rigid metrical conditions of oral diction, the formula qua flexible formula tends to cease being a formula and to dissolve into individual words, which the poet manipulates according to his poetic designs230. It seems to belong to a diction, which, transcending its origins in oral song, is ultimately situated beyond orality – in postorality, if I may dare to say so. The Nucleus-Periphery Model of Homeric Versification – As a remedy for what they call the “deadlock” and “stand-still in oral-poetry research” (for which read “formular theory”), E. Bakker, F. Fabbricotti, and E. Visser231 have proposed an approach to Homeric verse-making that differs radically from the Parry-Lord approach. They view – rightly so – the endless expansion of the formula as “ruinous for a sound differentiation of oral versification from written versification”232. The tenor of their approach goes against Parry’s tenet that the oral singer thinks and operates in terms of word-groups, the formulas, rather than individual words233. What appears to be a given fixed formula, an indissoluble unit, consists, they hold, in fact of two distinct components, with distinct functions, one semantic, the other metrical: e. g., in the “so-called formula” wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~, the name forms the “semantic nucleus” and “determinant”, and the epithet forms the “peripheral element” that is reacting to the determinant by extending it to adapt it to a given metrical condition. They only combine in the very act of versification: this analysis is the core of their model. It is argued that Parry himself had once embraced this generative conception of the formula when he wrote in his Paris dissertation that “the poet creates the noun-epithet formula of the desired measure by adding x syllables of the epithet to the predetermined syllables of the substantive”234. The salient point here, it is maintained, is that Parry has the seemingly pre-existing fixed formula actually originate in the versifying process (“the poet creates the formula”); and thus views it not as its starting-point but as its result. In his later reasoning on oral versification Parry is said to have adopted the conception of the formula as a given indissoluble unit, causing thereby a “serious illogicality” in his oral theory235. Instead of manipulating inherited ready-made formulas such as wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~ for expressing the essential idea ‘Achilleus’nom under different metrical conditions, the poet works, according to this new approach, with the nucleus of a given metrical shape, ∆Acilleuv~/ ∆Acileuv~ (+ - - / + + -), and a list of peripheral elements, a ‘menu’236 230 Cp. Shive 1987: 138: “the flexible formula is evidently better suited to premeditation”. 231 Bakker-Fabbricotti 1991: 63; Visser 1988: 27 f. 232 Bakker-Fabbricotti 1991: 63. 233 Visser 1988: 34: “Principally, Homer must be interpreted exactly in the same way as any other poet: he obviously thought in categories of single words and not in formulaic word blocks.” 234 Parry 1971: 84. 235 Visser 1988: 25–6; 21. 236 Riggsby 1992a: 51: A. M. Riggsby has enthusiastically characterized – aptly, as it seems to me – this versification-technique as a “menu-driven process”: instead of drawing on systems of

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of epithets of different metrical-prosodical shapes such as di`o~, wjkuv~, podwvkh~, povda~ wjkuv~, dai?frwn, megavqumo~, a[grio~ ktl. From this menu, he selects one to add to the nucleus to adapt it to a given prosodic condition. Selecting the peripheral material chiefly for metrical reasons does not exclude semantic considerations; yet the metrical function has always priority. In order to explain why certain nouns (as nuclei and determinants) occur frequently combined with certain epithets as their reacting peripheral elements, Visser introduced the notion of “traditionally given lexical solidarity”, which is said to obtain between name and epithet, nucleus and peripheral material237 – e. g., between poluvmhti~ and Odysseus, between povda~ wjkuv~ and Achilleus, or between pteroventa and e[pea. The false impression of the existence of ready-made fixed formulas originates in misunderstanding such lexical solidarity. And so Visser decrees: “the generally accepted idea of the formula as a fixed unit has to be abandoned”238. In short, tradition-based lexical solidarity of nucleus plus peripheral element replaces the pre-existent ready-made formula. The nomenclature of this approach to Homeric composition is derived from linguistic theories of the cognitive production and communication in ordinary speech. Homeric versemaking is thus primarily understood in terms of ordinaryspeech theory: communication of information within an hexametrical frame. The dissolution of the formula into its components and the restitution of the distinction of their respective semantic and metrical functions are then applied to the larger unit, the verse. Killing scenes of the type ‘X killed Y’, which for the most part consist of one verse, occasionally two, serve for a reconstruction of what is advertised as Homer’s improvisatory technique of versification. How does Homer communicate the information at Il. 6. 32 ‘Antilochos killed Ableros’? He begins by setting down the line’s nucleus ∆Antivloco~ “Ablhron, the subject and object, the slayer and slain, thereby determining the semantic and metrical structure of the scene. All the other elements of the verse form the peripheral material that reacts to the nucleus: the predicate ejnhvrato reacts semantically and syntactically by completing the sentence and meaning, and metrically by extending the nucleus prosodically up to the bucolic diaeresis (∆Antivloco~ “Ablhron ejnhvrato - ++ --); the particle dev reacts prosodically through elision and positional lengthening, while connecting the verse with the previous one (∆Antivloco~ d∆ “Ablhron ejnhvrato - ++ -- -++ -++) and a decorative peripheral element in the form of a so-called formula (douri; faeivnw/-++ --|), whose components, though semantically unnecessary yet metrically needed, completes the verse: ∆Antivloco~ d∆ “Ablhron ejnhvrato douri; faeivnw/.

ready-made formulas, the oral poet has at his disposal standardized lists of nuclear and peripheral material comparable to the menus in computer programmes. During versification the poet drags down the suitable menus on the screen of his mind, selects and combines what he needs to communicate his intended information in hexametric form. In view of the rich vocabulary of the Homeric epics, such menus would have to be legion and would require a computer-like memory on the part of the poet. 237 Visser 1987: 7–10. 238 Visser 1988: 27.

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The genesis of the verse, thus described, is said to represent the Homeric versification technique in a nutshell: first the determinant/nucleus setting the syntactical and metrical structure of the verse, followed by a series of hierarchically ordered reactions of metrically variable peripheral elements to the nucleus. Thus the epithet faeivnw/ is peripheral to, and reacts to, its nucleus douriv; douriv, in turn, is peripheral to its nucleus ejnhvrato; ejnhvrato, in its turn, is peripheral to, and reacts to, the main nucleus of the verse, the subject and object of the act of killing. “Peripherality” is thus a “recursive affair”, attesting to the “hierarchical, recursive organization of the Homeric diction”. An “all-pervasive feature of the Homeric diction”, it “manifests itself in many ways”239. Peripheral elements, metrically crucial, are semantically neutral, since their presence or absence makes no difference for the communication of the intended information: This is the logical consequence of the notion of peripherality: a peripheral element is peripheral precisely because it may be absent without more ado. And when it is present it serves primarily a verse-technical, rather than a semantic role240.

That does not imply that peripheral elements are meaningless, but if there is a semantic ingredient, the meaning of peripheral elements is “intrinsically ‘innocuous’”: “If its presence or absence would matter in any way, the element in question would cease to be a useful peripheral element”241. Semantically innocuous, yet metrically useful and functional: this approach is not very much different from the Hard-Parryist doctrine of the semantic insignificance, yet metrical utility of the ornamental epithets. The Nucleus-Periphery conception of Homeric versification is problematical in almost every respect. Homeric composition undoubtedly works with the individual word as its basic unit – here one can agree. Yet his narrative technique operated with fixed formulas as well (and how these two facts are related to one another – the truly relevant question – will be discussed in a later section242). In view of so numerous and so frequently repeated word-groups such as poluvmhti~ ∆Odusseuv~ (81x), nh`a qwhvn (24x) or e[pea pteroventa (115x) – how can one possibly deny the existence of fixed formulas in Homer? Such denial is especially hard to understand given their proven organization in systems of extension and economy – their schematized form – which initiated the Theory of the Oral Homer in the first place. The assertion that these word-groups are created anew each time they occur, is too bizarre to require refutation. The alleged “serious illogicality” in Parry’s formular theory, invoked to back up the denial of the fixed formula, does not exist. A formula does not fall readymade from the sky: it evolves from an ad hoc formed word-group into a fixed expression. When Parry states: “the poet creates the noun-epithet formula of the desired measure by adding the x syllables of the epithet to the predetermined syllables of the substantive”, he views the formula diachronically. The thereby created wordgroup, once crystallized through regular and frequent use into a fixed unit, then 239 240 241 242

Bakker-Fabbricotti 1991: 69; 83 n. 25; 64. Bakker-Fabbricotti 1991: 67. Bakker-Fabbricotti 1991: 67–68. See below on formulary artistry.

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functions, organized with other such fixed units (or formulas) in a system of extension and economy, as a schematized formula. This is the synchronic view. To decry paying due regard to the diachronic and the synchronic aspects of the matter as a “serious illogicality” shows a serious misconception of Parry’s reasoning on the genesis and systematization of formulas. Si tacuisses … Most difficult to understand is how a technique distilled from an analysis of about 60 short killing scenes, consisting of one or two verses, should represent the Homeric versification technique in general. As to meaning and structure, these verses are of an utmost plainness and simplicity, as is the versification technique they exemplify. For slightly more complex scenes, in which the killing act extends over four verses, this allegedly general Homeric versification technique no longer applies, as Margalit Finkelberg has shown for Il. 17. 346–9243. Visser has prudently excluded the similes, in which, as he rightly says, it is not possible to demonstrate this technique244. He might as well have excluded the numerous speeches, which make up one half of all Homeric verses. Their often hypotactic syntax and frequent periodic enjambment would make inapplicable the nucleus-periphery technique, predicated as it is on the falsely assumed prevalence and pervasiveness of parataxis and unperiodic enjambment in Homer. Yet the principal fallacy of using the nucleus-periphery conception for describing and defining Homeric versification is the application of its underlying linguistic theory of ordinary speech. It is quite inappropriate to poetry, and most so to Homeric discourse. Elsewhere Bakker writes: “Homeric discourse is stylistically and metrically a stylization of the cognitive production of ordinary speech”245. This labelling of Homer’s alleged “cognitive production of ordinary speech” as stylized is obviously an attempt to do justice to the highly elaborate poetic Kunstsprache of the Homeric epic. Yet how do ordinary speech and poetic-metrical stylization go together? ‘Poetically and metrically stylized ordinary speech’ is an obvious contradiction in terms. Homeric poetry, defined as communication of information conveyed in hexametric form, must be, in the perspective of ordinary-speech linguistics, a particularly poor form of communication due to its alleged all-pervasive yet semantically innocuous peripherality – its need for numerous innocuous verse-fillers for adapting the nuclear information to the hexameter frame. It is a rather impoverished view of Homeric versification246. 243 Finkelberg 2004: 242. 244 Visser 1987: 34. 245 Bakker 1993: 3. 246 Regrettably, the views of Visser und Bakker figure prominently in Joachim Latacz’s contribution “Formelhaftigkeit und Mündlichkeit” to the Prolegomena of the Ilias-Gesamtkommentar – there, as the title “Von Parry bis Visser” suggests, especially the latter’s views seem to be seen as the culmination in the theory of improvising hexametric poetry (Latacz 2000: 54–57). It is rather puzzling why Latacz and Visser, who both assume a writing Homer, feel the need to construe for the literate poet a technique of improvising hexameters. – With Bakker, it is a quite different matter: he is a radical oralist for whom all those Parryists, still believing in the existence of the Homeric sentence, have not yet reached the height of a fully-fledged oralism (see below pp. 121–23).

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d. CONCLUSION. THE MALAISE OF PARRYIST FORMULAR THEORY The microphilology of the formula had developed its own dynamic. The incessant hunt for ever more formulas became a process that was feeding on itself. To decree as Parryism does that Homeric diction is inherently formular while failing to come up with a valid, meaningful, and binding definition of the central term should be an embarrassment to Parryists. But only for a few of them: the diffuse mass of incompatible conceptions of the formula is on occasion even celebrated as Parryism’s splendid enrichment through differentiation, when it rather resembles a scandal in scholarship. The attempted remedies of the alternative new approaches could not alter the fact that Parryist formular theory has come to an impasse. What is happening in all this theorizing to Parry’s great discovery – the truly oral schematized formulas? It is a sad tale swiftly told. Their fate in Soft-Parryist formular theory is not a happy one. Fixed as they are in content and metrical shape, they are held in low esteem in the heady theorizing that prizes flexibility and denigrates fixity. Once at Parryism’s centre as the very cause and reason for connecting Homer with the oral tradition, they have been relegated to the margins of Oral Theory. This pioneering elite, this old and rugged aristocracy among the formulas, is not only forced to cede centre-stage to those parvenus with their fancy names that parade their fashionable flexibility and flaunt their descent from generative substitution patterns – they also have to submit to ignominious vilification. Besides being viewed as a “consequence of ossification of more flexible systems”247, they are said to attest to the “repellent rigidity” of Parry’s first model248. Even worse, they are denounced as “mummified cadavers”249. Yet occasionally they have their use as show-pieces in oralist rhetoric. A vestige of their old glamour is still discernible when they are trotted out in defence of the Oral Theory of Homer: Parryists then invoke the schematized formulas as the unassailable evidence of oral composition in Homer’s diction, explicable, as they are, only in terms of oral versification and thus the hallmark of orality. This evidence was indeed, as we have seen, the powerful argument for connecting the Homeric epic with oral poetry in the first place: the schematization of the noun-epithet formulas served as the necessary premiss for the Parryist conclusion of the oral Homer. Marginalizing it by denigrating it as ossification or mummification amounts to removing the necessary premiss and at the same time retaining its conclusion – a logically untenable procedure that could turn the temporary malaise into the final ruin of Parryism’s formular theory.

247 Hainsworth 1968: 113; origin of this tendency: Lord 1960: 35 ff.; see also Edwards (A. T.) 1988: 27 ff. for a lucid decription of this development. 248 Hainsworth writes, referring to Lord’s substitution patterns: “the principal gain, it is supposed, is that an ingenious suppleness replaces the repellent rigidity of Parry’s first model” (Hainsworth 1968: 18). There seems to be a distancing ironic ring to it. Yet Hainsworth’s own concept of the flexible formula is to achieve the same. The talk of repellent rigidity (along with that of ossification) reflects Soft Parryism’s general view on the matter. 249 Edwards (A. T.) 1988: 29.

5. THE TESTS OF ORALITY RESUMED – THE FORMULA TEST a. A REVISED CONCEPT OF THE FORMULA After the near fiasco of formular theory, the resumption of the formula test of orality requires a reasonable and practicable conception of the formula – one that enables formular analyses to arrive at meaningful results instead of surreptiously obtained formular densities of 90+ percent. It has to be founded upon the very substance of formularity: repetition of both content and structure. – The way to go about this is to start with Parry’s classical definition of the formula as a “regularly employed word-group to express a given idea under given metrical conditions”. Yet it does need widening. Such widening must be controlled by precise criteria. Parry’s definition connotes, as we have seen, (1) metrical fixity in shape and verse-location, as well (2) schematization, requiring the formula’s membership in a system of extension and economy. For a wider concept, these two criteria have to be relaxed. A simple and uncontroversial first step is the inclusion of the mobile formulas such as a[nax ajndrw`n, nh`a mevlainan, klevo~ ejsqlovn, ajntiqew/` ∆Odush`i ktl, all occurring in more than one location in the verse. – Included, too, should be the straight or plain formulas with no manifest membership in extensive and economic systems. Take the idea of ‘prowess’gen, expressed by the two formulas qouvrido~ ajlkh`~ (21x) and ajlkh`~ kai; sqevneo~ (3x). They were possibly once part of a system, which by Homer’s time has shrunk to minimal or near zero-extension, with economy observed in the simple sense that there are no metrical doublets. There would not be much point in speaking in such cases of schematized systems. In general, every word-group expressing an essential idea and being repeated verbatim at least twice, i. e., occurring three times, in the Homeric epics, should have formular status. This criterion excludes simple repeats; yet one must not be too rigid about it and make the occasional allowances in individual cases where one could reasonably assume or argue under-representation. For instance, a simple repeat such as klevo~ oujrano;n i{kei (Il. 18. 192; Od. 9. 20) has the sound, look, smell, feel, and taste of an oral formula. Its being repeated only once is most likely due to under-representation; and so the status of plain formula may be conferred on it. Finally, formulaic expressions, i. e., members of substitution patterns, can attain formular status, if they meet certain criteria. Take, for instance, davkru cevwn w}~ e[fat∆/favto { eujcovmeno~ nekeivwn

A useful proposal by Harald Patzer has articulated such criteria250: they must occur within a fixed syntactic-metrical schema (here Vpred. 1- + + Ptc 2- + + 3-), share one term 250 Patzer 1972: 15: a formula is “eine unter gleichen metrischen Bedingungen öfter wiederholte Wortgruppe, die Teil eines festen Satzschemas ist”.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

(here w}~ e[fat∆/favto), and express, however vaguely, a discernible content, i. e., a shared essential idea (here ‘so he spoke while doing x’). Thus my revised conception of the formula works with three types – (I) to (III) – which are here concretely exemplified: (I) The schematized or systematic formula (Parry’s classical definition): 1

2

3

4

(5- ++ 6- -)

(++ 5- ++ 6- -)

(+ 4- ++ 5- ++ 6- -)

(1 - ++ 2- ++ 3-)

di`o~ / wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~

povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~

podavrkh~ di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~

–

Tudevo~ uiJov~

kratero;~ Diomhvdh~

boh;n ajgaqo;~ Diomhvdh~

_

faivdimo~ ”Ektwr

koruqaiovlo~ ”Ektwr

mevga~ koruqaiovlo~ ”Ektwr

”Ektwr Priamivdh~

ejsqloi; / di`oi eJtai`roi

ejrivhre~ eJtai`roi

eju>knhvmide~ eJtai`roi

–

eujrevi> povntw/

ejni oi[nopi povntw/

ejn hjeroeidevi povntw/ / polukluvstw/ ejn povntw/

–

o[xei> douriv / douri; faeivnw/

calkhvrei> douriv

_

–

lu`nto de; gui`a

uJpevlunto de; gui`a

luvqen d∆ uJpoj faivdima gui`a

_

Phleivwna

–

podwvkea Phleivwna

–

(II) The plain or straight formula (occurring at least three times): hJghvtore~ hjde; mevdonte~ (23x) Trwavda~ eJlkesipevplou~ (3x) a{rmasi kollhtoi`si (4x) kata;/meta;/ajna; strato;n eujru;n ∆Acaiw`n (6x) i\fi mavcesqai (7x) klevo~ ou[pot∆ ojlei`tai (3x) qouvrido~ ajlkh`~ (21x)

(III) The formulaic expression forming a phrase pattern with other word-groups, which share at least one term within a common syntactical-metrical framework, and express an identifiable similar content, thus intimating, in Parryist parlance, an ‘essential idea’, e. g.,

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The Tests of Orality Resumed – The Formula Test

(1) ‘Essential idea’: ‘he rules among X’ (Pr+ Ndat- + + - + V+ - +|): ∆Argeivoisin met∆ { ajqanavtoisin } ajnavssei ajnqrwvpoisin (2) ‘Essential idea’: ‘thus he/she spoke; but X reacted with a certain emotion’: rJivghsen dev w}~ favto: { meivdhsen dev } poluvtla~ di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ ghvqhsen dev

With these three types of formula as analytical tools, the resumption of the formula test of orality should yield meaningful, interesting, and significant results. To determine the formular density of a text – the extent of its formularity, the object of the test – formulas and formulaic expressions will be marked in the ParryLord manner by solid and broken underlining respectively and measured by morae: a marked longum (–) equals 2 morae and a marked breve (+) 1 mora; thus a marked full metron (- + +) would equal 4 morae, and a marked full verse 24 morae. – In addition to the morae notation, all formula analyses will show an enjambment notation, using the numbers 0 to 4 to indicate co-terminous verses with zero-enjambment (0), adding enjambment (1), and the three forms of necessary enjambment (2, 3, 4). Here is an example (Il. 5. 121–24): w}~ e[fat∆ eujcovmeno~, tou` d∆ e[klue Palla;~ ∆Aqhvnh, gui`a d∆ e[qhken ejlafrav, povda~ kai; cei`ra~ u{perqen: ajgcou` d∆ iJstamevnh e[pea pteroventa proshuvda: “qarsw`n nu`n, Diovmhde~, e;pi; Trwvessi mavcesqai … ”

morae 24 24 24 12

enjambment 0 0 0 0

The underlined morae, 84 out of a total of 96, amount to a formular density of 87 percent. To the high degree of formularity corresponds the absence of enjambment in the form of exclusively co-terminous verses. This analysed passage, then, could pass as oral in terms of formular density (according to Lord’s criterion of 80 to 90 percent), as well as in terms of enjambment. With its abundance of formulas and zero-enjambment, it is a passage that oralists would wish for Christmas. b. ‘WORDS OF ZERO-FORMULARITY’: HAPAX LEGOMENA IN HOMER A pronounced marker of non-formular composition in Homer is the frequent occurrence of hapax legomena (or hapaxes for short). In my formula analyses they will be marked by bold print. A brief consideration of their extent in Homeric diction is one of the necessary preliminaries to the formula test. “How often Homer repeats himself every Homerist knows”, wrote the author of the Parallel-Homer251; and oralists quite naturally make the most of it. Parry was quick to claim the abundance

251 Schmidt, C. E. 1985: VIII.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

of repetitions as an imposing “statement of a thrift of expression”252. Fair enough. Yet not every Homerist knows how often Homer does the very reverse of repetition by using hapax legomena. Hapaxes are “the words the poet never formularizes, words of zero formularity” in George Goold’s felicitous description253. It is a strong lexicographical pointer to the non-formular component in Homeric diction. The surprising extent to which hapaxes occur in both Homeric epics is an equally imposing statement of a countervailing lavishness of expression. The most comprehensive and systematic study is that of M. M. Kumpf, according to which Homeric hapaxes, i. e., those occurring only once in all of Homer, Iliad and Odyssey combined, amount to 27 percent of Homer’s total vocabulary. If Iliad and Odyssey are treated as works by two authors, the percentages naturally increase: Maurice Pope has calculated from his samples 33 percent hapaxes for the Odyssey, and 35 percent for the Iliad, with which Nicholas Richardson’s calculation concurs254. How do the hapaxes in Homer compare with hapaxes in pen poets? Comparisons offered by Pope show a range from 15 percent hapaxes in Vergil to 40 percent in Shakespeare, with Sophocles, Ovid (both 22 percent) and Euripides (37 percent) in between255. Even with Mark Edwards’ low calculation of 15 percent256, Homer would not differ from Virgil in the use of hapaxes. More importantly, Homeric hapaxes also behave just like the hapaxes of the pen-poets: they show the same mixture of commonplace words (e. g. truvpanon, trupavw), nonce-words (e. g. panawvrio~, oijnobarhv~, dhmobovro~, purihvkh~) and words used with special reference to certain characters and situations (e. g. tektosuvnh, subovsion)257. Pope and Richardson have not hesitated to draw far-reaching conclusions from these findings. For one thing, such a high proportion of hapaxes does not, as Richardson observes, accord well with the notion of a traditional style and of an oral bard conceived as “tied to the apron-strings of his tradition”258. His essay on the hapaxes is therefore pointedly (and for some oralists provocatively) titled “The Individuality of Homer’s Language”. For another thing, the similarity of behaviour between Homer’s hapaxes and those of pen-poets suggests “that several hundreds of them are likely to be special creations”. From this likelihood we can infer with Pope “that Homer was as much concerned with the individual word as other poets …”259, and thus not exclusively with formulas, as oral poets are supposed to be. 252 Parry 1971: 279. Parry computes 25,000–26,000 repetitions in Homer from Schmidt’s book, while Schmidt himself counts only 9,000 (see Schmidt 1985: VIII). Parry does not say how he arrived at this incredibly high figure. 253 Goold 1977: 31 (added emphasis). 254 Pope 1985: 3 f.; Richardson 1987: 166–169; Kumpf 1984: 3–4, and 206 (Table III). – Commentaries at last take notice of the frequency of hapaxes in Homer; see, for instance, Bowie 2013: 254. 255 Pope 1985: 3 f. 256 M. W. Edwards 1991: 54–55. Edwards inclines towards minimizing evidence that does not tally with oralist assumptions, as we shall see in his treatment of necessary enjambment. 257 Pope 1987: 4. 258 Richardson 1987: 183 (emphasis added). 259 Pope 1987: 8.

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The Tests of Orality Resumed – The Formula Test

Concern with individual words is, according to Parry, characteristic of literate composition – a point to which we shall return later. Unlike the traditional formulas to which the oral poet is said to come by habit under the exigencies of composition-in-performance, hapaxes are by their very nature “the premeditated word(s)” (Goold), and point to premeditated composition: as we shall see, the significant ones of Homer’s hapaxes, especially the nonce-words, are contextually and, in terms of characterization, not only most apposite but also evocative and highly expressive. They definitely rank as mots justes. Those hapaxes, and their closest kin, rare words, tend to occur at moments of intensity and of high tension260. They significantly cluster, as we shall see, in Achilleus’ speeches and in narrative events associated with him. They are also frequent in extended similes, which seem to be Homer’s very own innovation in the art of epic narrative (on which more later). c. FORMULAR ANALYSES FOR THE ‘LITMUS TESTS OF ORALITY’ I begin this section with my own formular analysis of Il. 1. 1–15, Lord’s chosen sample for the formula test, which he claimed the Homeric text had passed: Mh`nin a[eide, qeav, Phlhiavdew ∆Acilh`o~ oujlomevnhn, h} muriv∆ ∆Acaioi`~ a[lge∆ e[qhke, povlla~ d∆ ijfqivmou~ yuca;~ “Aidi proivayen hJrwvwn, aujtou;~ de; eJlwvria teu`ce kuvnessin oijwnoi`siv te pa`si, Dio;~ d∆ ejteleiveto boulhv ejx ou| dh; ta; prw`ta diasthvthn ejrivsante ∆Atreivdh~ te a[nax ajndrw`n kai; di`o~∆ Acilleuv~. Tiv~ t∆ a[r sfwe qew`n e[ridi xunevhke mavcesqai; Lhtou`~ kai; Dio;~ uiJov~: o} ga;r basilh`i colwqeiv~ nou`son ajna; strato;n w\rse kakhvn, ojlevvkonto de; laoi,v ou{neka to;n Cruvshn hjtivmasen ajrhth`ra ∆Atrei?dh~: o} ga;r h\lqe qoa;~ ejpi; nh`a~ ∆Acaiw`n lusovmenov~ te quvgatra fevrwn tæ ajpereivsiæ a[poina, stevmmatæ e[cwn ejn cersi;n eJkhbovlou ∆Apovllwno~ crusevw/ ajna; skhvptrw/, kai; livsseto pavnta~ ∆Acaiouv~ …

morae 14 8 10 0 13 0 22 0 5 5 0 19 13 21 18

enjambment 1 0 1 1 2 3 0 0 3 2 3 1 1 1 1

Note the balance of adding and necessary enjambment. Not counting mere repeats, I arrive at a formular density of less than 45 percent. Even if the repeated verses 13–15 would be counted as fully formular, and not just their marked phrases, then the formular density would rise to no more than 50 percent261. Were one to follow, 260 Richardson 1987: 172; 177. See also Hainsworth 1993: 6–7. 261 For blocks of more than two verbatim repeated verses being a problem for the concept of oral composition-by-formula, see below p. 187 f. For example, Achilleus repeating Il. 1. 13–15 in his address to Thetis Il. 1. 372–75 suggests a conscious repetition, quotation-like, of a fixed passage. A pronounced example is the ou\lo~ “Oneiro~ passage in Iliad II, a block of five verses, repeated verbatim not only once, but twice: Il. 2. 11–15 = 2. 28–33 = 2. 65–69; in the second and third occurrence enlarged to a block of 10 verbatim repeated verses through the

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas

as the Parryists do, the statistically questionable procedure of simply extrapolating this result to the whole of the poem, one would have to infer that the formula test of orality has yielded a formular density of 45 or 50 percent for the Iliad – which would be too low to prove orality and, according to Lord’s criteria, would rather suggest literacy262. Yet for any such conclusions the proem is, in terms of statistical rules, an insufficient basis. The result of my formular analysis only allows the preliminary observation that a passage in Homer can have a large non-formular component in its diction; and it can be in equal parts formular and non-formular. The results of analyses by oralists using stricter criteria than Lord does for determining the formularity of Homer bear out this observation. Minton, for one, counting only the fully repeated phrases in his analysis of Il. 1. 1–7, arrives at a formular density of 58 percent. He calls this count very generous, as it includes mere repeats263. Maurice Pope, allowing only those phrases in Il. 1. 1–25 which occur elsewhere in the Iliad more than twice, thus excluding simple repeats, brought down the total of 25 full formulas to the more modest figure of 12264, which would translate into a formular density of only 20 percent. – In his analyses of Il. 18. 285–309 and Od. 17. 303– 327, Joseph Russo experiments with differing criteria, laxer ones and stricter ones, for defining the formula : for the Iliad-passage his figures are 63 percent with lax criteria, and 38.5 percent with strict criteria; and for the Odyssey-passage 46.7 and 16.6 (!) percent respectively265. Two important studies of a systematic nature arrive at similar results. They are Hainsworth’s investigation into the noun-epithet formulas (as distinguished from the name-epithet formulas); and Margalit Finkelberg’s already mentioned pioneering study of verbal formulas. Hainsworth’s study shows that 60 percent of the nounepithet phrases constitute formulas, while 40 percent form unique expressions – a number he calls “disturbingly high in a diction commonly supposed to be entirely formulaic”266. Finkelberg’s study, using as a sample the phrases expressing the ‘essential idea’ of joy, arrived at similar percentages: 60 % formular, 40 % nonformular. As a counter-check she examined verbal phrases expressing the essential idea ‘seafaring’: the figures here are 51 % formular and 49 % nonformular expressions267. Both Finkelberg and Hainsworth, it should be noted, use the concept of the flexible formula which admits far more phrases to the class of formulas than the much stricter concept that I have proposed.

262 263 264 265 266 267

Destructive Dream’s expansion: Il. 2. 23–33 = 2. 60–70 (with the necessary minor adjustments). See above (Lord 1968: 24). Minton 1965: 241 f. with note 4; 245. Pope 1979: 356 f. Russo 1976: 43: “It is even possible that the repeated phrase may not be a formula, but merely … a repeat. In the course of 28,000 verses any poet, whether oral or writing, is bound to use the same phrase again at least once”. Hainsworth 1962/repr.1979: 383. The percentage of 40 is calculated from Hainsworth’s three tables (374 f.; 378; 380) and the figures on p. 383: out of a total of 2113 treated expressions, 863 turn out to be unique = 40+ percent. Finkelberg 1989: 179–197; esp. 191 ff. and 192 n. 25.

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The Tests of Orality Resumed – The Formula Test

At any rate, figures such as these are much more credible than Lord’s formular density of 90+ percent, which we can now safely relegate to the realm of wish-fulfilling fantasy. These new estimates by oralists – with 50 to 60 percent of formular elements – are still too high when measured by my strict concept of the formula. Yet they demonstrate that Homeric composition is far from being entirely compositionby-formula, as Parryism commonly holds268. The ambitious enterprise of C. O. Pavese and F. Boschetti eclipses in scope all the formular analyses done so far269. What it offers is nothing less than the formular analysis of all Homeric verses. An admirable achievement! However, I have some reservations. For one thing, the concept of formula they apply to their analyses allows for simple repeats. For another, they include in their formula-counts chance juxtapositions – faux-formulas, as I call them, such as qew`n e[ridi (Il. 1. 7 & 20. 66) and provfrwn e[pesin (Il. 1. 77 & 150). On my third reservation – on their tacit assumption of the Homer’s uniform formular diction – I shall elaborate below. More significant results, I suggest, will issue from my own formular analyses, which will conclude the test of formular density in Homer. The samples for analysis are selected randomly and arranged according to the three narrative levels (I) – (III) of epic poetry. For (I) and (II), I borrow Plato’s terms (Pol. III 392a – 394c): diegesis, i. e., plain or direct narrative – diegetic level; and mimesis, i. e., impersonation through speeches as vehicle of êthopoiia – mimetic level. – For (III) I introduce the terms tropic (= figurative), which in Homer is occupied by the tropos of the simile – tropic level. In the following section, I present the results of my own formula analyses. Only one analysis at each of the three levels is presented in full to serve as paradigm. The complete analyses are found in Appendix II. I. Three passages of plain narrative (diegetic level) 1. Il. 6. 1–36. Battle scene Trwvwn dæ oijwvqh kai; ∆Acaiw`n fuvlopi~ aijnhv: polla; dæ a[ræ e[nqa kai; e[nqæ i[quse mavch pedivoio ajllhvlwn ijqunomevnwn calkhvrea dou`ra messhgu;~ Simovento~ ijde; Xavnqoio rJoavwn. 5 Ai[a~ de; prw`to~ Telamwvnio~, e{rko~ ∆Acaiw`n, Trwvwn rJh`xe favlagga, fovw~ dæ eJtavroisin e[qhken, a[ndra balw;n o}~ a[risto~ ejni; Qrhv/kessi tevtukto uiJo;n ∆Eu>sswvrou ∆Akavmantæ hju?n te mevgan te. tovn rJæ e[bale prw`to~ kovruqo~ favlon iJppodaseivh~, 10 ejn de; metwvpw/ ph`xe, pevrhse dæ a[ræ ojstevon ei[sw aijcmh; calkeivh: to;n de; skovto~ o[ss∆ ejkavluyen. “Axulon dæ a[ræ e[pefne boh;n ajgaqo;~ Diomhvdh~ Teuqranivdhn, o}~ e[naien eju>ktimevnh/ ejn ∆Arivsbh/ ajfneio;~ biovtoio, fivlo~ dæ h\n ajnqrwvpoisin:

morae 24 20 9 10 8 13 17 21 24 24 24 24 17 24

enjambment 0 1 1 0 2 1 1 0 1 3 0 1 1 0

268 For the Hainsworth-Finkelberg attempt at claiming the absence of formulas as a form of oral formular economy, see Friedrich 2007: 22. 269 Pavese-Boschetti 2003. – All previous analyses are listed in Pavese-Boschetti I 2003: 47.

104

The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas 15 pavnta~ ga;r filevesken oJdw`/ e[pi oijkiva naivwn. ajllav oiJ ou[ ti~ tw`n ge tovtæ h[rkese lugro;n o[leqron provsqen uJpantiavsa~, ajllæ a[mfw qumo;n ajphuvra aujto;n kai; qeravponta Kalhvsion, o{" rJa oiJ i{ppwn e[sken uJfhnivoco~: tw; dæ a[mfw gai`an ejduvthn. 20 Drh`son dæ Eujruvalo~ kai; ∆Ofevltion ejxenavrixen: bh` de; metæ Ai[shpon kai; Phvdason, ou{" pote nuvmfh nhi÷~ ∆Abarbarevh tevkæ ajmuvmoni Boukolivwni. Boukolivwn dæ h\n uiJo;~ ajgauou` Laomevdonto~ presbuvtato~ geneh`,/ skovtion dev eJ geivnato mhvthr: 25 poimaivnwn dæ ejpæ o[essi mivgh filovthti kai; eujnh`/, h} dæ uJpokusamevnh didumavone geivnato pai`de. kai; me;n tw`n uJpevluse mevno~ kai; faivdima gui`a Mhkisthi>avdh~ kai; ajpæ w[mwn teuvceæ ejsuvla. ∆Astuvalon dæ a[ræ e[pefne meneptovlemo~ Polupoivth~: 30 Piduvthn dæ ∆Oduseu;~ Perkwvsion ejxenavrixen e[gcei> calkeivw/, Teu`kro~ dæ ∆Aretavona di`on. ∆Antivloco~ dæ “Ablhron ejnhvrato douri; faeinw`/ Nestorivdh~, “Elaton de; a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnwn: nai`e de; Satniovento~ eju>rreivtao paræ o[cqa~ 35 Phvdason aijpeinhvn. Fuvlakon dæ e{le Lhvi>to~ h{rw~ feuvgontæ: Eujruvpulo~ de; Melavnqion ejxenavrixen.

21 12 12 11 12 24 16 13 13 24 24 24 18 14 24 24 20 24 20 5 24 20

0 1 1 3 0 0 3 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 0 2 0 1 0 3 1 0

Result: The formular density is high at 76 percent and goes with light enjambment: the combined numbers of zero- and adding enjambment is 29 against 7 periodic enjambments. 2. Il. 1. 446–474. Chryses sacrificing on behalf of the Achaeans (Full formula analysis in APPENDIX II) Result: A high degree of formular density, 85 percent, goes with enjambment that is for the most part either light or zero: 22 against 6 periodic enjambments. 3. Il. 7. 161–9: Achaean heroes volunteering to duel with Hektor. (Full formula analysis in APPENDIX II) Result: Formular density is 84 percent, with enjambment nearly non-existent. II. Three Speeches (‘mimetic level’) 1. Il. 1. 149–187: The Angry Exchange between Achilleus & Agamemnon (1a) Achilleus upbraids the generalissimo (Il. 1. 149–171): w[i moi, ajnaideivhn ejpieimevne, kerdaleovfron, 150 pw`~ tiv~ toi provfrwn e[pesin* peivqhtai ∆Acaiw`n, hjj∆ oJdo;n ejlqevmenai hj∆ ajndravsin i\fi mavcesqai; ouj ga;r ejgw; Trwvwn e{nek∆ h[luqon aijcmhtavwn deu`ro machsovmeno~, ejpei; ou[ tiv moi ai[tioiv eijsin: ouj gavr pwv potæ ejma;~ bou`~ h[lasan oujde; me;n i{ppou~, oujdev pot∆ ejn Fqivh/ ejribwvlaki bwtianeivrh/ karpo;n ejdhlhvsantæ, ejpei; h\ mavla polla; metaxuv, ou[reav te skioventa qavlassav te hjchvessa. ajlla; soiv, w\ mevgæ ajnaidev~, a{mæ eJspovmeqæ o[fra su; caivrh/~, timh;n ajrnuvmenoi Menelavw/ soiv te, kunw`pa,

morae 0 0 8 0 8 0 12 0 0 0 0

enjambment 0 3 0 3 0 1 3 3 0 1 1

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The Tests of Orality Resumed – The Formula Test

160 pro;~ Trwvwn: tw`n ou[ ti metatrevpe∆ oujdæ ajlegivzei~ 6 0 kai; dhv moi gevra~ aujto;~ ajfairhvsesqai ajpeilei`~, 0 2 w|i e[pi povll∆ ejmovghsa, dovsan dev moi ui|e~ ∆Acaiw`n. 15 0 ouj me;n soiv pote i\son e[cw gevra~ oJppovtæ ∆Acaioi; 0 3 Trwvwn ejkpevrswsæ eu\ naiovmenon ptoliveqron, 20 0 ajlla; to; me;n plei`on poluavi>ko~ polevmoi 14 3 cei`re~ ejmai; dievpousæ, ajta;r h[n pote dasmo;~ i{khtai, 0 2 soi; to; gevra~ polu; mevzon, ejgw; dæ ojlivgon te fivlon te 0 3 e[rcomæ e[cwn ejpi; nh`a~, ejpeiv ke kavmw polemivzwn. 5 0 nu`n dæ ei\mi Fqivhndæ, ejpei; h\ polu; fevrterovn ejstin 10 2 170 oi[kadæ i[men su;n nhusi; korwnivsin, oujdev sæ oji?w 14 3 ejnqavdæ a[timo~ ejw;n a[feno~ kai; plou`ton ajfuvxein. 0 0 * Note: provfrwn e[pesin, also at Il. 1. 77, is like qew`n e[ridi at Il. 1. 8, a mere juxtaposition in both verses, thus not a formula.

Result: The formular density is 21 percent, with 4 hapaxes, and heavy enjambment (11 necessary and 3 adding). (1b) Agamemnon responds in kind (Il. 1. 173–87) (Full formula analysis in APPENDIX II) Result: Formular density is 31 percent, with 1 hapax. Necessary enjambment prevails (6) over adding enjambment (3). Yet there are 6 co-terminous verses. 2. Nestor criticises and advises Agamemnon (Il. 9. 96–113) (Full formula analysis in APPENDIX II) Result: Formular density is 17 percent, with 1 hapax and with heavy enjambment (exclusively the necessary kind). 3. Od. 1. 32 ff. Zeus’ ‘theodicy’ (Full formula analysis in APPENDIX II) Result: Formular density is 20 percent, with heavy enjambment (exclusively the necessary form). III. Similes (‘tropic level’) 1. Il. 5. 136–143 (Diomedes/lion) dh; tovte min tri;~ tovsson e{len mevno~, w{" te levonta, crauvsh/ mevn tæ aujlh`~ uJperavlmenon, oujde; damavssh/: tou` mevn te sqevno~ w\rsen, e[peita dev tæ ouj prosamuvnei, ajlla; kata; staqmou;~ duvetai, ta; dæ ejrh`ma fobei`tai: ai} mevn tæ ajgchsti`nai ejpæ ajllhvlh/si kevcuntai, aujta;r o} ejmmemaw;~ baqevh~ ejxavlletai aujlh`~: w}~ memaw;~ Trwvessi mivgh kratero;~ Diomhvdh~.

morae 0 0 5 0 13 0 10

enjambment 3 0 1 0 1 0 0

Result: The formular density is 17 percent, with two hapaxes and balanced enjambment. 2. Il. 20. 164–175 (Achilleus/lion) (Full formula analysis in APPENDIX II) Result: Formular density is 30 percent, with 2 hapaxes; heavy enjambment.

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3. Il. 17. 61–69 (Menelaos/lion) (Full formula analysis in APPENDIX II) Result: formular density is 32 percent, with necessary enjambment (4) prevailing over adding enjambment (2). There is 1 hapax. 4. Il. 16. 156–165 (Myrmidons/wolves) (Full formula analysis in APPENDIX II) Result: The formular density is 21 percent; the simile is heavily enjambed with 5 necessary enjambments versus 1 adding. d. THE END OF THE NOTION OF FORMULAR UNIFORMITY IN HOMERIC DICTION The results of these analyses allow a number of significant observations and conclusions: (1) There is, first, a correlation between high formular density and light (and zero) enjambment – both are typical of oral composition. (2) Vice versa, there is a correlation between low formularity and heavy enjambment – both go together in literary composition. (3) Above all, there are pronounced discrepancies in the distribution of formulas within the Homeric diction270. The most significant is the third one. The pronounced difference in formularity that exists between the speeches (mimetic level) and the main narrative (diegetic level) calls to mind Jasper Griffin’s important study on the use of abstract nouns in Homer. He showed that the speeches differ conspicuously from the narrative in that they contain the vast majority of the abstracta – over 80 percent, in fact271. Griffin goes as far as to conclude that “in important senses the Homeric epics have two vocabularies”272. The results of Griffin’s study had already shattered what Milman Parry had referred to as “the uniformity of style of the Iliad and the Odyssey”273. What Griffin has demonstrated in terms of the use of abstract nouns, the present study has corroborated in terms of formularity: that the formular uniformity of the Homeric diction is a chimaera.

270 My analyses confirm in concrete detail Michael Silk’s general observation : “… we must accept that Homeric verse is part formulaic and part not, or rather that it embodies a spectrum from fixed, repeated elements, through contrastive systems and clear-cut parallel structures, to ‘free’ composition—that is as free as strict metrical constraints permit” (Silk 1987: 22). 271 Griffin 1986: 37. Griffin’s study resumes research begun by Krarup 1948. 272 Griffin 1986: 40 (emphasis added). Griffin’s “provocative assertion” (ibid.) is of course meant as a challenge to the Parryists. How serious this challenge is can be gleaned from Kirk’s attempt at damage control in the Introduction to Vol. II. of the Cambridge Commentary (Kirk 1990: 28 ff.): he devotes to it a whole section, titled ‘The speech-element in the Iliad’ trying to minimize the significance of Griffin’s results. It is written in Kirk’s smooth elegant style that seeks to level important differences; but it is not convincing at all. 273 Parry 1971: 445.

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That chimaera has been haunting the Parryist formular tests. It operates in them as an unstated assumption and becomes patent in their extrapolation of the results of their analysed samples to the whole of Homeric diction against all statistical rules – be these samples as small as Lord’s 15 lines or as large as the total of the 27,000 Homeric hexameters in Pavesi-Boschetti. Pavesi-Boschetti need not extrapolate; they calculate an average degree of formular density in Homer of 58.57 percent274. It amounts to the same thing: their calculation, too, is predicated on presupposing a uniformly formular diction, as it obscures the differences in the degree of formularity among the three narrative levels. This presupposition is the principal fallacy, the prw`ton yeu`do~, of all attempts hitherto to prove Homeric orality through demonstrating a high formular density for either poem (the realistic ones of Finkelberg and Hainsworth included). There can be no such thing as a uniform diction in Homer, when formular density ranges from very high to very low; and when there are, as Griffin showed, two vocabularies at work as well. Extrapolating from statistically unrepresentative samples is fallacious anyway. Extracting, as Pavesi-Boschetti do, an average formular density from the analysis of all the verses in both Homeric poems says next to nothing real about their diction. It is even misleading, as it suggests a uniform formular style. Now these differences in formular density in Homer are not random. They are related to the differences in the narrative material at the diegetic, mimetic, and tropic levels of epic narrative. A pattern emerges: at the diegetic level Homer deals largely with the most traditional material – battle narrative, catalogues, typescenes – and this explains the high degree of formular density. By contrast, poetic invention and innovation are operative at the mimetic level, with the speeches as the main vehicle of Homer’s art of characterization: Homeric originality and artistic spontaneity on this level manifest themselves in a diction with frequent unique expressions, hapaxes and rare words; and generally with low formularity275. Their high proportion of abstract nouns is derived to a large extent from their being also vehicles of moral debate. At the tropic or figurative level the largely schema-free diction derives from the untraditional subject-matter of the similes. It is, as is well known, quite distinct from that of the heroically stylized world of the epic action and the speeches of its heroes. This distinctiveness strongly suggests a third level of epic narrative. The similes body forth the natural and everyday world, the poet’s own life-world276. This content renders the similes the most untraditional component of the Homeric 274 Pavese-Boschetti 2003 I: 45: “According to our analyses, the Homeric poems have an average formular density 58.57 % …” – This is perhaps an opportune place to voice my reservations about their admirable enterprise. It concerns the concept of formula they apply to their analyses. For one thing, they include simple repeats in their formula-counts; for another, they even include chance juxtapositions (faux-formulas) such as qew`n e[ridi (Il. 1. 7 & 20. 66, as Parry and Lord did, see above) and provfrwn e[pesin (Il. 1. 77 & 150). 275 This assessment conforms with M. Finkelberg’s finding that 70 percent of the formular material she has identified in her study on expressions for joy occur in narrative passages and only 11 percent in speeches (Finkelberg 1989). – The greatly differing degrees of formular density as documented in Russo’s formular analyses point in the same direction (Russo 1976: 40–47). 276 See on this Fränkel 162: 44.

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epic. Their low formular density attests to this characteristic. My results accord well with those of Maurice Pope’s important 1963 study of the language of the similes in the Iliad that focuses on the noun-epithet phrases. In 184 extended similes with a total of 665 verses he found 379 different noun-epithet combinations. Of these, 270 occur only once in either epic: thus 70 percent are unique expressions; and about half of those occurring more than once are simple repeats. In other words, the overwhelming majority of noun-epithet expressions in the similes are not formulas277. On the untraditional and non-oral nature of the similes more will have to be said later. However, the distinctions of formular density in terms of the three levels of epic narration should not be seen as rigid dichotomies. Speeches closely connected with, and operative in, battle narrative such as the commanders’ exhortations of the troops before or during battle can be high in formular density and quite light in enjambment like the battle narrative itself. Take, for instance, Agamemnon’s exhortation at Il. 4. 234–39: ∆Argei`oi, mhv pwv ti meqivete qouvrido~ ajlkh`~: ouj ga;r ejpi; yeudevssi path;r Zeu;~ e[ssetæ ajrwgov~, ajllæ oi{ per provteroi uJpe;r o{rkia dhlhvsanto tw`n h[toi aujtw`n tevrena crova gu`pe~ e[dontai, hJmei`~ au\tæ ajlovcou~ te fivla~ kai; nhvpia tevkna a[xomen ejn nhvessin, ejph;n ptoliveqron e{lwmen.

morae 13 13 19 14 18 23

enjambment 0 0 2 1 3 0

Its formular density of 70 percent is as high, and enjambment as light, as they are at the diegetic level, akin as they are thematically to that level’s narrative material. – High formular density and light enjambment is also found in formal prayers: a case in point is the prayer of the priest Chryses (451–56) in the above analysed passage Il. 1. 447–74. Most importantly, as will become patent later, the distinction between the three levels of the diction in terms of formularity and enjambment does not apply to passages focusing on Achilleus. Passages with Achilleus at the core cut across those distinctions: low formular density and heavy enjambment along with the clustering of hapaxes and rare words are found at all three levels in such passages. When it comes to Achilleus, all bets are off. It attests to the innovative and untraditional nature of the Homeric conception of the Achilleus-figure. Its implications will be discussed in a later section. 277 Pope 1963. – Moulton 1974: 383 confirms such findings when noting that a search for formular elements in the similes yields little: “very few similes or phrases within them are repeated”. – Ingalls 1979 is an unsuccessful attempt at refuting Pope: he tries to show that formular density in the similes is the same as that in the narrative, namely very high, 86.3 percent to be precise. He produces impressive tables with statistics showing the result of his formular analyses of a number of similes of the Iliad and a control passage of main narrative. One is less impressed when one sees his paradigm, the actual formular analysis of Il. 2. 87–94 done in the Parry-Lord manner. It betrays all the vices of the latter; thus Ingalls’ high percentages in the analysed 100 verses of similes are as much surreptiously obtained as those of Lord, as they derive from Soft Parryism’s inflationary notion of the formula.

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One result of these formular analyses is certain: the diction of the Homeric epics is beyond the reach of the Parryist formula tests, predicated as these are on the assumption of uniform formularity in Homer. With uniform formularity being ruled out for Homeric diction, further formular tests are no longer needed. Registering again the co-existence of oral and non-oral elements in the Homeric epics, we can sum it up by stating that their diction is at once high and low in formularity, depending on the narrative level and narrative material.

6. THE ‘TEST BY THRIFT’ – THE ECONOMY TEST It was the presumption of a uniform formularity in Homer that had Parry extrapolate the schematization of diction he had discovered among the name-epithet formulas to the whole of Homeric diction: We have verses enough to show us the vast difference between the style of Homer and that of poetry which we know was written: we have found that the schematization, of which there were only the faintest traces in later poetry, reaches almost everywhere, if not everywhere, in the diction of the Iliad and Odyssey278.

It implies the apriori assumption that the Homeric diction is entirely formular – formular, that is, in the emphatic sense of connoting the operation of the twin categories, extension and economy. As noted in the Preface, from the master’s extrapolation derives the Parryist firm belief in the principle or, as Denys Page has it, the “law of formular economy” as “strictly observed” in Homer, with the exception of “a mere handful of equivalent phrases”279. This Parryist belief is most clearly and succinctly articulated by Geoffrey Kirk elaborating Milman Parry’s extrapolation: The fact remains that in the Iliad and the Odyssey a very large number of crystallized formulas are employed with an astonishing economy and lack of unnecessary variation. This suggests strongly, indeed almost imperatively, that the oral technique was used in full and undimished degree for the main act of composition of each of the two monumental poems …280

To his credit, Lord thought such a claim had to be proved. As formular economy is the decisive factor in the schematization of diction, he postulated the fourth test of orality: the economy test or, as he preferred, the test by thrift, which is in fact the schematization test. Yet this test has never been carried out until I tried my hand at it in my 2007 book Formular Economy in Homer. Before I summarize its results, let me briefly recapitulate why the economy test is in essence the test of a poem’s stylistic schematization, the hallmark of oral composition-in-performance. It is the operation of the twin categories of economy and extension that constitutes schematization, most palpable in the organization of the formulas into systems: hence the synonym use of systematization for schematization. The decisive category here is economy. For illustration take as an example the formula megavqumo~ ∆Acilleuv~. It is a metrical doublet to the regularly used formula povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~; as a doublet megavqumo~ ∆Acilleuv~ enlarges the extension of the system for ‘Achilleus’nom, but impairs its economy and, in turn, attenuates schematization. Thus, the test that is to determine the observation of the principle of formular economy in the Homeric epics goes to the very core of their assumed oral278 Parry 1971: 313–14 (emphasis added). 279 Cp. Page 1959: 225; 227. 280 Kirk 1976: 115 (emphasis added).

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ity. Since this assumption as expressed by Kirk was so prevalent among Parryists and ranked as a self-evident axiom, the test by thrift seems to have been deemed unnecessary. An exception among the Parryists is G. P. Edwards with his hunch that metrical doublets of regularly used formulas may “exist quite widely in Homer”. He surmises that “the extent to which breaches of the principle of economy occur in Homer is perhaps greater than is generally supposed …”281. The results of my testing confirm both his hunch and his surmise: on my count in Formular Economy there are 338 actual breaches of the principle of economy in Homer, plus 32 possible ones whose status as breaches may be subject to debate282. It is not possible to determine the extent of Homeric breaching of economy in percentages. Yet the prelude to my testing, the Tables I and II, a listing of all the formulas in all cases for Achilleus and Zeus, the two chief agents of the Iliad, could convey some idea as to the extent of breaches in Homer in general283. Here one finds a range from slightly breached economy (e. g. in the Achilleusnom system) to heavily breached economy as in the systems for Achilleusgen (40 percent), Zeusnom (50 percent) and Zeusvoc (more that 60 percent). The overall percentages in all Achilleus-systems are 22 percent and for the Zeus-systems 33 percent. At any rate, this reality is a far cry from Kirk’s “strictly observed economy of expression” and “careful lack of metrical duplications” as well as from Page’s “strictly observed law” and a “mere handful of equivalent phrases”284. That the Homeric epics have passed the ‘test by thrift’ is out of the question. Again, we see a co-existence of oral and non-oral features, i. e., of schematized diction as manifest in the formular systems and of non-schematized diction as patent in the breaches of economy. Formular economy in Homer is honoured both in the breach and the observance. Yet as significant as these numbers are, certain aspects of Homeric schematization that the economy test brings to light are even more significant. To begin with, systematic schematization is very limited in Homer. For the most part, it is confined to where Parry had discovered it in the first place: among the name-epithet formulas. It is almost exclusively here that complete extensive and economic systems occur with some regularity and frequency. Parry conceded as much: for the “greater number of systems” he observes that “their length is rarely as great and their thrift never so striking” as those of the nominative systems285; for most systems for the name-epithet formulas in the oblique cases show far less length and less striking thrift286. – True, in addition to the frequent name-epithet formula systems, there are a number of extensive noun-epithet formula systems, in 281 Edwards (G. P.) 1971: 58; cp. also p. 72: “alternative expressions exist quite widely in Homer as well as in Hesiod”. 282 See my Table III (Lists A & B) in Friedrich 2007: 48–65. My List A shows 321 items, yet I have meanwhile added the cases of 17 answering formulas discussed on pp. 42–43, which I had been too timid to include in my count. 283 Cp. Friedrich 2007: 36–39 (Tables I and II). 284 See above note 279. 285 Parry 1971: 278. 286 Cp. for instance Parry’s table of the noun-epithet genitive systems (Parry 1971: 57).

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particular for weapons, ships, sea et al., but they are far less frequent287. There are also systems for verbal formulas similarly organized as the nominal formulas; for instance, answering formulas: Essential idea: ‘and he/she answered him/her’ 1

2

3

4

1

- ++ - ++ - ++ - ++

2

3

4

- ++ - ++ - ++ -

to;n/th;n d∆ ajpameibovmeno~ prosefwvnee

to;n/th;n d∆ ajpameibovmeno~ prosevfh

1

2

3

- ++ - ++ - +

to;n/th;n d∆ au\te prosevveipe

They are designed and shaped for interlocking with the nominative formulas of the name-epithet systems to form whole lines and sentences, e. g.: povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~ to;n d∆ajpameibovmeno~ prosevfh } kreivwn ∆Agamevmnwn Telamwvnio~ Ai[a~

In addition to the name/noun-epithet formulas are systems of verbal formulas for typical actions in heroic epic such as killing in battle288, e. g., for the essential idea (in Parryist parlance) ‘he killed’ and ‘they were killed’: Essential idea: ‘he killed’ 5-

++

6-

-

lu`se de; gui`a

++

5-

++ 6- -

uJpevluse de; gui`a

++ 4- ++ 5- ++ 6- -

++ 3- ++ 4- ++ 5- ++ 6- -

–

uJpevluse mevno~ kai; faivdima gui`a

and its reverse: Essential idea: ‘they were killed’ 5-

++ 6- -

lu`nto de; gui`a

++ 5- ++ 6- -

++ 4- ++ 5- ++ 6- -

++ 3- ++ 4- ++ 5- ++ 6- -

uJpevlunto de; gui`a

luvqen d∆ uJpoj faivdima gui`a

-

Yet such schematized verbal formulas are few and far between. As a matter of fact, many of the Homeric formulas constitute what can be described at most as systems of minimal extension and thus of hard-to-discern formular economy. Take, for example, the formulas for the essential idea ‘nuptial gifts’acc: there are only two of them, muriva e{dna / ajpereivsia e{dna – hardly a system anymore; and inasmuch as the extension is minimal, economy, though observed, is trivial: there is no metrical doublet for either formula. Most are just formulas standing alone. Another Parryist witness, A. T. Edwards, puts it bluntly: “for most of Homeric diction, systems of simplicity (read economy, RF) and extension do not exist”289. 287 Cp. Gray 1947. 288 Cp. Hainsworth 1968: 126–7. 289 Edwards (A. T.) 1988: 27.

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Even the nominative-systems of the name-epithet formulas – the glorious showpieces of Parryism – have a largely restricted application: the distinctive and more expressive ones gravitate towards speech-openings. Take, for instance, the 81 occurrences of Odysseus’ most distinctive and most often used formula, poluvmhti~ ∆Odusseuv~: the vast majority of them, 71, are used for speech-openings; similarly, of the 31 occurrences of Achilleus’ most distinctive and second most often used formula povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~, as many as 26 introduce speeches. From the perspective of oral composition, it is a far from optimal use of these two principal-type formulas, so serviceable and necessary for rapid versification in performance. It indicates that the nominative name-epithet systems, the most complete and intact ones, are operating below capacity; when they are not used for speech-openings, they “operate intermittently” only, as Norman Austin has put it290. To refer to and name the main characters the poet has at his disposal non-systematic alternatives to the systematic name-epitheton formulas: e. g., phrases such as paido;~ eJh`o~, a[grion a[ndra, o}n fivlon uiJovn ktl. to refer to Achilleus. Homer uses 120 ways of referring to Achilleus, of which the total of 49 systematic name-epitheton Achilleus-formulas in all cases forms only a fraction, albeit a large one. Most surprisingly, the mere name, without epithet, in both its spellings (∆Acil[l]euv~), is as frequently used as the name-epithet formulas291. Odysseus’ unadorned name is even more frequently used than his systematic formulas292. It has become obvious that in Homer schematization, although still discernible, is considerably reduced and its range of deployment has narrowed. It means that schematization of diction, indispensable for oral composition-in-performance, is no longer indispensable for Homeric composition. Its use, especially of the systematic name-epithet formulas, is no longer one of necessity but of free choice, the implications of which will be explored in the next section. For summing up the results of the ‘test by thrift’, it suffices to state that schematization is only partial in Homeric diction. By the same token its use of formulas is only partially governed by the principle of economy: this testifies to the strong trend towards schema-free composition in Homer. Schematization and formular economy in Homer have a distinct air of being residual. Again, we register the coexistence of oral and non-oral elements.

290 Austin 1975: 39. 291 On all this see Shive 1987: 140–152 (Appendices A to E). 292 Austin 1975: 26–36.

7. PARATAXIS & HYPOTAXIS IN HOMER – THE ENJAMBMENT TEST In oral composition enjambment is bound up with the paratactical nature of its style. Thus the enjambment test of Homeric diction will be at the same time its ‘parataxis test’. It leads perforce to the larger question as to what is the extent of parataxis and hypotaxis in Homeric diction. Parataxis or levxi~ eijromevnh, the ‘strung-on diction’ or the “adding style”, coordinates the secondary and the primary, adding the one to the other in simple clauses: fuvlla ta; mevn t∆ a[nemo~ camavdi~ cevei, a[lla de; q∆ u{lh thleqovwsa fuvei, e[aro~ d∆ ejpigivgnetai w{rh (Il. 6. 147–148).

By contrast, hypotaxis or katestrammevnh levxi~, the “periodic style”, subordinates the secondary to the primary in complex sentences293: Eij d∆ ejqevlei~ kai; tau`ta dahvmenai, o[fr∆ eu\ ei[dhi~ hJmetevrhn genehvn, polloi; dev min a[ndre~ i[sasin (Il. 6. 150–151).

Note the immediate juxtaposition of a hypotactic to a paratactic construction (also note the apodotic dev, a paratactic residue, on which more below), attesting to the co-existence of oral and non-oral characteristics in Homer. Parataxis is inherent in oral poetry, a central concept for understanding composition-in-performance. “Oral verse-making”, Milman Parry writes, “by its speed must be chiefly carried on in an adding style”. Its basic structural unit is the single co-terminous line, where verse-end and sentence-end coincide and complete its metre, syntax, and sense. Oral narrative is cumulative: it proceeds by adding one coterminous verse to another. It is this feature that makes for the paratactic discourse of oral poetry. As Egbert Bakker puts it more comprehensively in terms of composition as well as reception, “any spoken discourse is naturally paratactic, not only because the circumstances of its composition preclude more complicated syntax, but also in order to facilitate the comprehension by listeners” (Bakker 2011: 627). In his often referenced essay “Parataxis in Homer”, which has a canonic ring to it, John Notopoulos elaborated, and further advanced, Parry’s reasoning on this central tenet of oralism: “parataxis … extends beyond the style and characterizes the structure and thought of the poems”. It extends even to mentality. The scope and import that the Parryist discourse ascribes to parataxis are immense and so fundamental that an extended citation is justified: When the poet composes by means of the formulaic diction, which Parry has shown in his studies, he must concentrate on the moment, on the immediate verse. Unlike creation with the written word, where the audience is a remote factor in the imagination, where sufficient time is at hand to coordinate the part to the whole conception, with opportunity for revision, the oral poet 293 Aristotle’s terms, cp. Rhet. 3.9 (1409a 24; 26).

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is both physically and mentally bound to the moment, the immediate verse, and his intimate relation with the audience … Neither the poet nor his audience can divert their attention for any period of time to the whole; they cannot pause to analyze, compare, and relate parts to the whole; the whole only exists as an arrière pensée which both the poet and his audience share as a context for the immediate tectonic plasticity of the episode … The imperious domination of the immediate verse and episode shapes in large measure the paratactic style as well as content of the oral epic … The effect of this technique on the mind of the oral poet is such that it develops a corresponding paratactic technique in handling his material. The poet thus tends to become episodic in his mentality …294.

From Notopoulos’ essay, some sort of “pan-parataxis” obtaining in oral poetry emerges as an almost existential imperative for poet and audience alike. It arises from the given physical, mental, and social factors and conditions under which oral singers compose and their listeners receive. Thus parataxis has come to be one of the defining characteristics of oral poetry as an all-pervasive feature. Parryism’s exorbitant talk about parataxis refers, of course, not just to oral poetry in general but pronouncedly to Homer. Notopoulos’ essay carries, after all, the title “Parataxis in Homer” and claims in its subtitle to offer a “New Approach to Homeric Literary Criticism”295. Parry’s reasoning and Notopoulos’ essay have firmly lodged the association Homeric epic/parataxis in Parryist discourse. Pervasive parataxis in Homer has attained the status of an axiom. It comes naturally to the Parryist mind, as it appears to be so self-evident: it is easily deduced from Homer’s orality, since all oral discourse is paratactic; and, vice versa, Homer’s orality is as easily inferred from his paratactic diction. Conflated, as these two lines of reasoning usually are, they give off a whiff of argumentative circularity. This logically dubious element should occasion, as indeed it will in this section, the overdue examination of this Parryist axiom as the larger framework for the enjambment-test. In oral poetry parataxis, the adding style, prevails even when enjambment occurs. Enjambment is “in its largest sense the running over of the sentence from one line to another”296. When “sense is variously drawn out from one verse to the next”, as John Milton describes enjambment in the “Preface to Paradise Lost”, the verse ceases to be co-terminous in sense and metre. Nevertheless, in oral poetry even then parataxis prevails: the kind of enjambment that ensues Parry has called ‘adding’ and ‘unperiodic’. It is all of a piece with parataxis in that it extends a principally complete sentence into the next line through the addition of appositional material (as in mh`nin a[eide, qeav, Phlhiavdew ∆Acilh`o~ / oujlomevnhn) – in contradistinction to the other form that Parry has called ‘necessary’ and ‘periodic’ enjambment: this is the ‘nonparatactic’ kind, in which the enjambed word is necessary for completing the period and sense of the previous line (as in a[ndra moi e[nnepe Mou`sa, poluvtropon, o}~ mavla polla; / plavgcqh`). Just as rapid oral verse-making must be chiefly carried on in an adding style, Parry writes, so the oral poet who “has no time for the nice balances and contrasts of unhurried thought” is “ever pushed on to use unperiodic enjambment”297. 294 295 296 297

Notopoulos 1949: 15. On this see Friedrich 1975: 123–4. Parry 1971: 253, note 1. Parry 1971: 262.

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Adding enjambment, then, goes with the parataxis of oral song. Conversely, periodic enjambment goes with the more complex hypotaxis of the literate author who does have ‘time for the nice balances and contrasts of unhurried thought’. The statistics resulting from the Parry-Lord comparative studies of the use of enjambment have borne out this proposition: they show a high frequency of necessary enjambment, with only a small fraction of adding enjambment, in the literate Argonautika and Aeneid; and the nearly exact reverse in the oral South-Slavic songs298:

South-Slavic texts (Lord) Argonautika (Parry) Aeneid (Parry)

Zero enjambment (0)

Adding enjambment (1)

Necessary enjambment (2)

44.5 % 34.8 % 38.3 %

40.6 % 16.0 % 12.5 %

14.9 % 49.1 % 49.2 %

Hence Lord’s criteria for the enjambment test: “the oral text will yield a predominance of non-periodic enjambment, and the ‘literate’ text a predominance of periodic”299. The oral text must also show, if it does show any, “a low frequency of necessary enjambment”300. a. THE NATURE AND FORMS OF ENJAMBMENT301 Parry’s terms ‘adding’/‘non-periodic’ and ‘necessary’/‘periodic’ point to the differing degrees of involvement of the enjambed verse with the next. Differently put, any enjambment is deviation from (oral) co-terminosity, the coinciding of verseend and sentence end: it is moderate in the case of adding, and radical in the case of necessary enjambment. Thus enjambment effects varying degrees of cohesion between verses: it depends on how integral the grammatical element is that the verseend splits off from the sentence of the enjambed line. When the enjambed word is so integral a syntactical part as the predicate is at Od. 1.1–2, necessary enjambment creates a greater cohesion between the two verses than adding enjambment would do, since the latter only appends an apposition to a syntactically and semantically already complete verse, as at Il. 1. 1–2. With adding enjambment, the enjambed verse retains its grammatical and semantic autarky. With necessary enjambment, the periodically enjambed verse loses its autarky to form a larger grammatical and semantic unit with the following verse. 298 Lord 1949: 114 n.6; Parry 1971: 254 n.1. – A detailed presentation of all relevant statistics on enjambment at Friedrich 2000: 7; 15–16. 299 Lord 1960: 131 (emphasis added). 300 Janko 1982: 1 (emphasis added). 301 In the preliminary study to the present enterprise, “Homeric Enjambement and Orality” (Friedrich 2000), I have described and discussed the general nature and the forms of enjambment, and have collated the various relevant statistics. The following is a summary of the results of this study.

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Such loss of autarky becomes more evident in the differentiations of necessary/ periodic enjambment. Parry distinguished between two types of necessary enjambment: one where verse-end falls between word-groups, e. g., between protasis and apodosis (=2); and another type where verse-end falls within word-groups, e. g., subject and predicate (=3). Parry reserved the term periodic for (2), and called (3) prosaic. Others such as Mark Edwards, Geoffrey Kirk, and Carolyn Higbie added to Parry’s prosaic enjambment a fourth form called harsh or violent enjambment (= 4), e. g., when verse-end separates a conjunction from its clause or an epithet from its noun. This chart summarizes and correlates the various terms employed in the literature on Homeric enjambment: Parry & Lord I

0

II

1 2 3 4

Edwards

Kirk

Higbie

zero enjambment in co-terminous verses adding/unperiodic necessary/periodic prosaic (= 3)

adding necessary prosaic harsh

progressive periodic integral violent

adding clausal necessary violent

Il. 9. 96–99 contains instances of all three forms of necessary enjambment: ∆Atreivdh kuvdiste, a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnon, ejn soi; me;n lhvxw, sevo d∆ a[rxomai, ou{neka pollw`n law`n ejssi a[nax kaiv toi Zeu;~ ejgguavlixen skh`ptrovn t∆ hjde; qevmista~, i{nav sfisi bouleuvh/sqa.

2 4 3 0

Verse-end falling between address and message at vv. 96/97 results in a periodic enjambment of the lighter kind (= 2); verse end separating predicate (ejgguavlixe) and its direct objects (skh`ptro;n, qevmista~) at vv. 98–9 gives rise to a prosaic/integral enjambment (= 3). Note that in vv. 97–8, verse-end, separating the conjunction (ou{neka) from its clause as well as the epithet from its noun (pollw`n/law`n), creates a doubly harsh or violent enjambment (= 4). All three types of necessary enjambment propel the narrative beyond the basic unit of the single self-contained co-terminous verse of oral composition, and develop the passage into a complex sentence that stretches over several lines, with two levels of subordination (ou{neka/ i{na), attesting to the affinity of necessary enjambment to hypotaxis. Necessary enjambment in its harsh or violent form could not be further away from co-terminosity; yet there is a phenomenon in Homer that goes further, called the “skewed sentence” as at Il. 21. 241–43: w[qei d∆ ejn savkei> pivptwn rJovo~: oujde; povdessin ei[ce sthrivxasqai, o} de; ptelevhn e{le cersivn eujfueva megavlhn: h} d∆ ejk rJizevwn ejripou`sa ktl.

3 2 3

A skewed sentence begins within a verse and ends within one of the next ones; and thus constitutes, as Carolyn Higbie puts it, “the furthest possible deviation from coterminosity”302. Deviation from oral co-terminosity such as both cited passages exhibit would be most untypical of composition-in-performance. 302 Higbie 1990: 112.

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There is an apparent paradox in necessary enjambment: it is through disruption that it effects greater cohesion. The verse-end separates parts of the sentence from one another, and the resulting enjambment stretches its syntactical structure over two or more verses: these become thereby more involved with one another, i. e., more cohesive. The stronger the disruption caused by the verse-end, the higher the degree of cohesion achieved by the enjambment. The apparent paradox is easily resolved: the verse-end pays, as it were, a penalty for the disruption it causes, as it loses some of the force it possesses in articulating the verse and its rhythm. In this way enjambment blurs the demarcation between the verses; and the resulting greater cohesion of the verses with one another is purchased at the expense of the verse-rhythm. Enjambment produces thereby, according to Dionysios of Halikarnassos, a prosaic effect – hence Parry’s term ‘prosaic’ for the stronger form of necessary enjambment303. b. THE STATISTICAL EVIDENCE. Here is a synopsis of the cold statistical facts that are available concerning enjambment in Oral texts, Homeric texts, and Literate texts304: zero enjambment (0) ORAL TEXTS: Yugoslav epic (Lord) HOMERIC TEXTS: Iliad (Parry) Odyssey (Parry) Iliad (Clayman-Nortwick) Odyssey (Clayman-Nortwick) Il.16 (Kirk) Il.16 (Higbie) Iliad (Barnes/Lyding) Odyssey (Barnes/Lyding) Iliad (Higbie) LITERATE TEXTS: Argonautika (Parry) Aeneid (Parry)

adding enjambment (1)

necessary enjambment (2)

44.5 %

40.6 %

14.9 %

48.5 % 44.8 % 38.1 % 43.5 % 38.3 % 37.02 % 47.1/47 % 50 % 38.8 %

24.8 % 26.6 % 23.8 % 24.6 % 28.6 % 35.76 % 26.2/26.3 % 22.5 % 36.7 %

26.6 % 28.5 % 37.7 % 32.0 % 33.1 % 27.22 % 26.7/26.7 % 27.5 % 24.5 %

34.8 % 38.3 %

16.0 % 12.5 %

49.1 % 49.2 %

303 On Parry’s discussion of Dionysios’ use of ‘prosaic’, see Parry 1971: 252 f. 304 Sources: ORAL TEXTS: Lord 1949: 114–15 n. 6. – HOMERIC TEXTS: Parry 1971: 254 n.1. Parry’s samples consist of 1200 verses taken from the first 100 verses of Bks 1, 5, 9, 13, 15, 21 of both Homeric epics. – Clayman-Van Nortwick 1977: 87, using random samples totalling 10 % of the verses of either epic. – Barnes 1979: 7; her statistics are based on Iliad Bks. 3, 11, 14, 19. – Lyding 1949 (her results are in Barnes 1979: 6 n.13): Lyding has the broadest basis: an analysis of all enjambments in both Homeric epics. – Higbie 1990: 82: she has analysed all enjambments of the Iliad. – Kirk 1976: 182; his sample is the whole of Iliad 16, with 867 verses the longest and, in his view, most typical book of the Iliad; see Kirk 1976: 155; his percentages have been computed by Higbie 1990: 82). – LITERATE TEXTS: Parry 1971: 254 n.1.

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What can be inferred from the statistical evidence? 1. In terms of the enjambment test, the South-Slavic texts behave like the unequivocally oral songs that they are, showing predominance of adding enjambment and a low frequency of necessary enjambment. 2. Conversely, in terms of the enjambment test, Argonautika and Aeneid behave like the unequivocally literate texts that they are, showing predominance of necessary enjambment and a low frequency of the non-periodic kind. 3. In terms of the enjambment test, these oral and literate texts behave exactly as Oral Theory postulates. The Homeric texts, in sharp contrast, do not. They show a far higher frequency of necessary enjambment than the oral texts. But what is more, its frequency is higher than that of adding enjambment305 – slightly higher in some, and significantly more so in those of Kirk and ClaymanNortwick306. Thus the evidence contradicts Lord’s claim that the Homeric epics have passed the enjambment test of orality. Yet this is not all: not only is necessary enjambment in Homer generally more frequent – its heavier, more literate forms (= 3, 4) far outnumber its lighter form (= 2) as well: Iliad Parry

Iliad XVI

Yugoslav epic Argonautika Aeneid

Higbie Kirk

Higbie

Lord

24.47 33.1

27.22

14.9

49.1

49.2

5.12 12.2

5.42

14.0

(9.1)

(9.2)

3+4prosaic/harsh (ca. 20)30719.35 20.9

21.8

(ca. 0.9)308

(ca. 40)

(ca. 40)

2+3+4 necessary 26.6 2 periodic

(6.6)

Parry

Parry

This prevalence of the stronger, i. e. more literate, forms of necessary enjambment (= 3 & 4) over the milder one (= 2) moves the Homeric texts closer to the penned texts of Vergil and Apollonios. Yet more importantly, it moves them far away from the oral texts: for, according to Lord, while necessary enjambment in its stronger 305 With the exception of Higbie’s, on which more below. – Barnes-Lyding present for the Iliad essentially equal percentages of both types. 306 Clayman-Van Nortwick’s statistics have met with hostility in oralist quarters: they have been denounced as aberrant by Barnes 1979 and Janko 1982; it is probably their high percentages of necessary enjambment that offended. Yet theirs do not very much deviate from those of Kirk. The statistics of the chief editor of the Cambridge Commentary have never been questioned, let alone criticized, though Kirk even surmises (see below) that he has underestimated the percentage of necessary enjambment in Iliad XVI. 307 Parry gives no differentiating percentages for (2) and (3) in Homer, Apollonios and Vergil; instead he estimates that the stronger form of necessary enjambment (=prosaic) occurs every second or third verse in Vergil and Apollonios, and every fifth verse in Homer (Parry 1971: 264). The figures with ‘ca.’ are derived from this estimate – an estimate which corresponds to a reader’s experience. 308 This is based on Lord’s information (Lord 1948: 119) that prosaic or integral enjambment in the Yugoslav singers is “less than one percent”, found only, with one exception, in Avdo Mededovic’s dictated song.

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forms (= 3 & 4) “by far predominates in the Homeric poems, [it] … is so rare in the South-Slavic songs as to be practically non-existent”309. Here the results of Kirk’s analysis can give an impression of the enormity of the difference: of the 287 cases of necessary enjambment he registers in Iliad XVI, he lists 106 (= 37 %) as periodic (= 2, ‘progressive’ in his terminology) and 181 (= 63 %) as the combined number of integral (= 3) and violent (= 4) enjambments. The latter figure may be even higher, as Kirk believes he has “probably understated the total number of integral enjambments” by regularly listing ambiguous cases as ‘progressive’, i. e., ‘adding’ enjambment310. In terms of enjambment, then, the Homeric epics come to be positioned between the oral songs and the penned epics, exhibiting as they do in roughly equal measure the deployment of oral adding and non-oral (literate) necessary enjambment. It is a significant instance of the co-existence of oral and non-oral elements in Homer. Yet having failed to pass the enjambment test of orality does not mean that the Homeric texts have thereby passed the implicit test of literacy. For so far the result of the enjambment test – the near equipoise of oral and non-oral enjambment – is inconclusive. To be sure, this is not the last word on the enjambment test: it is this very inconclusiveness that will turn out to be significant for the postoral argument. c. PARRYISTS IN DENIAL This, however, is not how Parryists read the results. They cannot live with inconclusiveness. They cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the verdict of their own statistics. They cannot accept that for Homer the enjambment test does not confirm what Oral Theory postulates. They are thus in denial of this textual reality in the Homeric epics. The denial started with Parry’s astounding conclusion that “Homer was ever pushed on to use unperiodic enjambment”311; “in it above all lies the marked beat and swing of the Homeric rhythm”312. This conclusion blatantly contradicts the testimony of his own statistics. Lord attempts to explain this contradiction by pointing out that Parry asserted “that unperiodic enjambment was a distinctive characteristic of the Homeric style” on the grounds that he found it being twice as frequent in Homer as in Vergil and Apollonios313. Lord thereby inadvertently draws attention 309 Lord 1949: 120 f. (emphasis added); see also Lord 1960: 145. This remarkable difference between Homer and the Yugoslav oral bards Lord explained with the greater length of the hexameter which provides more opportunities to start anew a thought before verse-end than the shorter Yugoslav decasyllabic verse does. Lord seems to have in mind the necessary enjambments starting at the bucolic diaereses. However, the argument from the longer verse also cuts the other way: the greater length of the hexameter should help complete a period before verseend, thus avoiding un-oral necessary enjambments. 310 Kirk 1976: 155. 311 Parry 1971: 262. 312 Parry 1971: 264. 313 Parry 1971: 264; Lord 1949: 114.

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to a flaw in Parry’s comparative method: as Higbie has critically observed, Parry had compared “Homer to Yugoslavian oral poetry to find similarities and to Apollonius and Vergil to find differences”314. Such strategic shifting of focus enabled him to gloss over the fact that periodic enjambment is an even more distinct characteristic of the Homeric style. Parryists have never questioned the master’s conclusion of 1929: as recently as 2012 Mark Edwards re-asserted in his entry “Enjambment” in the Homer Encyclopedia Parry’s view that adding enjambment is “fundamentally Homeric”315. Yet there is unease among Parryists, Edwards included, about the all too high frequency of necessary enjambment in their oral Homer, especially since it comes along with the very high proportion of its heavier un-oral forms. All of this goes against Parryist doctrine. Strategies have been devised to explain away the unwelcome evidence and thus sustain the blissful state of denial – chiefly by either narrowing the category of necessary enjambment or by widening that of adding enjambment. Mark Edwards narrows it by excluding all cases of necessary enjambment beginning at the bucolic diaereses316 on the grounds that too few words can stand before the verse-end to speak of sense units (which Higbie rightly dismisses as special pleading317). Higbie, in turn, widens the concept of adding enjambment (= 1) into what she calls a “vast and varied assortment”, including numerous cases that Parry, Lord, and Kirk rank as necessary (= 2), prosaic (= 3) or even violent (= 4). Naturally, it has the effect of lowering the percentage of necessary enjambment for Homer318. Yet neither strategy could make the contrary evidence vanish. To achieve that ‘vanishing act’, Egbert Bakker proposed to suppress the notion of enjambment in Homer altogether, “even in its softened, ‘unperiodic’ sense”. He does so by abandoning the notion of the Homeric sentence319. Necessary enjambment is bound up with the sentence, as Bakker rightly holds; for it comes about through the verse-end separating essential constituents of sentential syntax (predicate, subject, object etc.) from one another. Once the sentence is abolished, there are no essential constituents

314 315 316 317 318

Higbie 1991: 9. Edwards (M. W.) 2012: 252. For a critique, see Friedrich 2000: 4–6 of Higbie; 9–10 of Edwards. Higbie 1990: 12. This result greatly gladdens the oralist heart of Bryan Hainsworth. In his review of Higbie’s book (Hainsworth 1992), he finds it quite consoling to see the proportion of necessary enjambments reduced to, as he believes, 19 percent: “fairly frequent”, he concedes; but, as he happily adds, “… unlikely to strike the reader as having any particular significance, either technically or stylistically”. Hainsworth is here the victim of the confusion arising from Higbie’s deviant use of the term ‘necessary’, which corresponds to Parry’s term ‘prosaic’ and Kirk’s term ‘integral’. Higbie’s actual totals for necessary enjambment, i. e., the combined types 2, 3 and 4, are not 19 percent, but 24.47 percent for the whole Iliad, and 27.22 percent for Iliad XVI (see Higbie 1990: 82, Table 3.1). Even so, Higbie’s statistics show a proportion of necessary enjambment that is still much too high for passing the enjambment test of orality, which stipulates low frequency. 319 For a critical account of this proposal see Friedrich 2000: 10–15.

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to separate by verse-end; and so enjambment vanishes with the sentence. No sentence, no enjambment! Let us try to unpack Bakker’s astounding doctrine. To more determined oralists like him, Parry’s and Notopoulos’ brave talk on parataxis in Homer has always remained a halfway house. Bakker has chided his fellow Parryists for not having gone far enough as oralists: “they kept applying, whether or not implicitly, the linguistic standards of written language to Homer”, and hitherto failed to “accept the ultimate linguistic and cognitive consequences of what it means to speak about oral poetry”320. It means that one has to accept the “oral basis” for the discussion of the Homeric style; and this acceptance “consists in abandoning … the concept of ‘sentence’ in favour of an approach in terms of ‘idea units’ reflecting the cognitive processes of the narrative”321. This latter point refers to human cognitive limitations: in oral discourse a speaker as well as a listener can focus on a very limited amount of information at any one time. Thus the oral story-teller can communicate – and his hearers can cognitively process – his total amount of information in “small chunks” only. It is manifest in the “fragmented linear organization of oral discourse in idea units” (the ‘small chunks’) – in contrast to written discourse which integrates its information in syntactical structures, i. e., ordered sentences. The linguistic-cognitive theory that Bakker invokes postulates the opposition of “the fragmentation of speech … to the integration of writing”322 – that is to say, of orality’s paratactic cumulative strings of juxtaposed fragmented idea units to literacy’s integral structures of sentential syntax. As long as one assumes sentential syntax in the Homeric epics, one is applying the standards of written literature to oral texts. In the discussion of Homeric style, Bakker holds, Parryists must give up the notion of ‘sentence’; for it belongs to literacy and is alien to orality. Only then would Parryism come into its own as a complete and genuine oralism. Bakker exemplifies his linguistic-cognitive approach in the four-verse passage at Il. 11. 369–72: (Ex. 1)

aujta;r ∆Alevxandro~, ÔElevnh~ povsi~ hju>kovmoio, Tudeivdh/ ejpi; tovxa titaivneto poimevni law`n, sthvlh/ keklimevno~ ajndrokmhvtw/ ejpi; tuvmbw/ “Ilou Dardanivdao palaiou` dhmogevronto~.

3 1 1 0≠

By conventional standards, this passage forms a complex enjambing sentence – a hypotactical structure subordinating by participial construction one action (keklimevno~) to another (titaivneto). It deploys three enjambments, one of the heavier necessary kind, with the verse-end separating the subject ∆Alevxandro~ from its predicate titaivneto; and two of the adding kind, extending the completed sentence by participial, and descriptive-genitival phrases. Yet in Bakker’s cognitive-linguistic approach this passage reads quite differently: 320 Bakker 1990: 1–2. 321 Bakker 1990: 19. 322 Bakker 1990: 4.

Parataxis & Hypotaxis in Homer – The Enjambment Test a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

123

But Alexandros, the husband of Helen of the fair hair, to Tudeides his bow he aimed the herdsman of the soldiers, leaning on the gravestone, on the man-made tomb, (that) of Ilus the son of Dardanus, the elder of the people.

This passage, Bakker comments, “instead of being one complex integrated sentence … falls apart in eight successive idea units, which together vocalize various aspects of one coherent mental picture”323. His decisive operation that effects this transformation from sentence to a string of successive informational chunks is deployed at idea unit (c). It is the core of the passage, which he calls, obviously in order to avoid the term ‘sentence’, “the clause proper” or, for short, the “clausal unit”: Tudeivdh/ e[pi; tovxa titaivneto, “to Tudeides his bow he aimed”. He makes it “perfectly complete” by extracting its “real subject” (‘he’) from the inflexion of the verb. What hitherto passed for the subject (∆Alevxandro~) is unmasked as the “alleged subject” and demoted to the rank of a “syntactically detached constituent”, a “dislocated theme”, said to function as a topic-shifting device that directs the hearer’s attention from one actor in the battle-narrative to another. It ranks as a “L(eft)dislocation” placed as it is ahead or to the left of the clausal unit. A dislocated theme placed after it or to its right goes by the name of “R(ight)-dislocation” as ”Ektwr Priamivdh~, another “alleged subject”, does at Il. 11. 299–300324 : (Ex. 2)

e[nqa tivna prw`ton, tivna djj∆ u{staton ejxenavrixen ”Ektwr Priamivdh~, o{te oiJ Zeu;~ ku`do~ e[dwken;

3

(a) Then whom first, whom last did he kill, (b) Hektor, son of Priam, (c) when Zeus granted him glory?

Necessary enjambment (= 3) vanishes in both instances – thanks to the dissolution of the sentence into a linear string of fragmented idea-units, where verse-end no longer separates necessary constituents (subject, object, predicate). For according to linguistic-cognitive theory, both ‘alleged subjects’, ∆Alevxandro~ and ”Ektwr Priamivdh~, are already separate as L/R dislocations. Furthermore, in Ex.1 the two adding enjambments of (e) and (f), dissolve too: far from extending an already-begun sentence, as the conventional view has it, the fragmented idea-units (e) and (f) specify, as an afterthought to the clausal unit, circumstance and place of its action to complete the mental picture. Designating “Homer’s style as fragmented and full of concomitant L- and R-dislocations”325 without the benefit of sentential syntax amounts to a radicalization of the oralist axiom of the pervasiveness of parataxis in the Homeric epic. It raises in a fundamental way the question about Homeric syntax in terms of parataxis and hypotaxis with regard to the orality-literacy axis. 323 Bakker 1990: 10 (emphasis added). 324 Bakker 1990: 16. 325 Bakker 1990: 14.

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d. “NONCONFIGURATIONALITY” This kind of reasoning on Homeric style and syntax has found a home in a trend in linguistics, dubbed nonconfigurationality326. It is the theorization of phrasal arrangements in free-word-order languages. Here parataxis no longer refers, as it usually does, merely to an interclausal relation, that is, between clauses in terms of coordination versus subordination – in the framework of nonconfigurationality, parataxis refers also to the infraclausal relations of the constituents of the sentence, operating primarily within the clause, with juxtaposition trumping structure. Here are the coiners of the term, A. M. Devine and L. D. Stephens: The term nonconfigurational implies that the language has a rather flat (as opposed to hierarchical) phrase structure. In the most highly nonconfigurational languages, there is little or no evidence for the verb phrase as a syntactic constituent, and there are no subject-object asymmetries that require a structural explanation327.

Not exactly a pellucid statement! Bakker’s much more lucid prose puts it this way: in nonconfigurationality, there is little ‘configuration’ in the form of hierarchical relations between constituents, and noun phrases typically are syntactically independent, without being ‘bound’ to the verb as an obligatory subject or object.

With “such a decentered structuring of clauses”, Bakker holds, the verb/predicate is not the nexus of the clause, with the noun phrases complementing it as its necessary ‘arguments’ (subject, object, indirect object), but an element specifying the relationship between a number of syntactically independent pieces of information328.

It is Bakker’s cognitive-linguistic theory of ordinary speech with its “chunkwise linear progression” and its L-/R-dislocations all over again – now spelled out in the terms of this larger trend in linguistics. A comparison of a configurational with a nonconfigurational translation of Il. 2. 402–3 shows what is involved: (Ex. 3)

Aujta;r o} bou`n iJevreusen a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnwn pivona pentaevthron uJpermenevvi> Kronivwni.

To a ‘configurational’ translation such as “and ruler of men Agamemnon sacrificed a fat five-year-old bull to the overpowering son of Kronos”, Bakker opposes his own nonconfigurational translation: “But he, a bull, sacrificed, ruler of men, Agamemnon, fat, five years old, to the overpowering one, the son of Kronos”329.

The configurational translation is said “not (to) do justice to the Homeric original”, while the nonconfigurational one “better captures the flow of the passage”330. The 326 327 328 329 330

Devine-Stephens 1999; Bakker 2011. Devine-Stephens 1999: 142. Bakker 2011: 835 (emphasis added). Bakker 2011: 835. Bakker 2011: 835.

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implication seems to be that it is more authentic. The syntactical discontinuity331 that nonconfigurationality connotes arises mainly from making the pronoun oJ the subject proper of the clausal unit, rendering the “alleged subject” a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnwn a R-dislocation, appositional to the pronoun. When read nonconfiguratively, the apparent sentence dissolves into a paratactic juxtaposition of fragmented and loosely related phrasal units. It is similar with these two verses that Devine and Stephens adduce as evidence in support of claiming Homeric Greek for nonconfigurationality: (Ex. 4)

h{ min e[geire / Nausikavan eu[peplon (Od. 6. 48–9) ‘And she awakened her, beautifully dressed Nausikaa’.

(Ex. 5)

……… o} d∆ ejpevdrame faivdimo~ Ai[a~ (Il. 5. 617) ‘And he ran up, shining Aias’.

Instead of direct object (in Ex. 4) and subject (in Ex. 5), they register “nominals made appositional to independent pronouns” (Nausikavan to min, Ai[a~ to o{)”, just as Bakker did in (Ex. 3): what in configurational syntax are constituents of an ordered sentence, become in the nonconfigurational reading dislocated themes, here R-dislocations in either case332. – What Devine-Stephens call “the paratactic character of Homeric syntax”333 they see exemplified by prolepsis, as in (Ex. 6) (Ex. 7)

aujto;n d∆ ouj savfa oi\da, povqen gevno~ eu[cetai ei\nai (Od. 17. 373); Tudei?dhn d∆ oujk a]n gnoivh~ potevroisi meteivh (Il. 5. 85).

All told, nonconfigurationality, in concert with the cognitive-linguistic theory of ordinary speech334, has taken the oralist tenet of pervasive parataxis in Homer to a new level by extending parataxis from interclausal relations to the infraclausal arrangements of sentential constituents. By construing thus Homer’s style as fragmented and replete with concomitant L- and R-dislocations, it has thereby advanced the Parryist tenet of pervasive parataxis in Homer to the negation of Homeric sentential syntax. My reservation starts with the term itself: nonconfigurationality, a ponderous and unwieldy coinage, is as clumsy as the prose which the nonconfigurational translation of Ex. 3 gives rise to (‘but he, a bull, sacrificed … etc.”). By construing the pronoun oJ as the subject proper, and the constituent a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnwn as an appositional R-dislocation, non-configurationality manufactures the postulated syntactical discontinuity by dissolving the sentence into a string of fragmented and loosely connected units. What it does in fact is to turn oJ, used here as a stylistic device for emphasis, into a vehicle of linguistic and philological prestidigitation. 331 Devine-Stevens 1999: 142. 332 As further evidence for nonfigurationality Devine-Stephens adduce “number and case agreement lapses”, normally known as anacolutha, as in Nestorivdai d∆, oJ me;n ou[tas∆ ∆Atuvmnion ojxevi> douriv (Il. 16. 317); th`~ djj … ajnagnouvsh/(Od. 23. 205); Zeu` pavter … ∆Hevliov~ q∆ (Il. 3. 276). 333 Devine-Stephens 1999: 148. 334 “Homeric syntax, being a high-register poetic idiom in a non-configurational language, is a stylized form of the flow of ordinary speech” (Bakker 2011: 836).

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It has become patent that the negation of Homeric sentential syntax proceeds chiefly by the demotion of essential constituents of the sentence, such as subject and object, to the status of L- and R-dislocations. For a critical assessment, let us briefly revisit the two passages where these terms are being exemplified: (Ex. 1)

aujta;r ∆Alevxandro~, ÔElevnh~ povsi~ hju>kovmoio, Tudeivdh/ ejpi; tovxa titaivneto, poimevni law`n, sthvlh/ keklimevno~ ajndrokmhvtw/ ejpij tuvmbw/ “Ilou Dardanivdao palaiou` dhmogevronto (Il. 11. 369–72)

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(Ex. 2)

e[nqa tivna prw`ton, tivna djj∆ u{staton ejxenavrixen ”Ektwr Priamivdh~, o{te oiJ Zeu;~ ku`do~ e[dwken; (Il. 11. 299–300).

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To any reader, unencumbered by current linguistic theories, it is immediately manifest that either passage forms, by all standards, a regular sentence, each complete with subject, object, and predicate. Both display hypotaxis, a moderate form (participial) in Ex. 1, a more pronounced one (clausal) in Ex. 2. Furthermore, both are heavily enjambed by way of the prosaic/integral form of necessary enjambment (= 3). Nothing in both passages would therefore compel one to divorce their subjects from their predicates and reduce them to Left- and Right-dislocations, while extracting new subjects from the inflections of the predicates. It is the doctrine of nonconfigurationality that inflicts this procedure on the Homeric text in order to make the two well-ordered sentences dissolve into strings of fragmented idea units and thus to void the concept of sentence for the Homeric epic altogether. Being purely theorydriven, it amounts to a mere renaming of the grammatical subjects – an unwarranted, tendentious, and arbitrary renaming. It is by sheer fiat that these two sentences are made to cease existing as sentences. A sophisticated sleight-of-hand makes sentential syntax vanish from Homeric diction: the Homeric sentence is first dismantled and then pronounced non-existent. It is a clear case of circular theorizing: a theory creating its object which then provides the evidence for the theory. To be fair, occasionally Bakker can claim that “Homeric Greek sometimes allows us to ‘prove’ the dislocated status of a nominal constituent”, and that in two ways: by an oddly placed enclitic and an apparently pleonastic pronoun. For instance, “the ‘proof’ of the existence of R-dislocation in Homeric discourse may be made on the basis of cases like this” (and here Bakker cites from Ex. 3)335: (Ex. 3)

aujta;r o} bou`n iJevreusen a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnwn.

Here the ‘proof’ (the inverted commas with ‘prove’ and ‘proof’ are Bakker’s) consists in the seemingly redundant o{, that, far from deeming it pleonastic, Bakker declares the subject proper of the clause: this declaration then effects the described demotion of the ‘alleged subject’ a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnwn to the status of appositional R-dislocation (similarly o{ in [Ex. 5], and min as object proper in [Ex. 4]). The other proof is provided by the deviantly placed particle a[ra, here as rJ∆, at Il. 16. 220–21 :

335 Bakker 1990: 12.

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aujta;r ∆Acilleu;~ / bh` rJ∆ i[men ej~ klisivhn. ‘But Achilleus/ strode to go into his tent.’

Its deviant placing is said to signal that the clausal unit begins with bh`, implying that the ‘alleged subject’ Achilleus is placed outside the clausal unit and the subject proper is to be derived from the verbal inflection336. At least, o{ and rJ∆ in Exx. 3 and 8 do offer some sort of evidence, however tenuous337. But in Bakker’s model such evidence, if available, is an additional bonus; it is not required, as the nonconfigurational analysis is applied also when there is no pleonastic pronoun nor deviantly placed particle: “I wish to extend this analysis even to cases where the ‘pleonastic’ pronoun is absent”; and “even when a[ra (or any other enclitic) in its seemingly deviant position is absent”338. Nonconfigurationality is thereby, without further ado, uncritically extrapolated to the whole of Homeric syntax. In essence, nonconfigurationality takes up the widely shared assumption among oralists – that the Homeric narrative style is for the most part, if not altogether, paratactic, and that the paratactic-adding enjambment is “fundamentally Homeric”339 – and drives it over the top, as it were. It thereby turns parataxis into something like ‘hyper-parataxis’ (sit venia verbo). The textual evidence offered for nonconfigurationality in Homer is exiguous and remarkably trivial, besides being debatable; and occasionally it backfires. Adducing, as Devine and Stephens do, prolepsis as a sign of the paratactic character of Homeric syntax340 is a case in point (Exx. 6 & 7): as the anticipation of the subject of a subordinate clause in the main sentence, prolepsis itself connotes hypotaxis. One is at a loss as to why the assumed “paratactic proclivities” of Homeric Greek341 are being exemplified by verses with a hypotactic structure. Moreover, far from exemplifying nonconfigurality both verses exhibit configurality in that the anticipated subjects of the subordinate clauses are grammatically adjusted to the syntax of their main sentences by being changed from nominative to accusative (aujtovn, Tudei?dhn). The syntactical discontinuity that nonconfigurationality avers would have ensued only if prolepsis had left the subjects of the subordinate clauses in their original case. Exemplifying assumed “paratactic proclivities” of Homeric Greek by hypotactically structured verses is rather odd, not to say self-defeating. It is as odd as Parry’s 336 Bakker 2011: 835. 337 And debatable, namely being susceptible to different explanations: the ‘pleonastic’ pronoun could serve as rhetorical emphasis (Ex. 3); and the position of the particle might be explained metrically as avoidance of hiatus shortening (Ex. 8). 338 Bakker 1990: 13 (emphasis in text). 339 Cf. Edwards 2011: 252–3: adding enjambment is “fundamentally Homeric”; Edwards embraces Bakker’s approach to the Homeric narrative analyzing it as successions of separate idea units, placed ahead or after their clausal unit, “instead of a complex enjambing sentence”; and quoting affirmatively Bakker on “abandoning the concept of sentence” as the “oral basis” of the Homeric style. 340 Devine-Stephens 1999: 148. 341 Devine-Stephens 1999: 142.

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conclusion of the greater frequency of adding enjambment in Homer, when in fact his own statistics tell the opposite. There is a connection between both these oddities. Pervasive parataxis in Homer is as much an unfounded oralist rumour as is the prevalence of adding enjambment in Iliad and Odyssey. It is hard to explain how this persistent rumour could arise in view of these statistical facts on enjambment and of the frequent occurrence of subordinating conjunctions in the Homeric epics such as eij, aij, wJ~ eij, i{na, o[fra, ei|o~, privn, wJ~, o{ti, o{, o{te, eu\te, ejpeiv, e[ste, ktl.: they are clear indicators of Homeric hypotaxis, along with Homer’s differentiated use of the moods and of the modal particle a[n/ken342. What is not hard to explain is why this rumour has arisen in the first place; and why it is not only tenaciously adhered to but is now upgraded and radicalized to the negation of the Homeric sentence. Being “prisonniers de l’oralisme”, as we recall A. Ballabriga’s apt characterization343, Parryists are bound to view the epics through the oralist prism. It has them register in Homer what oralism’s doctrine postulates – the pervasiveness of parataxis and prevalence of adding enjambment; and has them gloss over what the doctrine says should not be there – the frequency of hypotaxis and of necessary enjambment. e. HYPOTAXIS IN HOMER To readers of Homer, who do not view the text through the prism of oralism, the alleged non-existence of Homeric sentential syntax is at the very least counterintuitive. On every page they come across hypotactic structures in various forms and degrees of subordination – clausal, participial, and infinitival. These are often combined, and at times elegantly so, as for instance at Il. 4. 415–7: (Ex. 9)

Touvtw/ me;n ga;r ku`do~ a{m∆ e{yetai, ei[ ken ∆Acaioiv Trw`a~ dh/wvswsin e{lwsiv te “Ilion iJrhvn, touvtw/ d∆ au\ mevga pevnqo~ ∆Acaiw`n dh/wqevntwn.

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Diomedes’ reflections on the profits and risks of Agamemnon (= touvtw/) as supreme leader are shaped by a rhetorical frame of configured parallelism/antithesis/chiasm/ anaphora, further enhanced by variatio, when the absolute participle construction of v. 417 takes the place of an eij-clause corresponding to that of v. 415. This heavily enjambed complex sentence alone should discredit the nonconfigurational negation of Homeric sentential syntax. As a matter of fact, hypotactic structures abound in Homer, occurring in units ranging in scope from the half-verse to passages of five verses: (Ex.10) Savfa d∆ oujk oi\d∆ eij qeov~ ejstin (Il. 5. 183b). Nu`n d∆ e[rcesq∆ ejpi; dei`pnon, i{na xunavgwmen a[rea (Il. 2. 381; 19. 275).

342 On the moods in Homer, see the study of Willmott 2007. 343 Ballabriga 1990: 28.

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Parataxis & Hypotaxis in Homer – The Enjambment Test Eij dev ti tw`nd∆ ejpivorkon, ejmoi; qeoi; a[lgea doi`en polla; mavl∆, o{ssa didou`sin o{ti~ sf∆ ajlivthtai ojmovssa~ (Il. 19. 264–5).

1

Kaiv nuv ken e[nq∆ ajpovloito a[nax ajndrw`n Aijneiva~, eij mh; a[r∆ ojxu; novhse Dio;~ qugavthr ∆Afrodivth, mhvthr, h{ min uJp∆ ∆Agcivsh/ tevke boukolevonti (Il. 5. 311–3).

2 1

∆All∆ a[ge qa`sson o[trunon povlemovnde kavrh komovwnta~ ∆Acaiouv~, o[fr∆ e[ti kai; Trwvwn peirhvsomai ajntivo~ ejlqwvn, ai[ k∆ ejqevlws∆ ejpi; nhusi;n ijauvein (Il. 19. 68–71).

3 2 2

ÔOssavki d∆ oJrmhvseie podavrkh~ di`o~ ∆Acilleuv~ sth`nai ejnantivbion kai; gnwvmenai, ei[ min a{pante~ ajqavnatoi fobevousi, toi; oujrano;n eujru;n e[cousin, tossavki min mevga ku`ma diipetevo~ potamoi`o plavz∆ w[mou~ kaquvperqen (Il. 21. 265–268).

3 4 2 3

Note that the majority of these instances display more than one level of syntactical subordination, with the last one showing even four: three clausal ones (oJssavki, eij, toiv) and one infinitival. Also note the heavy enjambment. There are even larger hypotactically structured units. I conclude the demonstration of the existence of Homeric sentential syntax by analyzing three large-scale hypotactical structures in terms of levels of grammmatical subordination ([1] – [6]) and enjambment (1–3): (Ex. 11)

oi] de; kai; aujtoiv ou[te biva~ Trwvwn uJpedeivdisan ou[te ijwkav~ ajll∆ e[menon, – [1] nefevlh/sin ejoikovte~, – [2] a{~ te Kronivwn nhnemivh~ e[sthsen ejp∆ ajkropovloisin o[ressin ajtrevma~, – [3] o[fr∆ eu{dhsi mevno~ Borevao kai; a[llwn zacreiw`n ajnevmwn, – [4] oi{ te nevfea skioventa pnoih/`sin ligurh/`si diaskidna`sin ajevnte~: w}~ Danaoi; Trw`a~ mevnon e[mpedon oujd∆ ejfevbonto. (Il. 5. 520–26)

(Ex. 12) aj[ll∆ uJmei`~ me;n ijovnte~ ajristhvessin ∆Acaiw`n ajggelivhn ajpovfasqe – to; gajr gevra~ ejsti; gerovntwn – – [1] o[fr∆ a[llhn fravzwntai ejni; fresi; mh`tin ajmeivnw, – [2]] h{ kev sfin nh`av~ te saw`i kai; lao;n ∆Acaiw`n/nhusi;n e[pi glafurh/'~, – [3] ejpei; ou[ sfisin h{dev g∆ eJtoivmh, – [4] h}n nu`n ejfravssanto – [5] ejmei`∆ ajpomhsivnanto~. (Il. 9. 421–26).

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oiJ de; kai; aujtoiv sfh//`sin ajtasqalivh/sin uJpe;r movron a[lge∆ e[cousin, – [1] wJ~ kai; nu`n Ai[gisqo~ uJpe;r movron ∆Atreiv>dao gh`m∆ a[locon mnhsthvn, – [2]to;n d∆ e[ktane nosthvsanta, – [3] eijdw;~ aijpu;n o[leqron: – [4] ejpei; prov oiJ ei[pomen hJmei`~, – [5] ÔErmeivan pevmyante~, ejuvskopon∆ Argei>fovnthn, – [6] mhvt∆ aujto;n kteivnein mhvte mnavasqai a[koitin: (Od. 1. 33–39).

3 2 3 1 2

Note in Exx. 11–13 the heavy enjambment that goes with the high degree of hypotaxis. What clinches the case for Homeric sentential syntax and hypotaxis is the use of the oblique optative in both epics – a sure index of hypotaxis: (Ex. 14) e[nq∆ au\ Tudeivdh/ Diomhvdei> Palla;~ ∆Aqhvnh dw`ke mevno~ kai; qavrso~, i{n∆ e[kdhlo~ meta; pa`sin ∆Argeivoisi gevnoito ijde; klevo~ ejsqlo;n a[roito. (Il. 5. 1–3).

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(Ex. 15) Pa;r d∆ aujto;~ klismo;n qevto poikivlon, e[ktoqen a[llwn mnhsthvrwn, mh; xei`no~ ajnihqei;~ ojrumagdw/` deivpnw/ aJdhvseien, uJperfiavloisi metelqwvn, hjd j i{na min peri; patro;~ ajpoicomevnoio e[roito. (Od. 1. 132–5).

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Here are two more instances of the use of the oblique optative from either epic, each presenting its principal hero deliberating in a critical situation: (Ex. 16) w}~ favto: Phleivwni d∆ a[co~ gevnet ∆, ejn dev oiJ h\tor sthvqessin lasivoisi diavndica mermhvrixen, hj∆ o{ ge favsganon ojxu; ejrussavmeno~ para; mhrou' tou;~ me;n ajnasthvseien, o} d∆ ∆Atreivdhn ejnarivzoi, h\e covlon pauvseien ejrhtuvseiev te qumovn. (Il. 1. 188–92).

3 2 3 2

(Ex. 17)

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aujta;r ejgwv ge ejgrovmeno~ kata; qumo;n ajmuvmona mermhvrixa, hje; pesw;n ejk nho;~ ajpofqivmhn ejni; povntw/, h\ ajkevwn tlaivhn kai; e[ti zwoi`si meteivhn. (Od. 10. 49–52).

Again note the heavy enjambment. Though less frequently used than in later Greek, the oblique optative is already well established in Homeric Greek, attesting to the existence of the Homeric complex sentence. The advocates of nonconfigurationality ignore such Homeric structures – quite naturally so, for their theory is predicated on their non-existence. Thus their mere existence – with such great frequency to boot – tells against applying such a theory to the Homeric epic. Sentential syntax in its hypotactic form, then, turns out to be alive and well, residing in Homeric discourse; ditto its component, necessary enjambment. Both prove to be recalcitrant to attempts to have them vanish by theoretical sleight-of-hand. In their Griechische Grammatik Kühner-Gehrt go as far as

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to state, on the basis of plenty of evidence: “in the Homeric poems we find hypotactic syntax developed already to high perfection”344. In sum, the frequent hypotactic structures, and especially the large-scale ones among them, along with the use of the oblique optative, give the lie to the alleged absence of sentential syntax in Homer. Evidence to the contrary is so pronounced that one has to be willfully blind to ignore it. In view of this, the theory-driven denial of the existence of the Homeric sentence and the equally theory-driven assertion of Homeric nonconfigurationality border on the bizarre. It amounts to forcing linguistic primitivism on the Homeric discourse. f. PARATAXIS IN HOMER Nevertheless, paratactic structures obtain in Homer to a far greater extent than they do in Apollonios and Vergil. Homeric parataxis comes in different modes, but principally in two. There is, first, the habitual parataxis Parryists have in mind as oral routine, which, when prevailing in a text, serves as an index of orality. Its relative frequency in the Homeric diction is due to its provenance from oral discourse. The opening three verses of Iliad VIII are typical – mevn-dev coordination instead of protasis-apodosis subordination: (Ex. 18) ∆Hw;~ me;n krokovpeplo~ ejkivdnato pa`san ejp∆ ai\an: Zeu;~ de; qew`n ajgorh;n poihvsato terpikevrauno~ ajjkrotavth/ korufh`/ poludeiravdo~ Oujluvmpoio.

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The reverse is the artistically designed or rhetorical parataxis, the second mode. Consider, for instance, at Il. 2. 382–90, Agamemnon’s instructions when preparing his troops for the impending battle: (Ex. 19) Eu\ mevn ti~ dovru qhxavsqw, eu\ d∆ ajspivda qevsqw, eu\ dev ti~ i{ppoisin dei`pnon dovtw wjkupovdessin, eu\ dev ti~ a{rmato~ ajmfi;~ ijdw;n polevmoio medevsqw, 385 w{~ ke panhmevrioi stugerw/` krinwvmeq∆ a[rhi. ouj ga;r pauswlhv ge metevssetai, oujd j hjbaiovn, eij mh; nu;x ejlqou`sa diakrinevei mevno~ ajndrw`n: iJdrwvsei mevn teo telamw;n ajmfi; sthvqhssin ajspivdo~ ajmfibrovth~, peri; d j e[gcei> cei`ra kamei`tai: 390 iJdrwvsei dev te∆ i{ppo~ ejuvxoon a{rma titaivnwn.

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Such instructions have to be precise and pithy: the apt rhetorical expression for that is paratactic syntax and minimal enjambment. Note the effective rhetoric of anaphora in vv. 382–84 (eu\ mevn ti~ / eu\ devv ti~), and again in vv. 388–90 (iJdrwvsei mevn teo/iJdrwvsei dev te’). Yet in the peroration (vv. 391–93) Agamemnon rounds off this paraenesis with a warning, to be reflected upon; accordingly, the syntax changes to hypotaxis with heavy enjambment, as the suitable stylistic form for reflection:

344 Kühner-Gehrt 1963: 229: “in den Homerischen Gesängen finden wir die hypotaktische Satzverbindung schon bis zu hoher Vollendung ausgebildet”.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas o}n dev k j ejgw;n ajpavneuqe mavch~ ejqevlonta nohvsw mimnavzein para; nhusi; korwnivsin, ouj oiJ e[peita a[rkion ejssei`tai fugevein kuvna~ hjd j oijwnouv~.

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Interchange of parataxis and hypotaxis, along with that of light and heavy enjambment, for stylistic-rhetorical ends, is also deployed for larger units, as for instance in Odysseus’s speech to the army at Il. 2. 284–332345. The most pronounced instance of artistically designed parataxis with zero enjambment – i. e., complete co-terminality – is Achilleus’ exhortation of Patroklos at Il. 16. 126–130: (Ex.20) o[rseo, diogene;~ Patrovklei~ iJppokevleuqe: leuvssw dh; para; nhusi; puro;~ dhi?oio ijwhvn: mh; dh; nh`a~ e{lwsi kai; oujkevti fukta; pevlwntai: duvseo teuvcea qavsson, ejgw; dev ke lao;n ajgeivrw.” »W~ favto, Pavtroklo~ de; koruvsseto nwvropi calkw`/.

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Parataxis renders Achilleus’ speech pithy and imparts to it urgency and pragmatic conciseness346. Another, quite different case of artistically designed parataxis is found in extended similes as well as in longer digressions (parekbavsei~). As a rule, these passages start out as hypotactic structures, soon to be disrupted by a shift to parataxis through the start of a new main clause. A case in point is the blizzard simile at Il. 12. 278–287: (Ex.21) Tw`n d∆, w{" te nifavde~ ciovno~ pivptwsi qameiai; h[mati ceimerivw/, o{te tæ w[reto mhtiveta Zeu;~ 280 neifevmen, ajnqrwvpoisi pifauskovmeno~ ta; a} kh`la: koimhvsa~ dæ ajnevmou~ cevei e[mpedon, o[fra kaluvyh/ uJyhlw`n ojrevwn korufa;~ kai; prwvona~ a[krou~ kai; pediva lwtou`nta kai; ajndrw`n pivona e[rga: kaiv tæ ejfæ aJlo;~ polih`~ kevcutai limevsin te kai; ajkth`i~, 285 ku`ma dev min prosplavzon ejruvketai: a[llav te pavnta ei[lutai kaquvperq∆, o{tæ ejpibrivsh/ Dio;~ o[mbro~: w}~ tw`n ajmfotevrwse livqoi pwtw`nto qameiaiv ktl.

1 2 0 3 1 0 1 3 0 1

The simile begins as a comparative protasis (w{~ te), combined with a subordinate temporal clause (o{te te) – an inchoate hypotactic construction, seemingly held in abeyance but in fact abandoned, when the narrative mode within the simile shifts at v.281 to a prolonged paratactic construction of four clauses (cevei, 281;;; kevcutai, 284; ejruvketai, 285; ei[lutai, 286), two of them with subordinate temporal clauses. When at the end of the simile the narrative takes up again the epic action by stating the tertium comparationis (livqoi qameiaiv ~ nifavde~ ciovno~ qameiaiv 278), the w{~clause does not form the apodosis, resuming and completing the inchoate hypotaxis, as one would expect. The intervening extensive parataxis has made that impossible and created some sort of anacoluthon. The tw`n at v.278 refers to the 345 On this speech see Kirk 1985: 146; Friedrich 2000: 18. 346 Cp. Kirk 1976: 159; Friedrich 2000: 18.

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Achaeans only, but when resumed at v. 287 tw`n refers to both the Achaeans and the Trojans. A similar syntax is found with the extensive excursus (parevkbasi~) at Il. 16. 179–92 that portrays the commander of a Myrmidon division, Eudoros: (Ex. 22) th`~ d∆ eJtevrh~ Eu[dwro~ ajrhvi>o~ hJgemovneuen parqevnio~, to;n e[tikte corw`/ kalh; Polumhvlh Fuvlanto~ qugavthr: th`~ de; kratu;~ ∆Argeifovnth~ hjravsatæ, ojfqalmoi`sin ijdw;n meta; melpomevnh/sin ejn corw//` ∆Artevmido~ crushlakavtou keladeinh`~: aujtivka dæ eij~ uJperw`/æ ajnaba;~ parelevxato lavqrh/ 185 ÔErmeiva~ ajkavkhta: povren dev oiJ ajglao;n uiJo;n Eu[dwron pevri me;n qeivein tacu;n hjde; machthvn. aujta;r ejpei; dh; tovn ge mogostovko~ Eijleivquia ejxavgage pro; fovwsde; kai; hjelivou i[den aujgav~, th;n me;n ∆Eceklh`o~ kratero;n mevno~ ∆Aktorivdao 190 hjgavgeto pro;~ dwvmatæ, ejpei; povre muriva e{dna, to;n dæ oJ gevrwn Fuvla~ eu\ e[trefen hjdæ ajtivtallen ajmfagapazovmeno~ wJ~ ei[ qæ eJo;n uiJo;n ejovnta.

1 1 3 1 0 3 1 0 3 2 3 1 1 0

The portrait starts out hypotactically with a relative clause (tovn), yet then the narrative shifts soon to a paratactic sequence of four main clauses (hjravst∆ 182; parelevxato 184; povren 185; hjgavgeto 190; eu\ e[trefen hjdæ ajtivtallen 191), endowing the portrait with a life of its own. Both instances may be taken, or rather mistaken, as a relapse to habitual parataxis after a hypotactical start – some sort of hypotaxe manquée, as it were. But this is not the case: the shift to parataxis is deliberate for the sake of narrative vividness. In both the extended similes and the excursus, parataxis is designed to allow the actions they depict to develop their own dynamic347. Freed from the hypotactical frame, their narratives are enabled to unfold to form small mimhvsei~ pravxew~, as it were, up to the point where each is rounded off into a full picture. The autonomy of the blizzard simile goes to such length as to portray a silent hushed world brought about by the nifavde~ ciovno~ qameiaiv, in a pronounced contrast to the din of battle effected by the livqoi qameiaiv hurled at one another by the Achaeans and Trojans in the epic action. What militates against the assumption that the shift to parataxis in instances like these constitutes a relapse to habitual parataxis is the fact that within the simile and the excursus internal hypotactical structures occur. In Exx. 21 and 22, then, parataxis, far from being a surviving oral habit, belongs to the second mode, that of poetic design. Yet there are instances of residual habitual parataxis within hypotactic structures in Homer. A case in point is the frequent Homeric use of apodotic dev, when the particle shows up where it is not supposed to be – in apodoseis. Bakker adduces Il. 1. 57–58: (Ex. 23) oi} d∆ ejpei; ou\n h[gerqen oJmhgereve~ t∆ ejgevnonto, toi`si d ∆ ajnistavmeno~ metevfh povda~ wjku;~ ∆Acilleuv~.

2

347 Cf. for an extensive treatment of this phenomenon Friedrich 1975: 47–58 (excursus); 59–75 (similes). See ibid. pp. 115–18 for a critical response to Notopoulos 1949.

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He naturally tries to make the most of it in terms of syntactical discontinuity as the hallmark of nonconfigurationality: “the ‘main clause’ (toi`si d∆ ajnistavmeno~ ktl.) that allegedly completes the thought begun by the preceding subclause, is in reality a fresh clausal unit, which is appended to what precedes in the normal way by dev”348. Now, if this were the case, it would render the ejpeiv-clause a dangling subclause: “And when they had gathered, and Achilleus, having stood up, spoke among them”. But there is a better form of explanation than registering an anacoluthon. Bakker could have drawn support, but did not, from the occasional case of a mevn in the protasis corresponding to a dev apodoticum – a mevn protaticum, as it were: (Ex. 24) aujta;r ejpei; yuca;~ me;n ajpeskevdas∆ a[lludi~ a[llh/ aJgnh;; Persefovneia gunaikw`n qhluteravwn h\lqe d∆j ejpi; yuch; ∆Agamevmnono~ ∆Atrei?dao (Od. 11. 385–7)

It seems as if a hypotactic protasis/apodosis structure has been superimposed on a paratactic mevn – dev construction, leaving the latter intact. It most probably exemplifies a transitional stage from parataxis to hypotaxis. Apodotic dev, when coordinated with mevn in the protasis, is better explained as a paratactic trace within a hypotactic structure, a residue from a once dominant parataxis. And this explanation can be exended to the frequent use of Homeric apodotic dev. To inflate apodotic dev to a case of nonconfigurationality’s syntactical discontinuity would appear to be theoretical overkill. – To conclude: though hypotaxis has gained considerable ground on parataxis in the Homeric epics, they do co-exist, just like the paratactic and the hypotactic forms of enjambment do. Indeed, both parataxis and hypotaxis are extensive in Homer but neither eclipses the other.

348 Bakker 1990: 7 n. 20.

8. COMPOSITION-BY-THEME – THE THEMATIC TEST The “corroborating test for oral composition” that investigates a poem’s “thematic structure”349, writes Lord, “should yield principles of structure as characteristic of oral composition as the principles of the formulaic technique”350. In oral poetry, “there is a common stock of formulas … and there is a common stock of themes”351; for “the oral epic poet needs well-established themes for rapid composition”352 as much as he needs a store of well-established traditional formulas: “The themes of oral poetry are the repeated narrative or descriptive elements, and they function in building songs in much the same way in which the formulas function in building lines”353. From his first descriptions of the oral theme up to his last, Lord has always stressed its analogy to the formula, especially in terms of repetition in the sense of regular use as the defining element of the theme: “the theme can be defined as a recurrent element of narration or description in traditional oral poetry”, such as assembly, arming, pondering, sacrifice etc.; and he adds: “it is approximately what Arend called ‘die typischen Scenen’ … Regular use, or repetition, is as much part of the definition of the theme as it is of the definition of the formula, but the repetition need not be exact”354. The typicality, or to use Arend’s handy German term, the Typik of oral themes, then, has a modicum of flexibility that allows for variation according to context355. Lord’s term for such flexibility is ‘multiformity’; for the differing instantiations of a theme the term is ‘multiform’356. Mention of the typical scenes, or type-scenes, brings to mind Milman Parry’s 1937 review of Walter Arend’s 1933 book357. It was in this review that the analogy of formula and typical scene was first established: Parry lauded Arend for “clearly see(ing) the schematization of Homer’s composition: … Homer uses a fixed diction and follows a fixed pattern for the telling of his story”358. Their common denominator, schematization, is the key-word. With the Arend-review he extended schematization, as the hall-mark of oral composition, from formular to thematic structure. 349 Lord 1960: 145. 350 Lord 1951: 74 (emphasis added). 351 Lord 1960: 95; 145; Lord 1951: 74 (emphasis added). 352 Lord 1960: 131. 353 Lord 1991: 41. 354 Lord, 1951: 73. – Cp. also the definition in Lord 1960: 63: “a group of ideas regularly used in telling a tale in the formulaic style of traditional song”; see also Lord 1995: 157. 355 Arend 1933, 21975. 356 See Lord 1960: 120. 357 Parry 1971: 404–407. 358 Parry 1971: 405 (emphasis added). In ‘Cor Huso’ Milman Parry suggests, in Adam Parry’s words, “an equivalence of theme and formula” (in A. Parry 1971: p. XLII): “Indeed, it is obvious that the distinction between the verse and the theme is only one of degree, and that even as the verse and the theme might be called formulas, so the simple verse might be designated as one of the types of simple themes” (Parry 1971: 446).

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Thus, next to the schematized formulas, it is the type-scenes that attest most patently to the oral provenance of a text. It is they that answer to Parry’s and Lord’s concept of the oral theme; and they do so chiefly by virtue of their schematization, manifest in their recurrent typical patterns (their schemata) and the repeated phrases. The oral themes as type-scenes, fixed as they are in the essentials and variable in the details, allow for variation in wording as well as in pattern through contraction or expansion, the latter in the form of elaboration by ornamentation. This variation makes for the multiformity of the oral theme. Yet note that, for all its multiformity, the oral theme is, as Lord emphasizes again and again, “not simply a repeated subject” or motif, since such is found “in written literature as well”: it is a “repeated passage rather than a repeated subject”359. Lord sets great store on the theme being a repeated passage; for “the ‘theme’ in oral literature is distinctive because its content is expressed in more or less the same words every time the singer or storyteller uses it”360. Beside the type-scenes other forms of thematic schematization that attest to the oral roots of the Homeric epic are the catalogue, the typical action pattern, and, having grown from the type-scene but having developed into a narrative form of its own, the aristeia. This section is concerned exclusively with type-scene and catalogue as indicators of oral roots in Homer. a. TYPE-SCENES Through Parry’s adoption of Arend’s results into oral theory, the terms ‘typical’ and ‘Typik’ came to mean ‘schematized’ and ‘schematization’, and were equated with ‘oral’ and ‘orality’. It is their schemata, the recurrent patterns, which Arend’s comparative analysis had extracted from the descriptions of visits, journeys, arrivals, meal preparations, sacrifices, assemblies etc., that make these actions into typescenes. ‘Typical’ in thematic analysis corresponds to ‘formular’ in the analysis of oral diction: as two different aspects of the same oral phenomenon schematization, Typik and formularity are analogous and complement one another. While formular schematization is designed to protect the oral poet, composing in performance, from metrical breakdown, thematic schematization, in turn, has the analogous function of protecting the rapidly composing singer of tales against thematic impasse. In schematization, both formular and thematic, economy is at work. Just as the schema of the formular system provides, for mnemonic reasons, one formula, and one formula only, for a given idea to meet a given syntactical and metrical condition, so the 359 Lord 1991: 27 (Lord’s italics). See also Lord 1995: 201: “I consider the theme as a repeated passage, not a repeated subject …” (Lord’s italics). 360 Lord 1991: 2, 7 (emphasis added). Lord stresses this point repeatedly in the same book: the theme is a “repeated passage with a fair degree of verbal or formula repetition from one occurrence to the next, rather than simply meaning ‘subject’ or ‘topic’ ” (ibid. p.26, n.18); “the theme – not the subject but the passage – is, indeed, as much a mark of oral-traditional composition as the formula, if not more so” (ibid., p.89 [emphasis added); “… a theme, that is, a repeated passage …” (p.119).

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traditional thesaurus of schematized themes provides one type-scene, and one only, for expressing a given recurrent theme in various narrative contexts. Thus for a recurrent theme, say ‘sacrifical meal’, only one schematic pattern exists that the singer has absorbed in order to deploy it, with the context-related variations, whenever the tale requires them. Arend’s type-scenes struck Parry as representing so obviously schematized narrative that he lost no time appropriating them for his oralist enterprise. An angry foe of Parryism, Odysseus Tsagarakis thought that Arend’s work lent itself too easily to such appropriation361. His attack on Parryism included an attack on the very notion of the typical scene as well. Objecting in general to the term schema in connection with poetry, Tsagarakis detests even more the oralist concept of Homeric composition by schematized theme, on the grounds that this notion conceives of the poet’s activity as being determined by a given schema. Arend’s schemata, he argues, are, in their pure and complete form, nowhere attested in Homer: there are only recurring themes that are differently shaped according to the given conditions of the epic plot. Yet how can this observation be an argument against their reality in Homer? For one thing, Arend himself had emphasized that the typus exists in its variations, and its schema can only be deduced from a synopsis of them; and that these variations arise from the fact that the schema is each time adjusted to the particular narrative conditions362. This is the very gist of multiformity, the nature of the oral theme. For another thing, Tsagarakis rightly emphasises that the variations are the important factor (very much Arend’s point). Yet the very notion of variation presupposes a schema on which variation is practiced. At any rate, it is generally agreed in Homeric studies that Arend succeeded in proving the reality of the type-scenes in Homer. For instance, the type-scene ‘sacrificial meal’ strongly testifies, pace Tsagarakis, to it. Arend’s analysis of its seven occurrences (Il. 1. 447 ff.; 2. 402 ff.; 7. 314 ff.; 24. 621 ff.; Od. 3. 421 ff.; 12. 353 ff.; 14. 413 ff.) has yielded this schema363: I.1 I.2 I.3 I.4 I.5 I.6 I.7 II.1 II.2 II.3 II.4 III IV

announcement: sacrifice of what & to whom positioning of victim(s) ritual washing of hands oujlovcutai hair offering prayer reception of prayer by deity killing of victims(s) ojlolughv slaughter mhriva & splavgcna preparation of sacrificial meal sacrificial meal

361 Tsagarakis 1982: 87 f. and passim. 362 Arend 1933,21975: 81: “jedesmal den besonderen Verhältnissen angepasst” (here said of the arrival scenes in Iliad IV and VI). 363 Arend 1933,21975: 64 ff. and Appendix Table IV.

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It is best – and almost completely – exemplified in the sacrifice, at which Chryses officiates (Il. 1. 447–474). Coming up as it does at a decisive point in the epic action, it marks the end of Apollo’s anger at the Achaeans; hence the almost full schema364: w}~ eijpw;n ejn cersi; tivqei, o} de; devxato caivrwn pai`da fivlhn: toi; dæ w\ka qew`/ kleith;n eJkatovmbhn eJxeivh~ e[sthsan eju?dmhton peri; bwmovn, cernivyanto dæ e[peita kai; oujlocuvta~ ajnevlonto. 450 toi`sin de; Cruvsh~ megavlæ hu[ceto cei`ra~ ajnascwvn: “klu`qiv moi ajrgurovtoxæ, o}~ Cruvshn ajmfibevbhka~ Kivllavn te zaqevhn Tenevdoiov te i\fi ajnavssei~. hjme;n dhv potæ ejmevo pavro~ e[klue~ eujxamevnoio: tivmhsa~ me;n ejmev, mevga dæ i[yao lao;n ∆Acaiw`n: 455 hjdæ e[ti kai; nu`n moi tovdæ ejpikrhvhnon ejevldwr: h[dh nu`n Danaoi`sin ajeikeva loigo;n a[munon.” ’W~ e[fatæ eujcovmeno~, tou` dæ e[klue Foi`bo~ ∆Apovllwn. aujta;r ejpeiv rJæ hu[xanto kai; oujlocuvta~ probavlonto, aujevrusan me;n prw`ta kai; e[sfaxan kai; e[deiran, 460 mhrouv~ tæ ejxevtamon katav te knivsh/ ejkavluyan divptuca poihvsante~, ejpæ aujtw`n dæ wjmoqevthsan: kai`e dæ ejpi; scivzh/~ oJ gevrwn, ejpi; dæ ai[qopa oi\non lei`be: nevoi de; paræ aujto;n e[con pempwvbola cersivn. aujta;r ejpei; kata; mh`r∆ ejkavh kai; splavgcn∆ ejpavsanto, mivstullovn tæ a[ra ta\lla kai; ajmfæ ojbeloi`sin e[peiran w[pthsavn te perifradevw~, ejruvsantov te pavnta. aujta;r ejpei; pauvsanto povnou tetuvkontov te dai`ta, daivnuntæ, oujdev ti qumo;~ ejdeuveto daito;~ eji?sh~. aujta;r ejpei; povsio~ kai; ejdhtuvo~ ejx e[ron e{nto, kou`roi me;n krhth`ra~ ejpestevyanto potoi`o, nwvmhsan dæ a[ra pa`sin ejparxavmenoi depavessin: oi} de; panhmevrioi molph`/ qeo;n iJlavskonto kalo;n ajeivdonte~ paihvona kou`roi ∆Acaiw`n mevlponte~ ∆Ekavergon: o} de; frevna tevrpet∆ ajkouvwn.

schema I.1 I.2 I.4 I.6 I.7

I.7 II.1

enjambment 3 3 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 0 3 0 2 1 0 2 0 2 1 0 1 1 0

This passage would pass the three tests of orality with flying colours: there is extensive formularity, well in excess of an 80 percent formular density; parataxis prevails, with only occasional light enjambment; and above all, it exhibits pronounced thematic schematization. It shares with other instantiations of the sacrifice theme a common recognizable schema, a recurrent pattern, which is flexible enough to allow, by way of expansion, ornamentation, contraction, and other minor variations, for the necessary adjustments to their respective contexts – all these factors make this passage a perfect exemplification of the oral theme as a “repeated passage rather than a repeated subject”365 – Lord’s important distinction, as we recall, between the oral theme and the literary motif. 364 The formula analysis of this passage is found in Appendix II, exemplifying the high degree of formularity at the diegetic level of narration; the results listed on p. 107. It is here presented as being put through three tests of orality (formular, thematic, enjambment) 365 Lord 1991: 279 (Lord’s emphasis).

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139

As noted, Arend has demonstrated the presence of such schemata in a number of recurrent themes. However, such pronounced and sustained thematic schematization, as in the instantiations of the type-scene ‘sacrificial meal’, is not very frequent in Homer. For other type-scenes, schematization greatly differs in degree. For instance, with so central an epic theme as ‘assembly’, it is a very different matter. A schema is hardly discernible366. In the all-important assembly of Iliad I, only a few formulaic verses mark it: its summoning (Il. 1.54–56) and dismissal (305b–307). Between them, there are for the most part speeches, in which the main themes – in this case, the quarrel and, born from it, the heroic wrath – evolve367. Homer’s assembly schema is at best rudimentary: the verses that are to constitute the agoraschema are so few, and the assemblies themselves are so varied, that it is difficult to reduce them to one type-scene. All the narrative thrust in the Homeric assemblies is on the dynamic of the speeches. They are shaped by the issues at stake and the requirements of the characterization of the speaker. Thus thematic schematization is here low-key. We shall return to this assembly scene, comparing it with an assembly scene in one of the South-Slavic oral songs (see below “A Tale of Two Assemblies”). b. CATALOGUES The catalogue belongs to the thematic structure of epic poetry, but does not in itself amount to a theme. It is sheer schema. A wide variety of contents can be organized as catalogical lists. Catalogues are a very prominent feature of the thematic structure in oral poetry. Lord’s The Singer of Tales shows the ubiquity of catalogues as well as their structuring force in the schematized oral narrative of the Southern Slavs368. The catalogue serves their most outstanding epic singer, Avdo Mededowic, as the chief vehicle of his famous art of ornamentation. Hence his Meho-Epic’s richness in catalogues369. In view of such an extent of catalogical versification in a significant oral epic it is hard to accept Jack Goody’s thesis that catalogues belong to literacy rather than orality, though he does not want to exclude them entirely from the latter370. It is true that catalogues are not specifically typical of oral discourse, as their frequency throughout antiquity in works of Greek and Roman literature shows. That is why the fairly high number of catalogues in the Homeric epic is not necessarily evidence that attests, as the type-scenes do, to its provenance in an oral tradition371. Yet the catalogue, being as it is the most elemental form of epic narration, is

366 Arend 1933, 21975: 116: “weniger tritt ein Schema hervor in den agora-Szenen”. 367 On the artful, non-schematized Typik in connection with Homeric speeches, see Lohmann 1970. 368 Cp. Lord 1960: 96–97. 369 Friedrich 2002: 49–54. See below the section “A Tale of Two Assemblies”. 370 Goody 1977: 78, 81, 104. 371 Beye 1964; Arend 1933/21975; Fenik 1968.

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a natural component of oral composition372. Its basic pattern is the list, a linear narrative, perhaps the purest instance of what Notopoulos has called structural parataxis: a series of items “strung paratactically like beads on a string”373. Its narrative pattern is an easy and very suitable vehicle of epic plenitude and diversity: unencumbered by a complex structure, plenitude and diversity can freely unfold because of the non-constraining form of the catalogue’s linear list. Homeric catalogues come in various forms and sizes and different degrees of elaboration, ranging from very short lists of bare names such as the catalogue of the lesser sons of Priam at Il. 24. 249–251 to the majestic Katalogos neôn in Iliad II, with many of its items richly elaborated. The majority of Iliadic catalogues are in one way or another connected with battle narration374, the most traditional component of the Iliad’s thematic material: the catalogues of Greek and Trojan forces are to open the battle sections of the Iliad; the catalogue of Myrmidon captains in Iliad XVI leads into Patroklos’ aristeia; likewise, the epipolesis of Iliad IV serves as the preparation for the first battle of the poem; and numerous catalogues, in the form of androktasiai, abound within the battle scenes375. Yet the form of the catalogue is not confined to battle narrative: it is evident from the delightful Leporello-list of Zeus’ amours in Iliad XIV; the list of Agamemnon’s gifts offered to Achilleus in Iliad IX; the catalogue of the Nereids at Il. 18. 39–49; and Priam’s ransom gifts in Il. 24. 229–237. The basic shape of the catalogue, the list, consists of an Introduction (I) opening a series (II) of single items (1, 2, 3 … n). A simple example is the catalogue of heroes, shamed by Nestor into volunteering to accept Hektor’s challenge for a duel at Il. 7. 161–8: ’W~ neivkessæ oJ gevrwn, oi} dæ ejnneva pavnte~ ajnevstan: w\rto polu; prw`to~ me;n a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnwn, tw`/dæ e[pi Tudeivdh~ w\rto kratero;~ Diomhvdh~, toi`si dæ e[p∆ Ai[ante~, qou`rin ejpieimevnoi ajlkhvn toi`si dæ e[p j ∆Idomeneu;~ kai; ojpavwn ∆Idomenh`o~ Mhriovnh~, ajtavlanto~ ∆Enualivw/ ajndreifovnth/, toi`si dæ e[pæ Eujruvpulo~, Eujaivmono~ ajglao;~ uiJov~, a]n de; Qova~ ∆Andraimonivdh~ kai; di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ …

Cat.-Schema I II 1 2 3,4 5 6 7 8,9

enjambment 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Simple anaphora (tw`/dæ e[pi / toi`si d∆ e[p∆) connects the items of the catalogue with one another; its structure is strictly paratactical with a total absence of enjambment. Ornamentation is confined to the use of epithets. Formular density is in excess of 80 percent. Such a passage would easily pass all orality tests. Catalogues, being as they are sheer schema, are part and parcel of oral poetry’s schematization. The catalogue schema attains a modicum of complexity through the greater elaboration of its individual items. Among the methods of analysing the schematization of catalogues, the one proposed by Charles Beye is the most useful, 372 373 374 375

See on this Krischer 1971: 141 ff. Notopoulos 1949: 6. Beye 1964: passim. Beye 1964: 345, with reference to Strasburger 1954.

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as it is applicable to all Homeric catalogues. It yields the following standard schema: (I) Introduction; (II) Catalogue proper as a Series of items : 1, 2, 3, … n), with each item made up of three possible units or elements: (A) ‘basic information’; (B) ‘anecdotes’; (C) ‘contextual information’376: (I) Introduction (II) Catalogue proper: Item 1 A B C Item 2 A B C Item 3 A B C . Item n A B C The schema need not be fully realized. B is frequently omitted, and A and C are often conflated (= A/C). The schematic presentation of the Catalogue of Ships (Il. 2. 484–759) looks like this: I II

Introduction. 484–493: invocation of the Muses 1 Boeotians: A 494–508; C 509–510 2 Orchomenians: A 511–12; B 513–515; C 516 3 Phocians: A 517–523; C 524–526 4 Locrians: Aias: A527 B 528–30; Locrians: A 531–533; C 534 f. 5 Euboeans: A 536–540; B 541; C 542–545 6 Athenians: A 546 B 547–551 A2 552 B2 553–555 C 556 7 Salaminians: A/C 557–558 . 22 Phthiotians A 695–699, B 700–709, C 710 29 Magnetans: A 756; B 757–758; C 759

I select Item 22 (Il. 2. 695–710) for exemplification mainly for its elaboration of element B. It shows very clearly the operation of the tripartite schema: 22 Phthiotians A 695–699 B 700–709 C 710 Oi} d∆ ei\con Fulavkhn kai; Puvrason ajnqemoventa, Dhvmhtro~ tevmeno~, “Itwnav te mhtevra mhvlwn, ajgcivalovn t ∆ ∆Antrw`na ijde; Pteleo;n lecepoivhn, zwo;~ ejwvn: tovte d∆ h[dh e[cen kavta gai`a mevlai tou` de; kai; ajmfidrufh;~ a[loco~ Fulavkh /ejlevleipto kai; dovmo~ hJmitelhv~: to;n dæ e[ktane Davrdano~ ajnh;r nho;~ ajpoqrwv/skonta polu; prwvtiston ∆Acaiw`n. oujde; me;n oujd∆ oi} a[narcoi e[san, povqeovn ge me;n ajrcovn: ajllav sfea~ kovsmhse Podavrkh~ o[zo~ “Arho~ ∆Ifivklou uiJo;~ polumhvlou Fulakivdao, aujtokasivgnhto~ megaquvmou Prwtesilavou

Cat.-Schema II 22 A

B

Enjambment 1 1 2 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1

376 Beye 1964: 346 f. – Edwards (M. W.) 1980b: 83–90 discerns seven basic elements; however, his elements 4 to 7 amount to no more than variations or combinations of his first three. Besides, his schema is too specific and applicable only to the two catalogues of the Greek and Trojan Forces in Iliad II.

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The Theory of the Oral Homer and its Dilemmas oJplovtero~ geneh`/: o} d∆ a[ra provtero~ kai; ajreivwn h{rw~ Prwtesivlao~ ajrhvi>o~: oujdev ti laoi; deuvonqæ hJgemovno~, povqeovn ge me;n ejsqlo;n ejovnta. tw`/d∆ a{ma tessaravkonta mevlainai nh`e~ e{ponto.

C

1 3 0 0

Note the high degree of formularity (close to 70 percent) and the prevailing parataxis with largely light enjambment. The Catalogue of Ships will come into focus again at an advanced stage of the postoralist argument. I close with a passage (Il. 2. 402–433) that combines a type-scene – sacrificial meal – with a catalogue of those invited to it: Catalogue schema

Type-scene Enjambment schema analysis 402 aujta;r o} bou'n iJevreuse a[nax ajndrw'n ∆Agamevmnwn I.1 1 pivona pentaevthron uJpermenevi> Kronivwni, 2

I II. 1A 2A 3A 4A 5A 6A 7A/B

kivklhsken de; gevronta~ ajristh`a~ Panacaiw`n, Nevstora me;n prwvtista kai; ∆Idomenh`a a[nakta, aujta;r e[peitæ Ai[ante duvw kai; Tudevo~ uiJovn, e{kton dæ au\tæ ∆Odush`a Dii; mh`tin ajtavlanton. aujtovmato~ dev oiJ h\lqe boh;n ajgaqo;~ Menevlao~: ei[dee ga;r kata; qumo;n ajdelfeo;n wJ~ ejponei`to. 410 bou`n de; peristhvsanto kai; oujlocuvta~ ajnevlonto, I. 2, 4 toi`sin dæ eujcovmeno~ metevfh kreivwn ∆Agamevmnwn: I. 6 “Zeu` kuvdiste mevgiste, kelainefev~, aijqevri naivwn mh; pri;n ejpæ hjevlion du`nai kai; ejpi; knevfa~ ejlqei`n privn me kata; prhne;~ balevein Priavmoio mevlaqron } speech aijqaloven, prh`sai de; puro;~ dhi?oio quvretra, ÔEktovreon de; citw`na peri; sthvqessi dai?xai calkw`/ rJwgalevon: poleve~ dæ ajmfæ aujto;n eJtai`roi prhneve~ ejn konivh/sin ojda;x lazoivato gai`an.” ’W~ e[fatæ: oujdæ a[ra pwv oiJ ejpekravaine Kronivwn, I. 7 420 ajllæ o{ ge devkto me;n iJrav, povnon dæ ajmevgarton o[fellen. I. 6, 4 aujta;r ejpeiv rJæ hu[xanto kai; oujlocuvta~ probavlonto, II. 1 aujevrusan me;n prw`ta kai; e[sfaxan kai; e[deiran, mhrouv~ tæ ejxevtamon katav te knivsh/ ejkavluyan II. 3, 4 divptuca poihvsante~, ejpæ aujtw`n dæ wjmoqevthsan. kai; ta; me;n a]r scivzh/sin ajfuvlloisin katevkaion, splavgcna dæ a[ræ ajmpeivrante~ uJpeivrecon ÔHfaivstoio. II. 4 aujta;r ejpei; kata; mh`re∆ ejkavh kai; splavgcna pavsanto, mivstullovn tæ a[ra ta[lla kai; ajmfæ ojbeloi`sin e[peiran, III w[pthsavn te perifradevw~, ejruvsantov te pavnta. 430 aujta;r ejpei; pauvsanto povnou tetuvkontov te dai`ta daivnuntæ, oujdev ti qumo;~ ejdeuveto daito;~ eji?sh~. IV aujta;r ejpei; povsio~ kai; ejdhtuvo~ ejx e[ron e{nto, toi`~ a[ra muvqwn h\rce Gerhvnio~ iJppovta Nevstwr:

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 2 2 3 0 1 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 2 0

Analysed as to the three criteria of orality – high formularity, light enjambment as well as prevailing parataxis, and thematic schematization – this passage attests to provenance from oral roots, as it would easily meet the tests of orality.

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c. ANATOMY OF A PARRYIST THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF ILIAD I The oralist proof of orality has, as we recall, a qualitative and a quantitative component. The established fact of a genuine oral feature meets the qualitative criterion: the type-scene, exhibiting as it does the chief oral features – schematization, along with predominant parataxis and adding enjambment, as well as high formular density – does just that for the thematic test of orality. The quantitative criterion would be met by the demonstration of the ubiquity of the type-scene. It was this that was missing in Lord’s testing of the thematic structure of the Homeric epic. That is exactly what Mark Edwards’ thematic analysis of Iliad I is designed to provide377. It was, as the author rightly claims, the first and only systematic thematic analysis of an extended section of a Homeric text. As the whole of Iliad I could constitute a statistically relevant sample, Edwards’ analysis is the thematic test of orality for the Iliad in all but name. As it methodologically informs Edwards’ 1991 introductory essay “Composition-by-theme” to Vol. V of the oralist Cambridge Iliad commentary, it is a representative piece of applied Oral Theory in Homeric Studies. Edwards analyzes Iliad I into a continuous series of 27 units he calls typescenes: (1) Supplication Scene (12b–33) (2) Prayer Scene (34–43) (3) Divine Visitation (44–53) (4) Summoning an Assembly (54–56) (5) Assembly scene (57–305a) (6) Pondering Scene (188–194a) (7) Divine Visitation (194b–222) (8) Mediation Scene (247–304) (9) Dismissal of the Assembly (305b–307) (10) Departure by Ship (308–312) (11) Purification and Sacrifice (313–318a) (12) Messenger and Guest Scenes (318b–348a) (13–15) Prayer, Divine Visitation, and Supplication Scenes (348b–430a) (16) Arrival by Ship (430b–439 & 484–487) (17) Handing over a Gift (440–447a) (18) Sacrifice, Meal and Entertainment (447b–474) (19) Retiring for the Night (475–476) (20) Departure and Voyage of Ship (477–483) (21) “Absent but much concerned” Scene (488–492) (22) Supplication Scene (493–532) (23) Divine Assembly Scene (533–604) (24) Mediation Scene (571–583) (25) Greeting Scene (584–596) (26) Feast and Entertainment Scene (597–604) (27) Retiring for the Night (605–611)

The conclusion from his analysis is that “type-scenes provide the formal structure, the skeleton, upon which the Homeric epics are based”; that “in the narrative parts 377 Edwards (M. W.) 1980a: 1–28.

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the story is carried almost entirely by a succession of type-scenes …”378. Edwards thus asserts the thorough schematization – his preferred term is standardization – of the narrative structure in Homer. In this way he seeks to complete what Parry had started shortly before his death with his work on themes: namely, to extend his claim of the ubiquity of schematization in Homer ranging from diction to thematic structure. On the other hand, Edwards tries to demonstrate something very different, as indicated in the title of his essay “Convention and Individuality in Iliad I”: namely, to highlight Homer’s artistic individuality in the treatment of traditional themes. This claim seems to undercut his endeavour to present Homer as a traditional poet employing schematized or standardized narrative due to the exigencies of oral composition-in-performance. The talk of Homer’s artistic individuality remains an unargued and unsupported assertion of his that comes up towards the end of his essay. In its peroration Edwards says “I feel that Homer … has developed a technical device into an aesthetic one” and that “the aesthetic often predominates over the merely technical”379. But he has not articulated this feeling by translating it into an actual demonstration of the predominance of the aesthetic. What predominates in his essay is the strong suggestion that Homeric narrative is entirely composition by schematized or standardized theme. To a reader unencumbered by axiomatic theories about the oral nature of the Homeric text, this suggestion is counterintuitive: Iliad I, and especially its first half, the mise-en-scène of the quarrel as the determining archê of the further course of the poem’s epic action (Il. 1:1–307), strikes one as the least schematized narrative in the whole Iliad; the little schematization there is is residual; and where Homer deploys real type-scenes, as he does in the second half of Iliad I, he does so with an aesthetic purpose in mind. d. A TALE OF TWO ASSEMBLIES For going beyond intuition, aesthetic feeling, and the immediacy of the reading experience, Edwards’ thematic analysis of the opening of the Iliad offers an occasion for a comparative study of an Homeric text and a certified oral text: the exposition of the epic actions of the Iliad (Il. 1. 1–307) and of the South-Slavic oral epic The Wedding of Smailagic Meho by Avdo Medjedovic380. With its over 13,000 verses it is a large-scale epic like the Iliad and Odyssey. Such a comparison is quite in line with Parryist reasoning: for Parryists, Avdo Medjedovic ranks as the “Homer of Kosowo”, and his Meho-Epic is the oralist answer to the Iliad. Witness John Miles Foley’s startling aphorism that The Wedding of Smailagic Meho is “the most convincing argument for the oral composition of the Iliad”381. As it is a certified oral epic, it will allow us to ascertain what oral schematization of theme actually looks like. 378 379 380 381

Edwards (M. W.)1980a: 1; Edwards (M. W.) 1987: 47 (emphasis added) Edwards (M. W.) 1980a: 27 (emphasis added). Avdo Medjedovic, The Wedding of Smailagic Meho (= Medjedovic 1974. Foley 1988: 98.

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This comparison is designed to contrast the mise-en-scène of the Iliad with that of an oral epic that employs composition by schematized theme to the hilt, and in this way to assess the degree of schematization in the Homeric text. In both the Iliad and The Wedding of Smailagic Meho, the exposition of the epic action takes place within the frame of an assembly, with an angry hero at the centre; and when the assemblies dissolve, either exposition is complete, and both epic actions are on their way. Thus there is enough common ground for a useful comparison. Using the comparative method is my oblique approach to the thematic test. It recommends itself in view of the fact that thematic schematization cannot be measured and expressed statistically. As a preliminary, here is a brief description of plot and structure of the Mehoepic. Its historical setting is 16th century Bosnia and Budapest, when both were part of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Sulejman the Magnificent. It opens with an assembly: a meeting of the Imperial Pasha of the province and his nobles at a tavern in a town of Bosnia. Among them are two members of a pre-eminent noble family that traditionally provides the military leader (alajbey) to the district: Cifric, the current alajbey, and his nephew, young Meho, while Meho’s father, Smail, the former alajbey, old and frail as he is, is staying at home. Everyone is in a festive mood; only Meho sits in brooding silence. When the Pasha inquires through Cifric about its cause, it turns out that the young man is angry and on the brink of rebellion for being deprived by his elders of the opportunity to prove himself as a hero. So determined is he to seek heroic action and win glory that he even threatens to join the Christian enemy of the Ottoman Empire, one General Peter. The Pasha and the gathered nobles decide that young Meho’s time has come: they send him on a journey to the Imperial Vizier at Buda to obtain his credentials as the successor to his father and uncle in the position of alajbey. On his journey he rescues, with the help of his retainer, a beautiful young woman, Fatima, of a noble house in Buda, whom the treacherous Vizier tries to force into marriage with his Christian ally, the enemy general Peter. From her Meho learns of the Vizier’s treacherous plans against the empire. Meho betroths Fatima, and after having restored her to her family and obtained the commission as alajbey from the Vizier, he returns home to report the Vizier’s treason and prepare the wedding and the war against the traitor. Since Fatima is claimed by the enemy, the traitorous Vizier’s Christian ally, leading the bride to her bridegroom’s house will have to be a military action against the competing suitor: the wedding of Meho will involve a bloody battle. Thus the invited wedding guests form a heroic host both to fight for winning the bride for Meho and for saving the empire from the Vizier’s treasonous design. The veteran general Tale assumes the command of the loyal army. After a fierce battle and many losses, it defeats the Vizier’s troops, takes Buda, and punishes all traitors. Surprisingly, the outstanding hero of the battle is not Meho, who is absent from the battle-narrative, but his uncle Cifric. Meho, already lamented as dead, re-emerges suddenly and triumphantly after the battle, with the enemy general as his personal captive. The poem ends with the wedding celebrations. The epic action is made up of five major themes (Assembly, Journey, Gathering of wedding-guests/warriors, Battle, Wedding) and its structure divides into two ma-

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jor parts, connected by an extended catalogue of military forces as they arrive, contingent by contingent: 1–7689

7690–9310

9311–13331

Cifric/MEHO

CATALOGUE

TALE/CIFRIC/Meho

Assembly. Hero’s journey to Buda and Return

Gathering of wedding guests = warriors

Army’s march to Buda. Battle & Return with Bride. Wedding

The dominant figure in the first part is the young hero of the epic, Meho. Yet he is absent for most of the second part: there the veteran general Tale, a sort of cross of Odysseus and Thersites, and Cifric predominate. The incidents that expose and set the epic action of The Wedding of Smailagic Meho into motion are few: a festive gathering of the nobles of Bosnia witnesses how the hidden conflict in the noble house of the military leaders of the region between its scion and his elders breaks into the open. It resolves it by a decree that transfers the military command to the young man. The assembly ends with Meho being sent on his journey to the Vizier in Buda for accreditation. Yet the exposition of the epic action takes nearly 1,100 verses, the equivalent of a full Iliadic book, considering the shorter decasyllabic verse of the South Slavic singers. The opening of Meho is a good illustration of how oral narrative proceeds by accretive parataxis and schematized composition. Parataxis juxtaposes epic-action constituents and digressions as equals. Such paratactic isonomia makes for an excursive form of narrative, in which ring-composition serves as a necessary framing device [a] > [a’]: it marks the conclusion of a digression by resuming the main action at the point, from which the digression had started, thus getting it on track again. Opening as it does with the typical theme of assembly, Avdo’s epic instantly dwells on a description of those assembled. This description takes quite naturally the form of a catalogue that lists the elders and nobles according to rank. After the ranking, one expects their feasting to begin in earnest. Before they can enjoy their drinks, however, and indulge in what traditional heroes like best, boasting, a catalogue lists the various forms of wealth they display. This listing is followed by a catalogue of typical boasts. Their boasting is to highlight their splendour, and this, in turn, gives rise to yet another catalogue that lists the typical features of their splendour. The representation of the setting of the assembly scene is a series of four lengthy catalogues: 1.

(a) “at the head of the gathering was Hasan Pasha Tiro with his fifty men of war” (b) CATALOGUE of nobles and elders (a’) “… Hasan Pasha Tiro with his warriors at the head”.

2.

(a) “brandy is ever a talker” among the wealthy beys and agas (b) CATALOGUE of the symbols of wealth; (a’) “so the talk began”.

Composition-by-Theme – The Thematic Test 3.

(a) “and the men of the Border began their boasting”. (b) CATALOGUE of boasts (a’) “each man made talk as was his desire”.

4.

(a) “there were more than sixty agas … twenty beys … beside the pasha …” (b) CATALOGUE of physical features/clothing/weapons of the nobles (celebrating the splendour of their appearance) (a’) “… they were courtiers of a great pasha”.

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In this manner, 180 verses are required to complete the mere setting of the gathering. Avdo Medjedovic is rightly celebrated for his art of rich ornamentation. Its preferred device is the descriptive catalogue, the most schematized of narrative forms, one that reinforces the digressive element in oral composition. Throughout the assembly scene Avdo’s narrative moves from one catalogue to another. The epic action in the meantime remains stationary. Now that the setting of the gathering is complete, the narrative can begin to concentrate on the central character of the tale, young Meho. One might expect the epic action to take wings at last. But the new focus gives rise to a further catalogue: (a) “Were you to cast your eyes about the gathering to see which hero was the best, one would stand out, Meho, son of Smail” (b) CATALOGUE celebrating Meho’s physical features, clothing, weapons (a’) “Looking about the gathering you would see that the youth … is the making of the whole assembly …”

Here, at last, the narrative can turn on the crucial motif, the unhappiness of the young hero who is being prevented from proving himself a hero. It does so with yet another catalogue listing all the concrete symptoms of Meho’s unhappiness: (a) “Meho … was unhappy”. (b) CATALOGUE of signs of unhappiness (a’) “such a fine son of such a good father … so downcast and unhappy”.

It is only when the Pasha, alarmed by the young man’s gloomy air, intervenes and has Cifric inquire about the cause of his nephew’s unhappiness that the exposition of the epic action gets under way. At this point we are already 300 verses into the epic. There follows a set of five speeches: (A) (B) (C) (B’) (A’)

Intervention of Hasan Pasha Tiro (ca. 15 vv.) Cifric’s speech to Meho (40 vv.) Meho’s response (270 vv., with several catalogues) Cifric’s response to Meho (ca. 470 vv., with several catalogues) Hasan Pasha Tiro has the petition prepared (ca. 20 vv.)

They are arranged by way of motivic ring-composition; and it is through these speeches that the exposition of the epic action begins to show some development382. Yet it will not be complete any time soon: the speeches take some 800 more lines. As Lord has pointed out, the annular arrangement around a centre-piece (AB C B’A’) structures the assembly in a thematically significant way by isolating Meho’s 382 See on this Lord 1991: 31.

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provocative speech as the focus of the whole section: it is his challenge to the elders that sets the epic action of The Wedding of Smailagic Meho into motion. However, the motivic ring-composition gives the misleading impression of a balanced arrangement. The emphasis and significance Meho’s speech possesses by virtue of being the centre-piece (C) are somewhat offset by the much longer speech of Cifric (B’). With 470 verses it is more than ten times the length of its counterpart (B). And there is no end to catalogues: the two long speeches are shot through with more of them, short ones as well as long ones, the longest of them being the catalogue of the Sultan’s gifts sent for Meho’s thirteenth birthday. Yet the ring A–A’ does signal the progression of the action: the petition brings the conflict between Meho and his elders to a resolution from which the further epic action receives its direction. In Avdo’s Meho epic, the catalogue is the chief vehicle for his famous art of ornamentation, not only in the setting but in the telling of the epic action as well. Catalogues abound throughout this epic: its centrepiece, the gathering of the army of wedding-guests, is one colossal catalogue. Yet Avdo’s rich ornamentation is purchased at a price: it impairs the development and advance of the epic action which is nearly buried under the multiplying catalogues. The result is a laborious narrative that inches its way forward. The epic action is constantly arrested by yet another catalogue, and so remains stationary for long passages, when it is literally clogged by schematized narrative. For this reason The Wedding of Smailagic Meho strikes one as over-ornamented. How different the exposition of the Iliad-action (Il. 1.1–307)!! The terse proem quickly moves from stating the central structuring motif of the epic, the destructive mh`ni~ ∆Acilh`o~ and its baleful consequences, to the e[ri~ between Achilleus and Agamemnon that occasioned it. For the motivation of the eris, the narrative goes back briefly in time to give its prehistory: the events that led up to the assembly in which Agemmenon and Achilleus “came to stand in division of conflict” (diasthvthn ejrivsante, Il. 1.6) turning on the plague as a manifestation of Apollo’s anger at Agamemnon’s outrageous treatment of his priest Chryses. Besides helping expose the epic action, this retrospective narrative offers, in a few strokes, a vivid portrait of an overbearing King Agamemnon, whose arrogance assumes an air of hybristic impiety: he treats a father who uses his priestly insignia in trying to ransom his daughter as if he were an insufferable turbulent priest. It is a piece of preparatory êthopoiia that prefigures the Agamemnon of the quarrel scene: an autocratic leader who ignores the wishes of his army and treats his most important vassal with the same self-centred arrogance as he treated the priest. The king’s inaction in the face of his army’s suffering continues the êthopoiia of Agamemnon: by way of contrast it begins to mesh with that of his antagonist Achilleus, from whom, significantly, comes the initiative for dealing with the crisis of the plague caused by the king’s sacrilege. Kalchas’ request for protection against the king’s arbitrariness arises naturally from his witnessing the king’s deplorably underdeveloped respect for the clergy – protection that is all too gladly and readily offered by Achilleus in a brief speech, a veiled provocation to Agamemnon who is not in the least amused. In this manner the narrative conveys the sense of a hidden simmering tension between the two protagonists, which then, by way of a carefully orchestrated climax through a set of

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powerful speeches on both sides (all of them masterpieces of êthopoiia) is forced into the open. It erupts in the quarrel that quickly moves to the crisis point of a veritable catastrophe, which only divine intervention can prevent. The determining motif from which the epic action receives its direction, tenor, and ethos, Achilleus’ wrath, is now established: the quarrel, after a futile attempt at reconciliation, has the assembly, which was called to save the Achaean army, issue in its foremost hero’s withdrawal that will bring it to the brink of destruction. When the assembly dissolves at verse 307, it does so in the state of an even more pernicious crisis than the one it was summoned to resolve. Note how much narrative ground is covered within some 300 verses. This movement is achieved through a taut and forward pressing narration, which, for all its forceful flow, is never hasty or desultory, but always compact and substantial: it has conciseness as well as depth. The thematic richness of the exposition of the Iliad plot comprises two conflicts, one between god and men, the other among men; two powerful wraths, one divine, the other heroic; two dangerous crises, one soon to be resolved, the other arising and persisting to the end of the epic. In the course of the quarrel important issues are raised such as timê and aidôs as well as martial supremacy and leadership, all central aspects of the heroic code. Everything serves the plot-development, characterization, and the articulation of the central themes; particularly impressive is the masterful in-depth êthopoiia of the protagonist of the epic action and his chief opponent. The forceful drive of Homer’s narrative, drawing into itself and absorbing all incidents, differs sharply from Avdo’s laboriously paratactic narrative. The difference is due to heavy schematization in the narrative of the oral poem, and its virtual absence in the expository section of the Iliad, where it is at most residual. And yet Edwards’ assertion that in Iliad I “the story is carried forward almost entirely by a succession of type-scenes”, suggests that Homer’s compact and pithy narrative is composition by schematized or standardized theme! The explanation for this discrepancy is to be found in Edwards’ exceedingly generous use of the term typescene. A closer look at what Edwards passes off as typical scenes will bear out this characterization. It is quite striking that of the 27 units he calls type-scenes only five – pondering (6), voyage (10, 20), sacrifice (18), visit cum supplication (22) – would qualify as typische Scenen in terms of Arend’s study. I restrict my critical examination to the nine units that make up the analysed exposition (1–307): (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Supplication Scene (12b–33) Prayer Scene (34–43) Divine Visitation (44–53) Summoning an Assembly (54–56) Assembly scene (57–305a) Pondering Scene (188–194a) Divine Visitation (194b–222) Mediation Scene (247–304) Dismissal of the Assembly (305b–307)

No. 1: Chryses is not a suppliant; on the contrary, he self-confidently carries his priestly insignia to give force to his ransom offer and his urge to honour Apollo (21:

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Atridai and Achaeans, accept my offer aJzovmenoi ……∆Apovllwna). This stance provokes Agamemnon to utter a threat to the priest (“if you come back, your priestly get-up will not protect you from my anger”): as noted, a fine feature of êthopoiia. There is not even a hint of supplication here, neither in gesture nor in diction: all the formulas that belong to the type-scene ‘supplication’ are missing (compare, by contrast, the real type-scene ‘supplication’ at Il. 1. 500 ff.). The verb livsseto (v.15) does not make it into a hikesia; at vv. 173–4 Agamemnon uses it, too (oujde; s∆ e[gwge / livssomai), in the neutral sense of ‘to ask’ or ‘beg’. What we have here is not a type-scene, the repeated theme of oral composition, but the individual shaping of the ransom motif. – No. 2 is a brief formal prayer for punishment of those who have failed to show the proper aidôs to the god’s priest. Prayers of this kind always have a high degree of formality, whether in real life or in poetry, oral as well as written. A short formal prayer is not a typical scene. – No. 3 (an angry Apollo punishes the Achaeans) and no. 7 (a concerned Athena dissuades Achilleus from killing Agamemnon) are made to share the designation “Divine Visitation”, as if these two entirely different incidents were multiforms of one typical scene so named. They have nothing in common, neither in content nor in structure nor in phrasing, except that in both cases a deity intervenes in human affairs. Divine interventions in the Iliad, however, are so manifold that they do not yield a common typical schema, but they do form a recurrent motif, of which these are two specific occurrences, one particularized as divine wrath wreaking destruction on a human group upon which the sins of its leader are visited, while the other is particularized as the motif of divine care for the same group; and both are related to one another not as instantiations of a common schematic pattern, as is the way of schematization, but by counterpoint within the epic action. – How generous Edwards is in his use of the term type-scene can be seen from his designating the three formulaic verses of no. 4 by which the army assembly is summoned, and the two formulaic verses of no. 9 by which it is dissolved, as two separate type-scenes. In Arend’s study they belong, as beginning and the end, to the assembly scene; and it may be said that the introduction of the central motifs of Iliad I, the quarrel and destructive wrath to which it gives rise, are framed by the opening and closing verses of a real typical scene, the assembly-scene. Yet the summoning of the assembly is not typical: being called as it is by Achilleus and not by Agamemnon (who ought to have called one), it is extraordinary. Besides, the substance of this scene, the 250 lines expressing the motifs of quarrel and wrath, form an entirely individually drawn scene without even a trace of schematization. – Edwards declares Nestor’s intervention in the quarrel (no. 8) a type-scene called Mediation Scene on the strength of a vague analogy to three passages: Hephaistos’ admonishing Hera not to quarrel with Zeus at Il. 1. 573 ff.; Zeus’ rebuke of Hera in Il. 24. 65 f.; and Achilleus’ censure of the unworthy bickering in which Idomeneus and the lesser Ajax are indulging over the quality of horses in Iliad XXIII. Yet in all three of these adduced passages the mediation element is missing, and so is any common pattern. – No. 6, Achilleus pondering whether to yield to his anger and kill Agamemnon or suppress it (188–194a), is an authentic type-scene à la Arend, though in a unique variation for the sake of êthopoiia: the pondering process is not described in its typical or standard form because it is over-

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taken by Achilleus’ impetuosity383. Even this genuine type-scene does not represent standardized narrative. Thus there is little that is typical qua schematized or standardized in this series of alleged type-scenes. Edwards’ use of the term ‘type-scene’ is not only exceedingly generous but also indiscriminate; and it is its indiscriminate use that has his article create the impression that composition by standardized theme prevails in Iliad I. His methodological remark says as much: “I am not attempting to distinguish between type-scenes which have a high proportion of repeated verses and those which have the same basic pattern but little or no verbal similarity”384. But the incidents he subsumes under ‘type-scene’ show not only a lack of verbal similarity but of shared pattern as well. It is this that makes his use of the term so indiscriminate. Any kind of similarity, however vague and tenuous, is sufficient to declare otherwise quite different passages to be instances of one type-scene, or multiforms of one theme. Edwards’ procedure ignores Lord’s important distinction between the theme as a repeated passage specific to oral composition, and the theme as a recurring motif found in all literature, oral or written. e. THE DILUTION OF THE TERM ‘ORAL THEME’ We recall that Parry and Lord stressed the analogy of oral formula and oral theme. There is yet another aspect to this analogy, one which Parryists would prefer not to stress: in the oralist reasoning on theme, one discerns the same flaws found in that on formula. As Bryan Hainsworth has remarked with discreet understatement: “themes have had an unsettled history in the Parryist school of criticism”385 – this despite the clarity and precision of Lord’s definition of the oral theme as a passage, repeated in terms of content, pattern, and formular language, yet allowing a modicum of variation. Why then the unsettled history of the oral theme? It is as unsettled as that of the formula and enjambment. The by now familiar dilemma is that the oral phenomena are there, but not to the extent needed to get the Homeric texts through the tests of orality. This dilemma obtains in the application of the thematic test as well. After all, Arend had identified just a handful of type-scenes, with different rates of recurrence and different degrees of schematization: they are few and far between and cover only a fraction of the 27,506 Homeric verses. And the Parryist remedy for this dilemma is the same as in the cases of the formula and adding enjambment: to expand the definition of the concepts that provide the criteria for the tests. The expansion of the notion of oral theme started with Lord himself. Despite his constant insistence that theme in oral composition differed in kind from general motif or repeated subject as a repeated passage, he had tacitly begun already in The Singers of Tales to expand the concept of oral typical theme to include grand motifs 383 For a closer interpretation, see below p. 196. 384 Edwards (M. W.) 1980a: 1 (n.3). 385 Hainsworth 1970b: 16.

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around which whole epic actions can be built, such as the dishonoured hero’s anger and subsequent withdrawal from fighting or the hero’s late return from war386. In a further step he added topics of wide generality, such as the ‘theme of timê’ or the ‘theme of aidôs’ to the rubric of oral theme. Clearly, these are general poetic motifs and recurrent literary subjects, with nothing specifically oral about them. Others went in the opposite direction designating as typical themes minor motifs or typical details such as ‘a warrior on foot slaying a charioteer’. Thus the term ‘oral theme’ has come to apply to an enormously wide range of phenomena: from typical detail, via typical scene and fundamental topic, to general notions such as timê and aidôs387. This expansion has resulted in the erosion of its oral substance. There are further expansions of the term in the direction of formalism and abstraction. Here is an example from Lord: “In fact, Patroclus’ mission to spy out the situation for Achilles (in Iliad XV) is strangely like the mission of Diomedes and Odysseus in the Doloneia”388. Lord equates Patroklos’ inquiries on behalf of Achilleus in Iliad XV and the spy-mission of Odysseus and Diomedes in Iliad X as two multiforms of one typical theme named ‘heroic spying mission’. Such equation derives, as Adam Parry had critically remarked, from blurring the differences between, and from forcing equivalences on, such passages that are vastly different in content, pattern, and verbalization389. This procedure combines with the reduction of themes to the most general and abstract patterns and so deprives motifs of the unique form the poetic treatment has bestowed on them. A notorious case in point is Lord’s attempt to reduce the epic actions of Iliad and Odyssey to two multiforms of the pattern of one and the same theme: “The essential pattern of the Iliad is the same as that of the Odyssey”: both heroes are “lost” to their respective communities for a long time; both experience the loss of those dear and near to them: the death of Patroklos corresponds to the ruin of Odysseus’ comrades; both use disguise: Patroklos’ use of Achilleus’ armour is equated with Odysseus’ disguise as beggar; the games in Iliad XXIII equal the contest of the bow in Odyssey XXI; both followed by a “remarriage”: Achilleus/Briseis; Odysseus/ Penelope390. Behind these contrived and far-fetched equations lurks the archetypal ritual pattern of withdrawal, devastation, and return – a controversial, even dubious construct, borrowed from the myth and ritual doctrine of the Cambridge School of Anthropology391. The extremely high degree of generality and abstraction, at which the oralist argument locates repetition, has all substantial differences vanish.

386 See in Lord 1960: 186 ff. (= chapter “The Iliad”) 387 This is indeed the range of the term ‘theme’ in the introductory essays of the oralist Cambridge Iliad commentary, which deal with it under titles such as ‘Typical motifs and themes’, ‘Composition-by-theme’, and ‘Structure and themes’. 388 Lord 1960: 195. 389 A. Parry in Parry 1974: XLII, n. 2 390 Lord 1960: 186. 391 Lord 1960: 186 ff. (ch. 9, “The Iliad”). For an incisive criticism of Lord’s recourse to the dubious archetypal myth and ritual approach to literature in general, see Clarke 1985: 14–17), and my critical account of the Cambridge school’s doctrine in Friedrich 1980: 159–223.

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Yet there is more. Once Lord had introduced the withdrawal-devastation-return theme into the debate, oralists began to see its multiforms everywhere in the Homeric epic. It is elevated to a thematic paradigm, said to inform not only the Iliad’s overall plot-pattern, but also its particular sections: oralist critics have made it ubiquitous as macro- as well as micro-structure392. They have claimed that within the Iliad a sequence of seven repetitions of the typical withdrawal/devastation/return theme can be discerned: in this view any hero’s withdrawal from and return to battle becomes an instantiation of the withdrawal and return elements; and any killing represents the devastation-component393. In this manner the Homeric epics are made to pass the thematic test of orality with flying colours: there is composition by typical theme around every narrative corner in Homer. One is impressed by the ingenuity and imagination with which the Parryist lens sees and registers equivalences and identities where the naked eye sees only differences. But this sighting comes at a price: through uncontrolled expansion and indiscriminate use, the terms ‘typical’, ‘type-scene’, ‘oral theme’, ‘multiform’, ‘typical action pattern’ and so forth tend to become so diluted and trivialized that the notion of ‘oral composition-by-theme’ is in danger of losing its explanatory power for determining orality or literacy. Moreover, all these far-fetched and forced interpretations require a great deal of equivocation and special pleading. Hainsworth had every reason to worry that Parryists may “make ‘typical’ as vacuous a term as some have made ‘formular’”394. Lest the typical meet the fate of the formular, one has to return to Lord’s original definition of the oral theme in doing the thematic test for the Homeric epic. Bearing this in mind, one can conclude from the critical anatomy of Edwards’ thematic analysis of Iliad I that all it shows is that in Homer schematized composition and non-schematized composition co-exist at the thematic level, with the latter by far prevailing395. It is the same kind of co-existence we have noted in the areas of formularity, formular economy, and enjambment.

392 See Nagler 1974: 131 ff.; 174 ff.; Miller 1982: 41–43. Cp. also Edwards (M. W.) 1987: 7 ff.; 61 ff. 393 It is purchased at the price of the paradigm’s reductio ad absurdum, as J. M. Bremer has critically noted in his review of Miller’s 1982 book (see Bremer 1985: 107–108). – B. Louden tries something similar for the Odyssey, by reducing, through equally far-fetched and tenuous analogies, the Kirke-adventure, the Phaiakis, and the twelve Ithaka-books to three multiforms of one and the same typical action pattern (see Louden 1993: 5–33). The analogies are particularly forced and far-fetched for the Kirke-adventure. There is an analogy between the Phaiakis and Od. XIII–XXIII, but too complex to be reduced to a typical action pattern of the oral tradition: on this topic see Friedrich 1975: 148–152. 394 Hainsworth 1970b: 17. 395 Russo 1968: 281 ff. had long ago hinted at such a co-existence when he distinguished four narrative modes at the thematic level in both Homeric epics: (1) straight repetition; (2) “creative variation” (more or less equivalent to Lord’s term ‘ornamentation’); (3) “the pattern … handled rather loosely”, even “distorted to the extent that the poet gives the impression … of twisting some traditional elements into quite new meanings under the impulse to innovate”; (4) “total nonrepetition”.

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f. THE DIFFERENT USES OF TYPICAL Parryism’s focus on the schema narrows the concept of the typical or Typik. By incorporating Arend’s typische Scenen in Oral Theory, Parry had given the terms type-scene and typical a decidedly oralist spin, mainly through the analogy he drew between typical scene and schematized formula. In this way the ‘typical’ came to mean ‘schematized’ in the sense of ‘stereotyped’, under the aegis of oral economy, as if Typik were eo ipso an oral phenomenon. Yet Typik is not an exclusively oral phenomenon. While Typik doubtlessly had its origins in the pressing exigencies of oral composition-in-performance, it is important to note that in Homer ‘typical’ does not necessarily equal ‘oral’. On the contrary, it can be shown that much of what is typical in Homer is also shared with written poetry. At any rate, the author of Die typischen Scenen was not an oralist and did not use the term as Parryists use it: the oralist focus on schematization bears the mark of Parry’s one-sided reception of Arend’s work. Arend’s use of ‘typical’ connotes, of course, ‘schematized’ (it was, after all, he who identified and extracted the underlying schemata from the Homeric narrative); but it does not exhaust itself in it: Arend’s main interest focused on the poetic aspects of the typical marked as they were by the considerable latitude that variation is given in their Homeric use; and for Arend the schematized aspect of the type-scene was of interest mainly as part of the poetic interplay of the typical and the particular in the variations. It is also important to note that for Arend (as well as for most German-speaking Homerists) ‘typical’ has not primarily the meaning of ‘schematized’ qua ‘stereotyped’, but that of ‘belonging to a typus’, i. e. ‘characteristic of a genre’, in the sense of ‘being a convention of a genre’396. In this sense, Typik refers to the body of poetic conventions and literary topoi that characterizes archaic Greek epic in particular as well as archaic and classical literature in general: the schema Pindaricum comes to mind; or the strict formality of tragedy’s stasima, the rhetoric of its agones, or the convention of having violent action take place off-stage, and of having it reported instead by the subsequent messenger’s rhesis; or the typical plot-patterns in Old and New Comedy. It is in this sense that one can speak of a Homeric Typik in the deployment and placement of similes (Gleichnis-Typik) and the Typik of the aristeiai397, both of which will be discussed later. Thus the terms ‘typical’ and Typik are by no means univocal in the nomenclature of Homeric studies. Their uses oscillate between ‘schematized’ qua ‘stereotypical’, on the one hand, and ‘characteristic of a genre’ qua ‘literary convention’ on the other. Such oscillation in Homer derives from the co-existence of oral and non-oral elements.

396 Cp. the circumspect review of Fenik 1968 by Müller 1970: 323: “Für F. gilt, dass typisch nicht, wie für uns, ‘charakteristisch’ bedeutet, sondern (im ursprünglichen Sinne) lediglich so viel wie ‘geprägt’ ”. 397 Typik of simile deployment and Typik of aristeiai: T. Krischer 1971. – Lohmann 1970 deals with the Typik of speeches.

9. THE TEST RESULTS – PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS When Parry and Lord, in testing formular density in Homer, extrapolated the results of their formular analyses of the initial 25 verses of Iliad and Odyssey to the entirety of the 27,508 Homeric hexameters, the critical issue involved, as we recall, was not so much the violation of basic statistical rules. Such extrapolation was in line with a tenet of Oral Theory that an oral poem has a uniform formular diction: so a passage of any length and in any location of the poem could serve as a representative sample. The really critical issue, as we have noted, was the implicit petitio principii of their procedure: it already premissed what it was to test and prove, the tenet of uniform formular diction for Homer. They believed in advance that the Homeric epics had an oral diction; and the formula test was simply to corroborate their belief398. Thus the extrapolation was done both in good oralist faith and with the bad logic of circular reasoning. This petitio principii determined the further development of the Theory of the Oral Homer. Its formular theory, as we have seen, slipped into exclusively quantitative reasoning (“Homer is too full of formulae to be anything but oral” as Hainsworth has ironically commented on this trend399). Lord even made the focus on quantity programmatic: “quantitative formula analysis” is, he wrote, “perhaps the most reliable” way of “determining whether a style is oral or not”400. To maintain the belief in Homer’s uniform formular diction required the widening and eventual dilution of the concept of formula to the point where it became so watered down as to become devoid of meaning. All this dilution ruined, as we have seen, Parryism’s formular theory. The circular reasoning first noted in the formula test wormed itself into the other tests. It is patent in the ease and ingenuousness with which partial discoveries have been extrapolated to the whole of Homeric composition – paradigmatically in Parry’s extrapolation of his discovery of the schematization of the name-epitheton formulas: to quote him again on this point, “schematization reaches almost everywhere, if not everywhere, in the diction of the Iliad and Odyssey”401. What an economy test would have to prove – the ubiquitous working of schematization guided by formular thrift in Homer – has always already been presupposed. Lord’s postulated economy test has never been carried out – probably because it was tacitly held that Parry’s discovery, tabulated in his lists of the name-epithet-systems, had already done the job. The situation is similar with the thematic test. Oral Theory’s 398 Lord speaks of “corroborating test(s) for oral composition” (Lord 1960: 145); see above pp. 44–5. 399 Hainsworth 1964: 157. – The change from the qualitative to the quantitative conception of formularity has been deplored by Hainsworth 1968: 16, and welcomed as a decisive advance in formular theory by Edwards (A. T.) 1988. 400 Lord 1972: 16. 401 Parry 1971: 314.

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tenet that oral narrative proceeds by schematized theme was simply presumed to be ubiquitous in Homer on the strength of the proven existence of a handful of Homeric type-scenes. Hence Lord’s extrapolation of thematic schematization to the whole of the Homeric narrative – which, as we saw, passed for meeting the thematic test. – The extrapolation is twisted in the enjambment test, because it is done obliquely. Having registered adding enjambment as occurring more frequently in Homer than in the pen-poets Apollonios and Vergil, Parry extrapolated this relative higher frequency to the absolute predominance of adding enjambment in the Homeric poems – doing so, as we have demonstrated, in the face of his own statistical results. In short the uncritical extrapolation in all four orality tests reveal that the assumption of the uniformity of the Homeric narrative in terms of formularity, schematization, sterotyped theme, and enjambment – the very thing the tests were designed to prove – is already in their premises. At any rate, the tests of orality have not, pace Lord402, been met by the Homeric poems. Their results have not proved that the Homeric texts are oral compositions – not by a long shot. Yet what they have shown – and this conclusion is one of the main results of the application of the tests of orality to the Homeric epic – is that the undeniably oral features in Homeric discourse cohabit with non-oral, literate features403. Thus the Homeric poems emerge from the tests as behaving neither as straight oral songs nor as straight literate texts. In other words, the question of Homer’s orality is still wide open.

402 Cp. Lord 1960: 147 (see supra: “The Homeric poems have met each of these tests”). 403 The afore-mentioned brief article “Oral and Literate Elements in Homer” by R. A. Whitaker (Whitaker 1986: 18–25) registers – combined with “all the (sc. oral) elements that the ParryLord school has done so much to identify and describe”– literate elements such as cross-references; the length of both Homeric epics as uncommon in oral poetry; and Homer’s subordination of the traditional narrative of heroic tales to larger poetic purposes, one of them being a general tragic outlook on the human condition (pp. 23–4).

II. THE THEORY OF THE POSTORAL HOMER

1. TAKING STOCK AND THE TASK AHEAD Before charting the further course of the postoral argument and outlining the task ahead, it is advisable to take stock of the results so far. In Part I, my analysis has registered the co-existence of oral and non-oral (i. e., literate) elements in the Homeric narrative. This co-existence has turned out to account for the inconclusiveness of the tests of orality. Nevertheless, one conclusive result, the most important one at this point, has emerged, as a by-product of the formula-test, putting an end to the assumption of formular uniformity in Homeric diction. It has become patent in the greatly uneven distribution of formularity at three levels – at the diegetic (narrative) level of the epic action; at the mimetic (‘ethopoetic’) level of the speeches; and at the tropic (figurative) level of the similes. It is closely related to a second conclusive result: the relaxation of formular economy, as demonstrated in my Formular Economy in Homer. In its turn, it has put an end to yet another oralist assumption – that of the uniformly schematized character of the Homeric narrative. In sum, markers of orality – such as high formular density; predominant parataxis along with adding enjambment; stereotypical themes; schematized composition in terms of formula and theme, observing economy of expression – cohabit with markers more akin to literacy – such as low formular density; a high degree of hypotaxis along with the frequency of necessary enjambment; non-schematic themes and motifs; and non-schematized free composition. Such cohabitation – along with the demonstrated absence of formular and schematized uniformity in Homer’s diction – has provided sufficient textual evidence for tentatively forming the hypothesis of Homeric postorality. Admittedly, an air of negativity has obtained in this first part of my argument: putting an end to two of Parryism’s long-held assumptions as well as registering some serious flaws in the theory of the oral Homer: the malaise of its formular theory; the dilution of central oral concepts; and the resort to equivocation and special pleading. These flaws are viewed as arising from the attempt of asserting Homeric orality in the face of mounting contrary evidence, which Parryism tries to neutralize by placing it in an oralist frame. My negative labour, however, aims at a constructive end. Part II will suggest ways of overcoming Parryism’s dilemmas. To go beyond this negativity, my argument advances to the next stage by widening its focus: from merely demonstrating the co-existence of the oral and the literate in Homer (Part I) to its explanation (Part II). – So far one thing has become clear: neither Homeric orality alone nor Homeric literacy alone could explain such coexistence. For explaining the co-existence and for resolving the inconclusiveness of the orality tests, a third term, a tertium is required. What has yielded this inconclusiveness is oralism’s theoretical framework postulating orality and literacy as mutually exclusive contradictories. They do not allow a third term (tertium non

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datur)1. A resolution thus requires transcending this framework. It is the very inconclusiveness of the tests that points to the necessity of a third term (tertium datur). Postorality suggests itself most strongly, if not cogently, as this third term. The very name ‘postoral’ covers both the oral and the non-oral components of the coexistence: the prefix ‘post’ signals the entrance of literacy into the oral tradition from which the Homeric epic had originally arisen. At this stage Homeric postorality has the status of a hypothesis and has to prove its validity through its explanatory force. Charting the further course of the argument involves two stages. Advancing from registering the coexistence of the oral and the literate in Homer to its explanation leads to the consideration as to whether coexisting means being merely juxtaposed in opposition as ‘oral versus literate’. Enough evidence has turned up in the first part that shows that postorality is already discernible in the artistic uses of the elements that mark the provenance of Homeric poetry in the Hellenic oral tradition. Those elements represent the province of the oral craft governed by the chief forces in unlettered epic song – utility, habit, and necessity. According to Oral Theory these forces rule out artistry and render literary criticism for the most part futile for Homeric studies2. The evidence so far suggests as a reasonable hypothesis that postorality can be shown to be already operative at the very heart of oral utility and necessity by turning craft into art, thus exhibiting an artistry that Oral Theory denies unlettered song. At the first stage, then, lies the investigation into Homer’s aesthetic and artistic use of orality’s functional elements turning craft into art. It would further corroborate the already registered trend towards schema-free composition, with necessity and utility, the forces of schematization, ceding to artistry. Craft into art then will be the main tenor of the postoral argument at the first stage. At the second stage the postoral argument, having been caught up so far in the microphilology of formula and stereotyped theme, will at long last turn to the two areas in which Homeric composition excels – characterization (h\qo~, hjqopoiiva) and large-scale structural design (mu`qo~, suvstasi~ tw`n pragmavtwn). In the process the postoral argument will engage and join with a natural ally, Neoanalysis3. The latter’s forte is the elucidation of the Iliad’s structure and of the rich art of Homeric characterization unfolding within this structure. The trend towards schema-free composition as the main marker of postorality is most pronounced in 1 2

3

Friedrich 2007: 143–4. Cp. Havelock 1986a: 124, contemplating a “creative partnership” between the oral and the written; and at Havelock 1982: 9, contemplating their “dynamic tension”. For a programmatic statement to this effect see Combellack 1959: 196: “If we accept Parry’s view about the traditional formulary nature of the Homeric style, his contention that the oral poet chooses a phrase primarily because it is convenient, not because of any delicate nuance in its meaning … then we must, in dealing with Homer, renounce a large area of literary criticism” (emphasis added). Neoanalysis is the natural ally in that it assumes “a transition from oral tradition to written composition in Homer” (cp. Kullmann 1984: 321 = Kullmann 1992: 153) and locates archaic Greek epic between orality and literacy, as the title of one of Wolfgang Kullmann’s essays states: “Die griechische Epik zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit” (in Kullmann 1992: 137–39).

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the shaping of the h\qo~ of Achilleus and in the structuring of the pravgmata that give rise to Homer’s novel conception of this traditional figure. But first things first. One of them is to ascertain the state of literacy in archaic Greece from the evidence which research in this area provides. The other is to describe and define, in concrete as well as in general terms, the theoretical framework of postorality and delimit it vis-à-vis alternative assumptions on the genesis of our Homeric text.

2. LITERACY IN ARCHAIC GREECE a. THE EVIDENCE The notion of postorality presupposes an advanced state of alphabetic literacy at the time of the composition of the Homeric epics, whether it be the late eighth or the early seventh century. The hyperoralist view of Kirk and Taplin is that alphabetic writing in archaic Greece remained rare, immature, and undeveloped for a long time. It is predicated on their authors’ firm belief that it took several generations after the invention of the alphabet for Greek literacy to develop and mature before it became capable of recording and transmitting large-scale epics. The evidence available on this matter does not, I submit, bear out such beliefs. The “structural revolution” in Greece at the end of the Dark Ages – rapid population growth; economic recovery with increasing prosperity; expansion and discoveries through colonization in the West; revival of the Eastern trade – gave rise to the “Greek Renaissance” in the eighth and seventh centuries4. It is the historical and cultural context of the composition of the Homeric epics, defined by its three main achievements: the new political order of the nascent polis; the large-scale epic; and alphabetic literacy. Of the various aspects of the structural revolution, the most important one for our topic is the revival of the Eastern trade, with the establishment of several Greek emporia. It brought the Greeks again in close contact with, and under the influence of, the more advanced civilizations of the ancient Near East. To a large degree the Greeks owed their own cultural advances to their openness to this influence during the period of what is dubbed the ‘orientalizing revolution’ in archaic Greece5. Here Euboea played a key-role, with its two cities Chalkis and Eretria acting as some sort of avant-garde in this formative period of Greek civilization. A great deal of the development that led to the Homeric culmination of Greek epic poetry possibly took place in these two very prosperous and culturally advanced cities6. If so, it would make Euboea a strong contender for the site where the Iliad received its final form and written fixation7. It was, above all, the close mercantile and cultural contact with the Phoenicians that led the Greeks to their achievement of the greatest consequence: the creation of the alphabet. Most probably, it was on the Euboean trade-route, reaching from the Greek emporion at Al Mina in the Levant, via Cyprus and Rhodes to Euboea’s cities’ joint settlement on Pithekoussai-Ischia, where alphabetic literacy was invented. 4 5 6 7

Greek Renaissance: Haeg 1980; on structural revolution and Greek Renaissance: Snodgrass 1980: 13 f.; 47 f.; Raaflaub 1991: 205–7. On this see Burkert 1992, passim. West 1988: 165 ff.: the Ionian phase of the Greek epic was largely West-Ionic, i. e. Euboean. West 1988: 166; 172; Powell 1991.

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There the commercial and cultural contacts between Greeks and Phoenicians seemed to have been both closest and most extensive8. The conventional view holds that the Phoenicians invented the consonants, the Greeks the vowels. By devising signs for the vowel sounds the Greeks adapted the Phoenician consonantal script to the Greek language and thus created the alphabet. But Eric Havelock’s view on the matter is larger and probably more correct: that the great innovation of the Greeks consisted primarily in separating the speech-sounds conceptually into ‘sonants’ (ta; fwnou`nta, aiJ fwnaiv) and ‘non-sonants’ or ‘consonants’ (ta; a[fwna, ta; suvmfwna): this amounted to ‘inventing’ both vowels and consonants in their pure form9. By contrast, in consonantal scripts like the Phoenician, consonants connote vowel sounds, thus doing double duty as consonants cum vowels, which renders these scripts crypto-syllabaries10 – while the Greeks’ conceptual separation of vowels and consonants rendered their script the first alphabet. During the ‘alphabet wars’ of the past, scholars have dated the origins of the alphabet in any of the centuries ranging from the fourteenth to the late eighth11. The consensus that has emerged settled on the first half of the eighth century B. C. From the two basic studies of the available evidence by Alfred Heubeck and Lilian Jeffery12, one can reasonably conclude that alphabetic literacy had existed and been practiced in Greece for several decades before the composition of the Iliad in the last quarter of the eighth – or even for a whole century, if one prefers the seventh century dating. It may be hard to conceive of an eighth century manuscript of the Homeric epics (less hard of one of the seventh century). Yet it is even harder to conceive of two of the defining achievements of the Greek Renaissance – alphabetic literacy and large-scale epic – as having had nothing to do with one another. By this I do not mean to subscribe to the recently revived view that the alphabet was invented around 800 B. C. with the purpose of recording or composing hexametric poetry, and especially the Homeric epics – an attractive, though hopelessly romantic and belletristic, hypothesis13. Here one has to go along with the realist views of 8

Jeffery 1982: 827: “Euboea is the crucial link in the epigraphic chain which, despite considerable gaps, appears to connect central Greece (Boeotia primarily) with the south-eastern Aegean”; see also Burkert 1992: 12. – Several places compete for being the site of the invention of the alphabet, of which Al Mina and Cyprus are the most likely ones. Woodard 1997: 205 ff. argues very forcefully for Cyprus; Heubeck 1979: 84–86 holds that Al Mina and Cyprus have an equal claim; so he leaves the question open. 9 Havelock 1986: 60. 10 Havelock ibid.: in the evolution towards phonetic scripts “the pre-Greek systems never got further than the syllable”. 11 As to the positions taken in the “alphabet wars”, see the lists of opinions in Jeffery 1963: 12 and n.4 ; Lewis 1974: 85 f., n. 2; and Heubeck 1979: 75 f. 12 The purpose of this section is solely to ascertain the state of alphabetic literacy in archaic Greece as it emerges from the basic studies of Heubeck 1979, Jeffery 1982, and Woodard 1997; see also Burkert 1992: 25–33. For more recent sketches of the larger picture, see Burkert 2004: 21–20; Rösler 2011: 201–213. 13 Originally proposed by Wade-Gery 1952, now worked into a full-fledged hypothesis by Powell 1991, assuming an Adapter, who, through adapting the Phoenician script to the Greek language, became the prôtos heuretês of the alphabet and the amanuensis of Homer. Powell’s hypothesis

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Heubeck, Burkert, Jeffery and others that the Greeks, as Jeffery has put it, most probably “owed their alphabet to traders”14. Greek merchants must have quickly noticed the usefulness of literacy and the advantage it offered their literate trading partners from Phoenicia: it was most probably the primary impetus for adopting and adapting the advanced Phoenician script. Yet once invented, alphabetic literacy was soon, as the surviving evidence shows, put to uses beyond the commercial ones: among them both the recording and the composition of poetry, and in particular hexametric poetry, in the nascent symposiastic culture15. While there is general agreement on the existence of alphabetic literacy in the period covered by the dates now commonly assumed for the composition of the Homeric epics, controversy centers on how developed and mature Greek writing was at this time. The arguments oralists adduce against the possibility of an eighth and seventh-century manuscript of the Homeric epics are the paucity of attestations to eighth-century writing, and above all the immaturity of the lettering the few attestations display: there is hardly, they argue, any attestation from the time before 750, while the relatively numerous attestations after 750 are all epigraphical and short, written on pottery and stone, mostly in awkward, uneven, and spidery letters. This evidence is seen as suggesting that literacy in the eighth and seventh centuries, practiced on unsuitable media, was too little advanced for committing monumental epics to writing. In the view of the radical oralists, this evidence should pull the empirical rug from under the dictation and autography theories. It would leave as the sole alternative the assumption of oral composition-cum-oral transmission down to the middle of the sixth century: only then the technology of alphabetic literacy would have been advanced enough to be up to an enterprise such as the recording of large-scale epics. Admittedly, the difficulty of making a convincing case for the possibility of an Homeric manuscript is considerable. Yet it has been unduly exaggerated; and, as we shall see, it is not insuperable. The available evidence for the currency of alphabetic writing in archaic Greece has been growing ever since Denys Page wrote some 50 years ago: “if we state that alphabetic writing was very rare in any Greek land before the birth of Archilochos we are unlikely to be contradicted by future discoveries”16. The growing evidence does, in fact, make it likely for Page to be contradicted. While not a single letter has been discovered on the ever increasing quantities of Geometric pottery before the middle of the eighth century, “there are now dozens and dozens of documents” from its second half, as Burkert has pointed out. From this material he infers: “a cultural explosion must have happened here”17.

14 15 16 17

implies that the newly created alphabet was immediately put to the monumental task of recording the longest work of classical Greek literature! Jeffery 1963: 7; Heubeck 1979: 95; 150 ff.; Burkert 1992: 33. Heubeck 1979: 150 ff. – On the emerging and evolving sympotic culture, see Murray 1983; Kannicht 1989; Latacz 1990. Page 1964: 120; see on this Johnston 1983: 66 where he shows how, due to new evidence, the ‘map’ of early Greek literacy has been greatly changing since 1964: contra Page. Burkert 1992: 28.

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Talk of the paucity of evidence might soon cease to be valid for judging the state of late eighth-century literacy. Then there is the crucial question of writing materials and utensils. Rhys Carpenter and Lilian Jeffery have made the important point that the Greeks’ adoption and adaptation of the Phoenicians’ script required an established bilingual settlement of both peoples: the relations between the Greeks and the culturally more advanced Phoenicians had to be not only extensive but intensive enough for such a cultural transfer. Trade between the two peoples meant not only the purchase of finished products but also the adoption of new technical skills and arts: “there was not”, Burkert writes, “just trade through various intermediate contractors but also learning and teaching through direct contact”18. It was in such a context that the Greek merchants and craftsmen came to adopt the Phoenician script for their own transactions. Analogous to the adoption of technical skills, “the adoption of the Phoenician script by the Greeks was more than the copying of letter forms; it included the transmission of the technique of teaching and learning, how to read and write”; and this transmission must have included the use of the writing materials and utensils the Phoenicians used: writing tablets and leather scrolls, together with the appropriate writing tools19. The Greek word for writing tablet, devlto~, attests to this: its retained Semitic name, dlt, is evidence that “it is as old as the Greek alphabet”20. Moreover, Heubeck has shown that one can make a strong case for the Phoenicians’ use of papyrus during the eighth century; it was imported to Phoenicia from Egypt by the middle of the 11th century. While it could be, and was, used for producing cables and even light boats, its primary use would most probably be for writing material21. It is most unlikely that the Greek merchants at Al Mina or Greek visitors to Kition would have ignored its enormous utility for their newly acquired skill. Thus it is reasonable to assume that the Greeks had adopted from the Phoenicians along with their script also their primary media of writing – wood tablet (devlto~, pivnax), leather scroll (difqevrion), and, yes, papyrus. That the Greeks must have taken over these established writing media is indirectly suggested by a fact to which Lilian Jeffery has drawn attention: the absence of the clay tablet – a medium extensively used in other areas of the ancient world and in Mycenean Greece, but neglected in archaic Greece, although there was an abundance of the raw material22. Perhaps the simplest explanation for the archaic Greeks’ neglect of clay was the superiority of the writing materials they took over from the Phoenicians – superior in terms of facilitating writing, but inferior in terms of durability. One is almost 18 19 20 21

22

Burkert 1992: 22. Burkert 1992: 29 f. Cp. also Heubeck 1979: 152. Burkert 1992: 30; Burkert 1983: 52: “the devlto~ is as old in Greece as the alphabet”; see also Heubeck 1979: 143. Heubeck 1979: 155 f. In the middle of the 11th century 500 rolls of papyrus were imported by Wen-Amon from Egypt to Phoenicia: on this “voyage of Wen-Amon”, see Lewis 1974: 84 f. and 9 n.8 (with literature); the earliest papyrus find in Palestine stems from the eighth century: ibid.: 9 n.9. Jeffery 1963: 6.

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tempted to wish – and here is an obvious irony – that archaic Greece had made use of the inferior writing material; for the lowly but durable clay would have preserved many texts, as Mesopotamia and Mycenean Greece prove. The perishable nature of the inherited writing materials, then, can largely explain the paucity of evidence of eighth-century literacy. Pottery and rock, the media of the early evidence, are not the ordinary material on which to write. Writing on them was secondary and casual. And it was difficult. Therefore the sparse evidence that has survived on them can represent only a small portion of possible eighthcentury writing: it would have been for the most part on perishable wood, leather, and papyrus as the primary media of writing. Admittedly, much of the available evidence of eighth century writing does attest to the immaturity of eighth-century Greek literacy: the lettering in them is indeed clumsy and irregular. However, one piece, dated before 700 B. C.23 and, more Phoenicio, still written retrograde (= n d∆ ejkdui`men o[leqron, o[fr∆ oi\oi Troivh~ iJera; krhvdemna luvwmen. Father Zeus, Athene and Apollo, if only Not one of the Trojans, as many as there are, could flee death, Nor one of the Argives, but we two could escape destruction So that we alone might break the sacred battlements of Troy! (Il. 16. 97–100; my translation).

This vision of Achilleus and Patroklos winning honour and glory by alone conquering Troy – with all Achaeans and all Trojans having perished – not only reveals the quest for absolute honour as chimerical but also adds an air of the absurd: for what would winning honour and glory mean in a world of corpses? Wolfgang Kullmann has registered in this strangely irreal vision Achilleus’ momentary blindness as to the future, who fails to recognize the danger into which he is sending Patroklos, and is unmindful of his being destined for a short life240. Achilleus’ irreal vision, one may add, attains thereby a specific tragic irony: at the conquest of Troy it will, after all, be Achilleus, along with Patroklos, who will be dead. With the portrayal of Achilleus growing into a tragic figure in the course of his single-minded and unrelenting pursuit of honour and glory, the Iliad transcends the oral traditional heroic epic. The latter’s mode is the unreflective exaltation of heroic excellence (aretê), heroic prowess (alkê), honour (timê), and glory (kleos) in the celebration of klea andrôn – as the be-all and end-all of life. The Iliad’s mode, by contrast, is that of the questioning exploration of the heroic by dramatizing its inherent dangerous proclivities and tragic potential, and showing it as being therefore in need of a larger framework. A case in point of such questioning exploration is the episode of Skamandros’ persecution of Achilleus. Herakles’ fight with, and victory over, the river-god Acheloos, is a motif typical of traditional heroic epic – plain and straight celebration of heroic alkê. When the motif enters the Iliad it is reversed. More, it is fundamentally transformed into the river-god’s near destruction of its hero, with the underlying idea of the potential perils inherent in the heroic. But this underlying idea is not meant as the disavowal of heroic aretê and alkê. Rather, both are viewed in a new perspective, grounded in a larger ethical framework – one that the nascent polis will provide241. In the ethical life of the polis the heroic will have eventually 240 Kullmann 1992: 237 (= Kullmann 1968: 32). 241 The complex topic of the polis in Homer and the related question of archaic-age aristocracy are beyond the scope of this book. I have to confine myself to pointing to the research that has

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its place as the cardinal civic virtue of martial prowess (andreia) and, as its actualization (praxis), in the citizen-warrior’s pursuit of honour and glory through protecting and advancing his civic community (koinônia politikê). Homer points in that direction through the figure of Hektor. In portraying Hektor in the role of the protective ‘holder’ (e{ktwr< eJk-/ejc-) of his city, Homer draws the contours of a prefiguration of the future polis-warrior. Hartmut Erbse has made a strong case for conceiving of the figure of Hektor in terms of such a prefiguration. Hektor stands out among the Homeric heroes for his devotion to civic duty – the locus classicus is Il. 12. 242: ei|~ oijwno;~ a[risto~, ajmuvnesqai peri; pavtrh~: “one bird sign is best: to fight in defence for your country”. Such portrayal of the “holder of Troy” attests to the Homeric tenor in reflecting on the heroic outlook – that of transcending traditional heroism and its narrow individualistic code of honour seeking by creating a heroic figure committed to the communal code of the public good242. Yet in the end Hektor did not live up to his role! He did not, because, in allowing ultimately his individual philotimia to trump the needs and interests of his community, he resembled his antagonist Achilleus with whose fate his own is intertwined: the same heroic ideology! Like Achilleus, he suffers tragic loss as a result. This calls for elucidation. A brief glance at the Homilia of Iliad VI will provide it. Before Pulydamos turns up in the narrative as advisor, it is Andromache who offers Hektor strategic advice (Il. 6. 433–439). She urges him to fight the enemy from the ramparts and attend to weaknesses in Troy’s fortification such as the one near the fig-tree (par∆ ejrineovn, 6. 433): there the enemy has already sensed the city’s potentially vulnerable spot. In other words, she is advocating what is the city’s only chance of survival against a vastly superior enemy – a defensive strategy that relies contradicted the trend in historical research inaugurated and profoundly influenced by the writings of M. I. Finley – that trend which K.-J. Hölkeskamp has characterised as the Finleyschool’s ‘primitivist’ reconstruction of the social world of the Homeric epic as entirely prepolitical (Hölkeskamp 1997: 3); it is perhaps best epitomized in Halverson’s facile formula “no state, only estates”. Those critical of that trend have convincingly, even cogently, established the reality of the polis (ptolis, ptoliethron, asty) in the world of Achilleus and Odysseus, cp. the two poleis on Achilleus’ shield (Il. 18. 491–508; 509–540). On its central institution, the agorê boulephoros see especially Hölkeskamp 1997 passim. – Even a military alliance such as the Achaean army before Troy is conceived in polis-terms, with its agorê and boulê, and a wall marking off a public space, when forced to fortify the ship-camp. What gave possibly rise to the said primitivist trend was the striking inability of these institutions to rein in the philotimia of the great heroes when it harmed the community, as it does in the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilleus. Wolfgang Kullmann attributes this to the tension that exists between the socialpolitical order that obtains in the epic on the one hand, and, on the other, the saga from which the poet draws his great glory-seeking heroes (Kullmann 1992: 270–71). – The nascent polis of the Homeric epic is the early stage of that long and complex process that culminated in fullyfledged city-statehood in the 5th and 4th centuries (Hölkeskamp, ibid.). See Scully 1987; 1990. Hölkeskamp 1992; 1994; 2000; Raaflaub 1991; on the question of archaic age aristocracy see Stein-Hölkeskamp 1989, esp. 15–56. 242 Erbse 1978: 18–19. – In future, individual honour and glory are still sought, but instead of trumping the common good, they are sought in its service. At Athens this was to become the way of integrating the nobility into the structure of the democratic polis: the nobility continued to pursue individual honour and glory through providing leadership to the dêmos.

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on Troy’s extraordinarily strong fortifications: a[stu de; puvrgoi / uJyelaiv te puvlai sanivde~ t∆ ejpi; th`/~ ajrarui`ai / makrai; ejuvxestoi ejzeugmevnai eijruvssontai in Pulydamas’ description (Il.18. 274–76). But no – Andromache’s strategic advice is out of the question for Hektor. It is out of the question, since it is incompatible with Hektor’s philotimia; his reputation and prestige as a hero among the Trojans would be at stake (Il. 6. 441–46): ajlla; mavl∆ aijnw`~ aijdevomai Trw`a~ kai; Trw/avda~ eJlkesipevplou~, ai[ ke kako;~ w}~ novsfin ajluskavzw polevmoio. oujdev me qumo;~ a[nwgen, ejpei; mavqon e[mmenai ejsqlov~ aijei; kai; prwvtoisi meta; Trwvessi mavcesqai, ajrnuvmeno~ patrov~ te mevga klevo~ hjd∆ ejmo;n aujtou` (442–36). I feel deep shame before the Trojans and the Trojan women in trailing robes, if, as a coward, I would shrink from battle. Nor does my spirit urge me to this, since I have learned to be ever brave and to fight among the Trojans battling in the front rank, winning great glory, both for my father and for myself (my translation).

The stronger motif for rejecting Andromache’s suggestion of a defensive strategy is, of course, Hektor’s desire to win great glory, a[rnusqai mevga klevo~. Misinterpreting Andromache, Heroic Man in Hektor can conceive of her advice only in terms of cowardice (kako;~ w}~ novsfin ajluskavzein polevmoio, Il. 6. 443) – as if she did not know better! As Stephen Scully has put it epigrammatically: “in as much as Hektor will fight for the city, he cannot fight from it”243. For fighting a defensive war from the city, as Andromache counsels, does not satisfy heroic ambition: heroic prowess is displayed, and honour and great glory are won, by fighting in the open pitched battle among the foremost ranks, the provmacoi: prwvtoisi meta; Trwvessi mavcesqai, Il. 6. 445. However much Hektor may prefigure the future polis-warrior, he falls short of its chief defining feature: the driving forces of his Heroism – a[rnusqai mevga klevo~ and ajmuvnesqai peri; pavtrh~ – do not coalesce yet, as they do in the future poliswarrior who, in seeking honour and glory in protecting the community, subordinates the former to the latter, philotimia to philopatria. In Hektor they are in conflict with one another and coincide only momentarily, when he sees, and tries to seize, the opportunity of winning great glory by averting the threat of his city’s annihilation through annihilating the enemy at their ships (nu`n … moi e[dwke Krovnou pavi?~ … / ku`do~ ajrevsq∆ ejpi; nhusi; qalavssh/ t∆ e[lsai ∆Acaiouv~, 18. 293–94). This opportunity, however, is predicated on Achilleus’ absence from the battlefield. It ceases with Achilleus’ return to the fighting. When Pulydamas cogently counsels the necessity of returning to the defensive strategy of the previous nine years of fighting from the ramparts, Hektor refuses to give up his pursuit of ku`do~ ajrevsq∆j ejpi; nhusiv: it is now enhanced by the prospect of winning even greater kydos through the chance of defeating and killing Achilleus in the process (18. 305–9). Thus, in the end, a[rnusqai mevga klevo~//ku`do~, the individual pursuit of glory and honour, trumps ajmuvnesqai peri; pavtrh~, the defence of the native city. 243 Scully 1981: 14 (emphasis added).

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Heroic Man in Hektor, then, chooses glory-seeking fighting on the battlefield over polis-saving defence from the ramparts244, and thus causes the ruin of his city. Later, in his soliloquy (22. 98–130), the poet has Hektor use v. 442 of Iliad VI (6. 442 = 22. 105) again – an iteration establishing a significant cross-reference to the Homilia: aijdevomai Trw`a~ kai; Trw/avda~ eJlkesipevplou~

In Iliad VI he would have felt shame for not acting according to the demands of his heroic ambition. Now in Iliad XXII he is ashamed for what his atê-driven ambition has wrought: by rejecting Pulydamas’ advice to have the warriors retreat into the city (18. 254–283; 285–309), he now realizes – his anagnorisis! – that he has ruined Troy’s host in the blind recklessness of honour-seeking (w[lesa lao;n ajtasqalivh/sin ejmh/`sin, 22. 104). While in Iliad VI he had no reason to feel shame before the Trojan men and women, in Iliad XXII he has every reason – namely, total failure, unforgivable in heroic shame-culture245. Hektor ends up with suffering tragic loss and guilt far greater than Achilleus does. To his heroic ambition – defeating Achilleus – he has sacrificed Astyanax and Andromache – his own oikos; Priam and Hekabe – his paternal oikos; and, above all, the polis of Troy and its people, whose protection was his raison d’être. This outcome imparts retroactively an ironic air to the end of the Homilia, intensifying the force of the cross-reference: there Hektor has rounded off his rejection of Andromache’s strategic advice with the standard Greek male response to women raising matters of state and warfare: leave such matters to men and go back to loom and distaff (6. 490–93). It is significant that the grand finale of the Iliad does not turn on the heroic themes of honour (timê) and glory (kleos), so central to its mise-en-scène. On the contrary, by turning, in a pronounced way, on the themes of respect for the claims of others and compassion, with aidôs reaffirmed and lost eleos regained, it stresses instead the ethical forces that would constrain the incessant pursuit of honour and glory saving it from becoming destructive of community and civilized life. The Iliad, which, like a traditional heroic epic, begins with intoning the most heroic themes, concludes by revealing the limited validity of the heroic code. It even shows its inherent danger for both the hero himself and his community, when self-

244 Against Werner Jaeger’s view (Jaeger 1932: 551) that Hektor exhibits already characteristics of the polis-ethics, Kullmann (1992: 269) has rightly emphasized that Hektor embodies the same extreme individualistic notion of glory as Achilleus, thus is possessed by the same philotimia. But I cannot follow when Kullmann says on the same page that with the verses of 6. 441–6 Hektor “steht auf dem Boden der ‘Polisethik’”. As I try to argue in my text, Hektor’s lines express here sheer Heldenideologie: what drives him is his heroic reputation among the Trojans and the pursuit of great glory, mega kleos. Polisethik would require that he accept what he rejects in these verses, namely Andromache’s advocacy of a defensive strategy, because this is in the interest of the polis, while his glory-seeking fighting in offensive battle is not. 245 My interpretation of the iteration (6. 442 = 22. 105) differs from that of J. Kakridis’ (Kakridis 1971: 73) which has Homer make Hektor utter this verse in order to remind the listener of the scene in Iliad VI. True, yet, more importantly, the iteration establishes the far range reference by contrast, namely through the contrary tenor of Il. 22. 105.

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assertive heroism strives exclusively for honour, unrestrained by an ethical framework246. This tenor structures the Iliad’s underlying nexus of ideas that informs the Homeric shaping of the epic action. Such critical tenor and the ideas involved are patently beyond orality and the oral epic247. Here we discern those mental forces at work, released through alphabetic literacy. In the Homeric poems their operation reflects the main achievements of the Greek Renaissance in the archaic age: the emergence of the new social order of the polis and its ethical code; integral largescale epic; and the invention of the alphabet. With its dramatic structure and its more advanced outlook, the Iliad not merely transcends the traditional Heldenepos with its chronographic structure and unreflective celebration of heroic excellence and valour: it also seems to tend to a different genre. Alfred Heubeck has remarked that the Iliad-poet, far from being, as he is often considered to be, the originator of the large-scale epic, actually represents the reverse: he overexerts it, stretches it to, and even pushes it beyond, its limits, and thus renders his dramatic epic one of a kind248. With the ‘tragic aura’ (Kullmann)249 that settles on the epic action through the fates of Achilleus, Hektor, Priam, and Patroklos, the Iliad is pointing forward to another genre that explores values in a questioning mode – towards Attic tragedy, the literary art-form of the polis. It calls to mind Plato’s dictum of Homer as the hJgemw;n th`~ tragw/diva~.

246 This aspect is most convincingly treated in Effe 1988; Nicolai 1981, Nicolai 1983. 247 See above pp. 172–73. 248 Heubeck 1958 = Heubeck 1984: 47. ‘One of a kind’: in the history of Western epic poetry the Iliad has found no successor in terms of structural design, with its dual time-scheme, which involves a bold poetic treatment of time that is free from the exigencies of chronological sequence. It telescopes the past into the present epic action and appropriates the future by way of symbolic prefiguration. Such a poetic manipulation of time is unique in ancient and generally in Western epic, and only the modern novel will produce something comparable to it. It is the Odyssey that provided the model for the high epic: the Aeneid, for one, follows the Odyssey’s structural design. 249 Schol. AT ad Il. 1.1 emphasizes the tragic element of the Iliad: a[llw~ te kai; tragw/divai~ tragiko;n ejxeu`re prooivmion: “above all, (sc. the poet) devised a tragic proem for tragedies”, his subject being not straight klea andrôn but klea andrôn suffused with a tragic air. C. W. MacLeod characterizes “the Iliad as a tragic poem” (thus the title of Section 1 of his Introduction to Iliad Book XXIV) in the sense of “war represent(ing) humanity under duress and in the face of death” (MacLeod 1982: 8). MacLeod’s view of the tragic in the Iliad is close to that of Jasper Griffin’s Homer on Life and Death, to which he repeatedly refers as a congenial interpretation (though he criticizes the author for not doing justice to Iliad XXIV, p.15, note 1). For Griffin, it is the “tragic and consistent view of human life that makes the epic so great”; “the central fact of the Iliad [is] the significance of death”; and he cites approvingly Walter Marg’s dictum (Marg 1973: 10) of the Iliad as “a poem of death” (Griffin 1980:143; 105; 138). MacLeod’s and Griffin’s (as well as Marg’s) characterization of the tragic in the Iliad strikes one as at once overstated and vague. I am rather inclined to view the scholiast’s tragw/divai in concrete terms as the tragedies of the dominant characters of the poem, when excessive passion, vaulting ambition, atê, hamartia, and hybris are at work. – On the tragic element in the Iliad cp. also Rutherford 1982: 145–160.

6. EPILOGUE: A LAST WORD ON POSTORAL NARRATIVE ART & SCHEMATIZATION As noted, Tilman Krischer has made a convincing case for including the aristeiai in the class of typical elements, akin to the type-scenes. Like them the aristeiai have a distinct yet flexible schema and thus are part and parcel of the typicality of schematized narrative. Here is the schema of Achilleus’ aristeia, as extracted from Krischer’s discussion of it250: (0a) (0b) (1a) (1b) (1c) [(2a) [(2b) (3a) (3b)

Arming (19. 368 ff:) Gleam of arms (19. 374) Intermezzo: divine assembly & opening of theomachy (20. 1–66) Intermezzo: Aineas’ encounter with Achilleus (20. 75–352) Series of single combat victories 20. 381–489 Attack on Trojan army, 20. 490–503 Pursuit of Trojans to city and river (21. 1 ff.) Ersatzmotiv: Achilleus in mortal peril (Skamandros [21. 211 ff.]) Ersatzmotiv: Achilleus rescued by Hephaistos 21. 342 ff.] Intermezzo: resumption of theomachy (21. 385–514) Monomachy resulting in Hektor’s death (22. 91 ff.) Ersatzmotiv: Hektor’s corpse ransomed by Priam (Iliad XXIV).

Note the term “Ersatzmotiv”, “substitute motif”. With its help Krischer extends the schema of Achilleus’ aristeia to Iliad XXIV to include the Hektoros Lytra: the ransom of Hektor’s body is said to substitute for the typical element ‘fight over the defeated hero’s corpse’ (= 3b). Similarly, Achilleus’ persecution by the river-god and his rescue by Hephaistos are said to substitute for the typical elements ‘wounding’ (= 2a) and ‘restoration of the aristeuôn’ (= 2b). At first glance, their designation as substitute motifs of the aristeia schema seems to make sense. The extraordinary narrative conditions of Achilleus’ aristeia do not offer an opportunity for a serious wounding of the invincible aristeuôn. Nor do they allow a fight over the corpse of the defeated enemy-hero. Before he meets Hektor in the final duel, Achilleus has wiped the battlefield clean: all surviving Trojans and their allies have fled in wild panic into the city. There is no-one who could fight Achilleus over Hektor’s body; and anyway, who would dare? But the narrative schema of the aristeia requires the wounding (2a) and restoration (2b) of the aristeuôn, as well as the fight over the defeated hero’s body (3b). Thus let substitute motifs conveniently fill the lacunae of the schema! Seen from the perspective of the schema, it seems a plausible operation. But it is not: just note the price at which preserving the schema is purchased. Labelling the Hektoros Lytra an Ersatzmotiv is, to say the least, audacious: the grand finale of the Iliad reduced to a substitute motif of a narrative schema! Krischer himself must 250 Krischer 1971: 27–8

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have sensed the term’s inadequacy, for he has added a qualifying ‘sit venia verbo’. So humble a term as Ersatzmotif for so magnificent a narrative piece as the Ransom of Hektor is strangely out of place. There is an obvious gap between the critical term and the phenomenon it is supposed to name. – Structurally, the Ransom of Hektor is not even a part, much less a substitute motif, of the aristeia-schema – it is the counterpoint to the aristeia. Reinhardt’s pertinent dictum – Iliad XXIV being the “reversal” (Umkehrung) of Iliad XXII – comes to mind: it connotes the revocation of Achilleus’ dehumanization and relapse to barbarism that obtain in his aristeia. It is the same with the other alleged substitute motif: Achilleus’ persecution by Skamandros, in presenting the hero, at the height of his heroic triumph, on a desperate run to escape the most unheroic death by drowning, turns for the moment the whole notion of an aristeia on its head – a far cry from serving as its substitute motif. Both sections listed as substitute motifs are, as we have found, gems of narrative art. They are pieces of individual design transcending, in form and in substance, the schema as well as the typical-traditional thematics. They strongly attest to the evolutionary trend towards schema-free narrative in Homer. To be sure, for Homer the schema is still a factor of his narrative mode, as his use of schematized formula, typical scene, and catalogue attests. Composing the schematized way would come naturally to him, trained as he originally was as an oral poet for composition-in-performance. So he may start out with schemata at both levels – diction and theme – and work with them as the conventions and the rules of the genre. However, as the oral poet Homer becomes the literate poet Homer, his postoral narrative, freed from the forces operative in orality (utility, necessity, and habit – the Lordian ‘must’), is no longer bound to and by the schemata. Whenever his poetic ideas so require, his narrative goes beyond them: it transforms them or leaves them behind or breaks their moulds or may even explode them; and passes into free, that is schema-free, composition. This is evidently the case with Skamandros’s persecution of Achilleus and with the Hektoros Lytra. With the poetic weight having shifted to novel and untypical motifs, the attempt at reclaiming them for the schema in the guise of substitute motifs is bound to fail: it only results in the discrepancy between the critical term and the poetic substance of what it vainly tries to grasp. A term such as Ersatzmotiv presupposes the primacy of schematization. Yet in these two passages, which both go against the very grain of the traditional heroic aristeia and its spirit, the Homeric narrative not only goes beyond any schematization: their inherent ideas have the further effect of having the Iliad transcend the very form of the traditional heroic epic. Such transcendence sums up most succinctly the gist of this book’s argument: both passages most pronouncedly demonstrate a profound advance in epic poetry in terms of structure and substance, made possible by the invasion of alphabetic literacy into the oral tradition comprising the Trojan Faktenkanon of myths. It is the advance from epic singing embodying the traditional heroic outlook that unreflectively celebrates the glorious deeds of heroes (klea andrôn) to an epic text that critically reflects on the limits and perilous proclivities of the heroic, placing it in a tragic perspective and grounding it in a larger view of life.

APPENDICES APPENDIX I: SUPPORTING PASSAGES TO THE “FORMULAR ANALYSIS” OF VERGIL, AEN. 1, 1–10 (1)

arma virumque: XI. 747

(2) haud incerta (VIII. 49) munera vestra (G. I. 12) non iniussa (E. VI. 9)

} cano

(3)

Cp.: Troiae quos (v. 190)

(4)

ab oris: III. 169; XI. 281

(5)

primus } ab oris densus (G. II. 196)

(6)

Italiam{

cursu (III. 253) laeto (III. 524)

(7) Cp. quos illi bello profugos egere superbo (VIII. 118) (8)

Cp.: miserandaque venit (III. 138)

(9)

misceri (G. I. 359) litora { pinguis ubi (VII. 764) } et praecipere (X. 277)

(10) et alto: XII. 244; XII. 357; G. III. 354; cp. also et altos (IV. 645) (11) informis et alto (G. III. 354) (12)

et fluctibus aestas (I. 756) terris { adnare necesse est (IV. 613) agitare vel undis (XII. 803) vestigia fecit (G. II. 474)

(13) Cp: vi propria (G. II. 428) (14) memorem (I. 4) saevae { } Iunonis nutu (VII. 592) (15) ob iram: I. 251. Cp. also: Iunonis (I. 4) } ob iram unius (I. 251) (16) Cp.: an mare quod supra memorem (G. II. 158) (17) Iunonis et irae (I. 130) (18)

diu (VI. 732) multa { inter (VI. 160) simul (XI. 222) super (I. 750; VII. 358; X. 839)

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Cp. also:

largoque (I. 465) multa gemens { magnoque (IV. 395)



(19) Cp. bello profugos (VIII. 118) (20) Also:

detonet omnis (X. 809) distinet hostem (XI. 381) dum { iactat inertis (X. 323) despicis omnis (E. VIII. 321) etc. detonet (X. 809) } omnis dum { despicis (E. VIII. 321)

(21) qui adveneris (I. 380) accesseris (III. 441) accedimus (III. 293) } urbem adventat ad (I. 514) respexit ad (XII. 671) cf. also … condere Iuppiter urbem (I. 522) (22) Cp. inferre et fatis regem (VIII. 12) (23) testaturque (XII. 581) adfaturque (II. 700) } deos implorantque (VII. 576) (24) arcebat longe (I. 31) qui petat auxilium et (VIII. 10) debellanda tibi (v. 731) gloria delectos (XI. 431) quae modo victorem (XI. 141) multi illam magno e (VII. 54)

} Latio

(25) genus unde: v. 123; 568; G. IV. 282 (26)

genus {

unde Latinum (I. 6) omne Latinos (XII. 530)

(27) Albanique (I. 7) cognatique (VIII. 132) (28)

} patres

Romae (I. 7) Troiae (XI. 288; IX. 144); v. 811) moenia { Abellae (VII. 740) Teucri (XII. 193; II. 252)

(29) Cp. exin bella viro memorat quae … (VI. 890) argenti atque auri memoras quae … (X. 531) regem adit et regi memorat (X. 149) (30) Cp. orabunt (VI. 849 insequitur (V.788) } causas insequor et (III.32)

Appendices (31)

247

dolens sequens (III.368) Cp. petat (X.150) petunt (VI. 319; II. 151) quidve { moror (II. 102) ferat (II. 75) quidve {

(32) regina deum: VII. 620 (33) pietate insignem { gemmis (VII. 76) (Cp. also as flexible formula: insignem pietate/pietate insignis [VI. 403]) (34) Cp. discrimina rerum (I. 204) tot { inhospita saxa (v. 627) responsa secuti (X. 33) (35) adire (I. 10) te ferre (XII. 635) } labores auferte (VIII. 439) (36) Cp. impulerat (II. 55) at beginning of verse. Other forms of impellere in this position: … labores/impulerit … labantem/impulit (IV. 23) (37) tantaene tantumque (X. 7) } animis quae tanta (XI. 733) (38) caelestibus irae discordibus irae (IX. 688)

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APPENDIX II Formula Analyses: see above pp. 101–106 I. Three passages of plain narrative (diegetic level) 1. Il. 6. 1–36. Battle scene: Formular analysis above in text, cp. p. 103 Result: The high formular density of 76 percent goes with light enjambment: the combined numbers of zero- and adding enjambment is 29 against 7 periodic enjambments. 2. Il. 1. 446–74. Chryses sacrificing on behalf of the Achaeans  w}~ eijpw;n ejn cersi; tivqei, o} de; devxato caivrwn pai`da fivlhn: toi; dæ w\ka qew`/ kleith;n eJkatovmbhn 450 toi`sin de; Cruvsh~ megavlæ hu[ceto cei`ra~ ajnascwvn: “klu`qiv moi, ajrgurovtoxæ, o}~ Cruvshn ajmfibevbhka~ Kivllavn te zaqevhn Tenevdoiov te i\fi ajnavssei~. hjme;n dhv potæ ejmevo pavro~ e[klue~ eujxamevnoio: tivmhsa~ me;n ejmev, mevga dæ i[yao lao;n ∆Acaiw`n: hjdæ e[ti kai; nu`n moi tovdæ ejpikrhvhnon ejevldwr: h[dh nu`n Danaoi`sin ajeikeva loigo;n a[munon.” ’W~ e[fatæ eujcovmeno~, tou` dæ e[klue Foi`bo~ ∆Apovllwn. aujta;r ejpeiv rJæ hu[xanto kai; oujlocuvta~ probavlonto, aujevrusan me;n prw`ta kai; e[sfaxan kai; e[deiran, 460 mhrouv~ tæ ejxevtamon katav te knivsh/ ejkavluyan divptuca poihvsante~, ejpæ aujtw`n dæ wjmoqevthsan: kai`e dæ ejpi; scivzh/~ oJ gevrwn, ejpi; dæ ai[qopa oi\non lei`be: nevoi de; paræ aujto;n e[con pempwvbola cersivn. aujta;r ejpei; kata; mh`r∆ ejkavh kai; splavgcn∆ ejpavsanto, mivstullovn tæ a[ra ta\lla kai; ajmfæ ojbeloi`sin e[peiran w[pthsavn te perifradevw~, ejruvsantov te pavnta. aujta;r ejpei; pauvsanto povnou tetuvkontov te dai`ta, daivnuntæ, oujdev ti qumo;~ ejdeuveto daito;~ eji?sh~. aujta;r ejpei; povsio~ kai; ejdhtuvo~ ejx e[ron e{nto, 470 kou`roi me;n krhth`ra~ ejpestevyanto potoi`o, nwvmhsan dæ a[ra pa`sin ejparxavmenoi depavessin: oi} de; panhmevrioi molph`/ qeo;n iJlavskonto kalo;n ajeivdonte~ paihvona kou`roi ∆Acaiw`n mevlponte~ ∆Ekavergon: o} de; frevna tevrpet∆ ajkouvwn.

morae 22 18 12 24 24 12 24 24 20 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 10 21 0

enjambment 3 3 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 0 3 0 2 1 0 2 0 2 1 0 1 1 0

Result: A high degree of formular density, 85 percent, goes with enjambment that is for the most part either light or zero: 22, against 6 periodic enjambments. 3. Il. 7. 161–9: Achaean heroes volunteering to duel with Hektor. ’W~ neivkessæ oJ gevrwn, oi} dæ ejnneva pavnte~ ajnevstan: w\rto polu; prw`to~ me;n a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agamevmnwn, tw`/ dæ e[pi Tudei?dh~ w\rto kratero;~ Diomhvdh~, toi`si dæ e[pæ Ai[ante~, qou`rin ejpieimevnoi ajlkhvn,

morae 8 24 24 24

enjambment 0 0 0 0

249

Appendices toi`si dæ e[p∆ ∆Idomeneu;~ kai; ojpavwn ∆Idomenh`o~ Mhriovnh~, ajtavlanto~ ∆Enualivw/ ajndreifovnth/, toi`si dæ e[pæ Eujruvpulo~, Eujaivmono~ ajglao;~ uiJov~, a]n de; Qova~ ∆Andraimonivdh~ kai; di`o~ ∆Odusseuv~ …

24 24 24 6

1 0 0 0

Result: The formular density is 84 percent, with enjambment nearly non-existent. II. Three Speeches (‘mimetic level’) 1. Il. 1. 149–187: The Angry Exchange between Achilleus & Agamemnon (1a) Il. 1. 149–71. Achilleus upbraids the generalissimo.  Formular analysis above in text pp. 104 f. Result: The formular density is 21 percent, with 4 hapaxes, and heavy enjambment (11 necessary and 3 adding) (1b) Il. 1. 173–87: Agamemnon responds in kind: feu`ge mavlæ ei[ toi qumo;~ ejpevssutai: oujdev sæ ejgwv ge livssomai ei{nek j ejmei`o mevnein: pavr j ejmoiv ge kai; a[lloi 175 oi{ kev me timhvsousi, mavlista de; mhtiveta Zeuv~. e[cqisto~ dev moiv ejssi diotrefevwn basilhvwn: aijei; gavr toi e[ri~ te fivlh povlemoiv te mavcai te. eij mavla karterov~ ejssi, qeov~ pou soi; tov gæ e[dwken. oi[kadæ ijw;n su;n nhusiv te sh`/~ kai; soi`~ eJtavroisin 180 Murmidovnessin a[nasse: sevqen dæ ejgw; oujk ajlegivzw wJ~ e[mæ ajfairei`tai Crushi?da Foi`bo~ ∆Apovllwn, th;n me;n ejgw; su;n nhi? tæ ejmh`/ kai; ejmoi`~ eJtavroisi pevmyw: ejgw; dev kæ a[gw Brishi?da kallipavrh/on 185 aujto;~ ijw;n klisivhnde, teo;n gevra~, o[fræ eu\ ei[dh/~ o{sson fevrterov~ eijmi sevqen, stugevh/de; kai; a[llo~ i\son ejmoi; favsqai kai; oJmoiwqhvmenai a[nthn.

morae 8 8 13 11 14 8 8 18 14 21 10

enjambment 3 3 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 3 1 2 3 0

Result: Formular density is 31 percent, with 1 hapax. Necessary enjambment prevails (6) over adding enjambment (3). Yet there are 6 co-terminous verses. 2. Il. 9. 96–113: Nestor criticises and advises Agamemnon ∆Atrei?dh kuvdiste, a[nax ajndrw`n ∆Agavmemnon, ejn soi; me;n lhvxw, sevo dæ a[rxomai, ou{neka pollw`n law`n ejssi a[nax kaiv toi Zeu;~ ejgguavlixen skh`ptrovn tæ hjde; qevmista~, i{nav sfisi bouleuvh/sqa. 100 twv se crh; peri; me;n favsqai e[po~ hjdæ ejpakou`sai, krhh`nai de; kai; a[llw/, o{tæ a[n tina qumo;~ ajnwvgh/ eijpei`n eij~ ajgaqovn: sevo dæ e{xetai o{ttiv ken a[rch/. aujta;r ejgw;n ejrevw, w{" moi dokei` ei\nai a[rista. ouj gavr ti~ novon a[llo~ ajmeivnona tou`de nohvsei, oi|on ejgw; noevw, hjme;n pavlai hjdæ e[ti kai; nu`n, ejx e[ti tou` o{te, diogene;~, Brishi?da kouvrhn cwomevnou ∆Acilh`o~ e[bh~ klisivhqen ajpouvra~, ou[ ti kaqæ hJmevterovn ge novon: mavla gavr toi e[gw ge povllæ ajpemuqeovmhn: su; de; sw`/ megalhvtori qumw`/ 110 ei[xa~ a[ndra fevriston, o}n ajqavnatoiv per e[tisan,

morae 24

19

enjambment 2 4 3 0 2 3 0 0 2 2 4 2 3 3 3

250

Appendices hjtivmhsa~: eJlw;n ga;r e[cei~ gevra~. ajllæ e[ti kai; nu`n frazwvmesqæ, w{" kevn min ajressavmenoi pepivqoimen dwvroisivn tæ ajganoi`sin e[pessiv te meilicivoisi.

16 13

2 2 0

Result: Formular density is 17 percent, with 1 hapax and with heavy enjambment (exclusively the necessary kind). (3) Od. 1. 32–44. Zeus’ ‘theodicy’ w] povpoi, oi|on dhv nu qeou;~ brotoi; aijtiovwntai. ejx hJmevwn gavr fasi kavkæ e[mmenai: oiJ de; kai; aujtoi; sfh`/sin ajtasqalivh/sin uJpe;r movron a[lgeæ e[cousin, wJ~ kai; nu`n Ai[gisqo~ uJpe;r movron ∆Atrei?dao gh`mæ a[locon mnhsthvn, to;n dæ e[ktane nosthvsanta, eijdw;~ aijpu;n o[leqron, ejpei; prov oiJ ei[pomen hJmei`~, ÔErmeivan pevmyante~, eju?skopon ∆Argei>fovnthn, mhvtæ aujto;n kteivnein mhvte mnavasqai a[koitin: 40 ejk ga;r ∆Orevstao tivsi~ e[ssetai ∆Atrei?dao, oJppovtæ a]n hJbhvsh/ te kai; h|~ iJmeivretai ai[h~. w}~ e[faqæ ÔErmeiva~, ajllæ ouj frevna~ Aijgivsqoio* pei`qæ ajgaqa; fronevwn: nu`n dæ aJqrova pavntæ ajpevtise.

morae 4 13 5 7 13

16

enjambment 0 4 2 3 2 0 2 0 2 3

*frevna~ hJniocoio (Il. 8. 124, 316) ~ frevna~ Aijakidao (Il. 8. 184)

Result: A formular density of 20 percent; heavy enjambment. III. Similes (‘tropic level’) 1. Il. 5. 136–143 (Diomedes/lion). Formular analysis above in text p. 105. Result: A formular density of 17 percent; two hapaxes and balanced enjambment. 2. Il. 20. 164–175 (Achilleus/lion) Phleivdh~ dæ eJtevrwqen ejnantivon w\rto levwn w}~ sivnth~, o{n te kai; a[ndre~ ajpoktavmenai memavasin ajgrovmenoi, pa`~ dh`mo~: o} de; prw`ton me;n ajtivzwn e[rcetai: ajllæ o{te kevn ti~ ajrhi>qovwn aijzhw`n douri; bavlh/, ejavlh te canwvn, periv tæ ajfro;~ ojdovnta~ givnetai, ejn dev tev oiJ kradivh/stevnei a[lkimon h\tor, 170 oujrh`/de; pleurav~ te kai; ijsciva ajmfotevrwqen mastivetai, eJe; dæ aujto;n ejpotruvnei macevsasqai, glaukiovwn dæ ijqu;~ fevretai mevnei, h[n tina pevfnh/ ajndrw`n, h\∆ aujto;~ fqivetai prwvtw/ ejn oJmivlw/: w}~ ∆Acilh` jw[trune mevno~ kai; qumo;~ ajghvnwr ajntivon ejlqevmenai megalhvtoro~ Aijneivao.

morae 19 13 6 8 13 9 8 10

enjambment 1 1 3 3 3 2 3 2 1 0 2 0

Result: Formular density is 30 percent, with 2 hapaxes; heavy enjambment. 3. Il. 17. 61–69 (Menelaos/lion) ÔW~ dæ o{te tiv~ te levwn ojresivtrofo~ ajlki; pepoiqw;~ boskomevnh" ajgevlh" bou'n aJrpavsh/ h{ ti" ajrivsth, th`~ d∆ejx aujcevn∆ e[axe labw;n krateroi`sin ojdou`sin prw`ton, e[peita dev q∆ ai|ma kai; e[gkata pavnta lafuvsse

17 13

3 1 1 1

251

Appendices dh/w`n: ajmfi; de; tovn ge kuvne~ t∆a[ndrev~ te nomh`e~ polla; mavl∆ ijuvzousin ajpovproqen, oujdæ ejqevlousin ajntivon ejlqevmenai: mavla ga;r clwro;n devo~ aiJrei`: w}~ tw`n ou[ tini qumo;~ ejni; sthvqessin ejtovlma ajntivon ejlqevmenai Menelavou kudalivmoio.

10 11 24

3 3 0 3 0

Result: The formular density is 32 percent, with necessary enjambment (4x) prevailing over adding enjambment (2x). There is 1 hapax. 4. Il. 16. 156–165 (Myrmidons) oi} de; luvkoi w}~ wjmofavgoi, toi`sivn te peri; fresi;n a[speto~ ajlkhv, davptousin, pa`sin de; parhvi>on ai{mati foinovn, 160 kaiv t∆ ajgelhdo;n i[asin ajpo; krhvnh~ melanuvdrou lavyonte~ glwvssh/sin ajraih`/sin mevlan u{dwr a[kroon, ejreugovmenoi fovnon ai{mato~: ejn dev te qumo;~ sthvqesin a[tromov~ ejsti, peristevnetai dev te gasthvr …

morae 8 5 0 13 6 0 0

enjambment 3 3 0 3 1 3 0

Result: The formular density is 21 percent; the simile is heavily enjambed, with 5 necessary enjambments versus 1 adding one. Overall result of Appendix II: an exemplification of the end of the assumption of formular uniformity in Homer.

252

Appendices

APPENDIX III A Formular Analysis of Il. 21. 233–271: Achilleus’ Conflict With The River-god.

«H: kai; ∆Acilleu;~ me;n dourikluto;~ e[nqore mevssw/ krhmnou` ajpai?xa~: o} d∆ ejpevssuto oi[dmati quivwn, pavnta d∆ o[rine rJeveqra kukwvmeno~, w\se de; nekrou;~ pollouv~, oi{ rJa kat∆ aujto;n a{li~ e[san, ou}~ ktavn∆ ∆Acilleuv~. tou;~ e[kballe quvraze, memukw;~ hju?te tau`ro~ cevrsonde: zwou;~ de; savw kata; kala; rJeveqra, kruvptwn ejn divnh/si baqeivh/sin megavlh/sin. 240 deino;n dæ ajmf∆ ∆Acilh`a kukwvmenon i{stato ku`ma, w[qei d∆ ejn savkei> pivptwn rJovo~: oujde; povdessin ei\ce sthrivxasqai: o} de; ptelevhn e{le cersi;n eujfueva megavlhn: h} dæ ejk rJizevwn ejripou`sa krhmno;n a{panta diw`sen, ejpevsce de; kala; rJeveqra o[zoisin pukinoi`si, gefuvrwsen dev min aujto;n ei[sw pa`s∆ ejripou`sæ: o} dæ a[r∆ ejk divnh~ ajnorouvsa~ h[i>xen pedivoio posi; kraipnoi`si pevtesqai, deivsa~: oujdev t∆ e[lhge qeo;~ mevga~, w\rto d∆ ejpæ aujtw`/ ajkrokelainiovwn, i{na min pauvseie fovnoio 250 di`on ∆Acillh`a, Trwvessi de; loigo;n ajlavlkoi. Phlei?dh~ d∆ ajpovrousen o{son t∆ ejpi; douro;~ ejrwhv, aijetou` oi[mat∆ e[cwn +mevlano~ tou`+ qhrhth`ro~, o{~ q j a{ma kavrtistov~ te kai; w[kisto~ petehnw`n tw`/ eijkw;~ h[i>xen, ejpi; sthvqessi de; calko;~ smerdalevon konavbizen: u{paiqa de; toi`o liasqei;~ feu`g,j o} d j o[pisqe rJevwn e{peto megavlw/ ojrumagdw`i. wJ~ d∆ o{tæ ajnh;r ojcethgo;~ ajpo; krhvnh~ melanuvdrou a]m futa; kai; khvpou~ u{dati rJovon hJgemoneuvh/ cersi; mavkellan e[cwn, ajmavrh~ ejx e[cmata bavllwn: 260 tou` mevn te prorevonto~ uJpo; yhfi`de~ a{pasai ojcleu`ntai, to; dev t j w\ka kateibovmenon kelaruvzei cwvrw/ e[ni proalei`, fqavnei dev te kai; to;n a[gonta: kai; laiyhro;n ejovnta: qeoi; dev te fevrteroi ajndrw`n. oJssavki dæ oJrmhvseie podavrkh~ di`o~ ∆Acilleu;~ sth`nai ejnantivbion kai; gnwvmenai, ei[ min a{pante~ ajqavnatoi fobevousi, toi; oujrano;n eujru;n e[cousin, tossavki min mevga ku`ma diipetevo~ potamoi`o plavz∆ w[mou~ kaquvperqen: o} d∆ uJyovse possi;n ejphvda lavbro~ u{paiqa rJevwn, konivhn d∆ uJpevrepte podoi`in.

morae

8 8 7 8 8 8 18 8 12 13 11 10

8 13 13 16 10

enjambment 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 2 3 1 3 3 1 3 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 3 3 0 3 1 0 3 1 1 0 3 3 2 3 1 0

Observations On kala; rJeveqra: Richardson 1993: 73 observes that “kala; rJeveqra occurs 6x in Book 21, but nowhere else in the Iliad. So it need not be merely formular”. In fact, its six occurrences form a phrase-cluster and function as a leitmotif, with a variation ejrateina; rJeveqra at v. 21. 218 – thus an instance of formulaic artistry (see Friedrich 2007: 72).

Appendices

253

On enjambment: Richardson observes for vv. 233–50 a high frequency of enjambment (ibid.); and Higbie 1990: 118–19 draws attention to the sequence of four skewed sentences (“the furthest possible deviation from coterminosity”, 112) in the passage vv. 241–8 as a “most powerful … device for scene-painting” at the most dramatic moment of Achilleus’ persecution by the river-god (see above p. 121). She also notes the low formular density in this passage (ibid.). – My analysis shows predominant periodic enjambment, with the heavy kind (=no. 3) prevailing. On formular density: The whole passage contains a number of mere repeats which, in accordance with my definition of the formula, I have not underlined. In this passage – without the repeats, but with the phrase-cluster kala; rJeveqra included – formular density amounts to 21 percent. On hapax legomena: Their frequency in this passage is noted in Richardson 1987: 172–73 and Richardson 1993: 74 (on vv. 257–64). – In the analysed passage the eight hapaxes are marked in bold print. Résumé: When the narrative turns on Achilleus, the narrative cuts across the three narrative levels (diegetic, mimetic, tropic) and leaves the distinction behind: all three levels exhibit similar low formular density, high frequency of hapax legomena, and a predominant degree of periodic enjambment.

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INDICES INDEX RERUM Achilleis 211 f.; 217 f.; 220 A.-constellation of motifs 211 A. as dramatic core of Iliad 211; 221; 223 f.; 226 Aristophanes 79 Achilleus passim affliction by Skamandros 232–34; 238 f.; 244 aristeia 212; 230–34; 243 f. ethopoiia 226–39 death of A. in symbolic prefiguration 212 fatal compromise 230–32 hamartia 230 humaneness of A. 227 f. eclipsed by grief/shame/guilt 231 f. restored 237 human sacrifice 234; 234233 hybris 230–33 megalopsychia, -os 228 f.; 237 philotimia 230; 237–39; see also s. v. ‘tragic loss’ quest for absolute/supreme honour 238 the reflective/questioning hero 229 tragedy of A., see s. v. ‘tragic loss’ Agamemnon ethopoiia 148 f.; 172 f.; 190–92; 201; 227 f. aidôs 148 f.; 172; 228 f.; 241 aidôs & eleos 228; 231; 235 f. aidôs breached 172; 228 f. breached & reaffirmed 241 Alphabet 163–69 ‘the script of scripts’ 169 ‘Alphabetic revolution’ 169–73 alphabetic mind vs. oralist mind 170–73 Alphabetic literacy 11; 170; 163–69; 186 f.; 207; 220 f.; 242–44 mental forces released by a.l. 179 ff.; 242 Analogy, see s. v. ‘Formular theory’ Andromache 193; 239–41 Ante-Iliaca/Post-Iliaca, see s. v. ‘Transfer of motif’ Aristeia 197–200; see also s. vv. ‘Achilleus’ & ‘Type-scenes’ Aristotle 41 f.; 45 f.; 48; 114293; 209158; 214177; 221 f.; 222201; 228

Atê 171–73; 190–92; 241 Autograph, see s. v. ‘Dictation theory’ Brecht 42 Catalogues 139–42 Co-existence/co-habitation of oral/literate passim, 12 f.; 109; 111 f.; 159; 174 Composition/re-composition in performance passim 11; 20–28; 30; 35; 50; 54–58; 117; 177; 189 Exigencies of 38–40; 85; 85113; 154; 184; 194 Co-terminosity, see s. v. ‘Enjambment’ Cyclic epics 46; 209–11; 214–16; 216561 ‘Troia-epic’ 214–16.; 220–22 representing Faktenkanon of Trôika 222 revalorization of c. e. 209158 ; 211169; synkrisis c. e./Homer 209158; 214177 Date of Iliad 13 Diachronic/synchronic 94 f. Diapeira (see also ‘Agamemnon, ethopoiia’) 189–92 Dictation theory 29 f.; 32–34; 164; 17482; 176; 17661 Dictation vs. autograph 178–81 Diction (levxi~) passim; 43 f.; 48; 52 end of notion of uniform formular d. in Homer 106 f.; 160; 186; 251 ‘oral-derived’/‘orally-evolved’ d. 35; 86216; 175; 184 schematized/systematic d., see s. v. ‘Schematization’ schema-free d., see s. v. ‘Schema-free composition/narrative’ Economy (thrift, simplicity), formular 11; 19 f.; 29; 55 ff.; 100 definition/description of e. 19; 59 economy test as ‘schematization test’ 110 f. economy & extension 11; 19 f.; 55 f.; 59; 66 f.; 69; 71; 80; 110; 112 principle/law of e. 11; 31; 55; 58 breach of e. 11; 55; 111; 194 Enjambment co-terminosity 99; 115–17; 253 nature & forms of e. 116–18 ‘skewed sentence’ 117; 253

270

Indices

Epic narrative’s three levels in Homer 103; 107f; 159; 195; 233; 253 Epithet(s) artistically weighted e. 64f; 65156; 157 context & e. 57–60; 57127 division/subdivision of e. 55–57; 57126; 60 mot juste & e. 43; 52; 63–65; 101 Parryist reasoning on e. 56 ff. lowly status of e. in Parryist r. 56–59 critique of 60–63 Essential idea, see s. v. ‘Formula(s)’ Ethopoiia/characterization 13; 38; 43; 45; 48; 101; 107; 160; 225 ff. Euripides 79; 100; 209 Extension (= scope, length), see also s. v. ‘Economy’) 11; 20; 52; 55 f.; 66 Faktenkanon, Trojan 213 f.; 213175; 216 canonical & non-canonical treatment of f. 215; 215181; 221; 225 Fernbeziehungen/far-range cross-references 189–191 Focalization, see s. v. ‘Narratology’ Formula(s) passim, 29; 21; 51 ff. definition (Parry’s) of f. 52–54 formular density 78 division/subdivision of f. 56 ff.; 57126;127 essential idea of f. 53 f.; 55–57; 56 f. increasing neglect of e. i. in oralist formular theory 68; 72 generative mechanism of f. 72 f.; 82 = substitution pattern 69; 72–74 metrical conditions 53–55 metrical utility/usefulness of f. 53; 58 principal shapes/types of f. 52–54 revised concept of f. 97–99 systematic organization of f. 19; 26; 41; 98 ‘Formulaic artistry’ 193 ff. ; 252 Formular apparatus 12; 55 expansion of f. a. 71–76 Formular economy (see also s. v. ‘economy’) 11; 19 f.; 29; 55 f.; 100 breaches of f. e. 55; 111; 194 description/definition of f. e. 19; 59 as law/principle 11; 31; 59; 110 increasing relaxation of f. e. in Homer 159; 186 Formular theory, Parryist 51 analogy, role of in f. t. 73–75 development of f. t. 79 f. petitio principii in f. th. 66; 155 Gilgamesh epic 169 Goethe 208

Greek renaissance of 8th/7th century 162; 1654; 242 Hapax legomena 52; 99–101; 253 cluster of h. l. 101; 105 Hegel 207; 233; 233202 Hegemony, see s. v. ‘Parryism’ Hektor 188; 193; 196; 225; 234 anagnorisis 241 philotimia of H. 239–242 H. & polis-ethics 240 f.; 241244 H.’s tragic loss 241 H. in Homilia 239–41 Herakleia 209158; 233; 238 Heroic code 149; 229 f.; 232; 241 Heroic ‘shame-culture’ vs. ‘guilt culture’ 239 ‘Homer of Kosovo’ 189 Homeric Question 19 f.; 21; 41; 45; 212 New Homeric Question 20 f. Homilia, see also s. v. ‘Hektor’, 193; 193106 ; 225; 239–41 Honour 176; 201; 239; 247 f. absolute/supreme honour 237 f. ‘Hyperoralism’ 34; 176–78; 17864 Hybris 172 f.; 190–92; 230–233 Hypotaxis 116; 128–31; 131–34; 135–38 Iliad (also see s. v. ‘Two Iliads’) ‘cyclic Iliad’ 222 Ante-Iliaca/Post-Iliaca 223–25 oral Iliads 214 Homeric Iliad passim advanced ethopoiia 160; 225 f. dual time-frame 224; 224208; 242248 dramatic structure 181; 214 ff.; 228 ff.; 250 intellectual physiognomy 13; 177; 187 nexus of ideas 13; 172; 242 questioning exploration of the heroic 238; 242 the ‘tragic’, ‘tragic aura’ in Iliad 242; 242249 tragic-heroic epic 225; 244 uniqueness of structure: ‘one of a kind’ 242; 242248 Iteration/repetition 20; 43; 67; 187–93 104261; 187–93 deliberate/artistic i. 187; 188–92; as leitmotif 192; 234; 252 Justness (justesse) of expression (see also s. v. ‘Mot juste’) 64; 65; 65158 Klea andrôn type of epic 172; 225; 238; 242349; 244 Kth`ma ej~ aijeiv 17

Indices Large-scale epic (Großepos) 45; 144; 162–64; 169; 213 chronographic-linear 45; 214 f. dramatic-integral 45; 213 f.; 220; 223 Leitmotif 192; 234; 252 ‘Lordian must’, see s. v. ‘orality’ Medjedovic, Avdo 45; 147; 179 Meho-Epic 139; 144–48, 179; 189; 18998; 203 Similes in M. 203 Milton 33; 39; 41; 47 f.; 115 Microphilology, oralist 13; 48; 52; 71 ff. ‘Monumental composer’ 32 f.; 210; 213 Morphology of archaic Greek epic 209; 214–16 Mot juste 43; 52; 63–65; 101 Narratology 173; 234232 focalization, embedded/secondary; 173; 234232 Neoanalysis 13; 23; 160; 1603; passim after 209; (see also s. vv. ‘Cyclic epics’; ‘Faktenkanon’, ‘Large-scale epic’; Ethopoiia; ‘Morphology of archaic epic’; ‘Transfer of motif’) evolution of n. 213 ff. Kakridis-Heubeck-Kullmann axis of n. 213 Memnon hypothesis 211 ff. Motivforschung 190; 213 ff. n. & Parryism 210 f. n. & postorality 160; 1603; 207 ff. ‘Nestor-cup’ 166–69; 16725 Nexus of ideas, see s. v. ‘Iliad’ ‘Nonconfigurationality’ 124 ff. Occam’s razor 10 f.; 217 Orality/Oral Poetry differentia specifica of o. p. 55 forces operative in o. p.: habit/utility/ necessity 38; 44; 160; 184; 187; 195 (= see also s. v. ‘Lordian must’) ‘Great Idol Orality’ 37 litmus test of o. 21; 31; 50; 50111; 65 ‘Lordian must’ 182; 186; 195; 195112; 244 multiformity (fluidity; see also s. v. ‘Protean force/flux’) of o. p. 25; 27; 32; 34; 35; 4489; 135–37; 176 f.; 181 qualitative/quantitative argument for o. 67 tests of orality 29; 50 f. Oral Theory (Oralism) 22 ‘oral law’ 38; 3970; 44; 45 ‘prison house of oralism’ 37 tenets of o. 28 f.; 30 Ovid 81206; 89 f.; 100 Parataxis 114–16; 125; 131–34

271

‘Parry-Lord conservatives’ 30 Parryism = Theory of Oral Homer 24–27 differentiations of P. 27; 29; 33 epochal discovery of P. 11; 17; 51 ff. hegemony in Homeric Studies 20–22; 23 f. ‘hybris of hegemony’ 175 waning of h. 23 ff.; 175 Hard/Soft Parryism 35–38; 3565 ‘multiform Parryism’ 38–40; 3765 Adam Parry’s ‘Other Parryism’ 175 ff. Patroklos from loyal hetairos to Achilleus’ alter ego 212 Philachilleia, see s. v. ‘philachilleus’ Philachilleus (filacilleuv~) 227; 234.; 235234 Philotimia, heroic 172; 228; 230; 237 ff. 241244 dangerous proclivities 238 hypertrophic form in Achilleus 238 trumping philopatria in Hektor 240 f. Plato 103; 170; 236; 242 Poetics, oral 38–49 Oral vs. Aristotelian poetics of epic 41–44 Polis 66156; 238 f.; 238241 nascent polis in Homer 162; 238246 heroic values in p. 239; 239242 Postorality/Postoral epic, postoral: passim; 12 f.; 86216; 92; 160 f.; 172; 174 f.; 183–85; 186 f.; 194 f.; 201; 210; 215; 220 f.; 225 f.; 244 Postoral markers 186 ‘Prodigality as poetry’ 213 Protean force in oral poetry 4489; 176 f.; 181 Protean flux 34 Renaissance of 8th century B.C 162 f.; 1624; 242 Reversal (in epic action) 192 Reversal (Reinhardt’s Umkehr) 237; 237239; 244 Schema-free composition/narrative 107; 113; 139 f.; 186 f.; 198; 204; 229; 240 Schematization (=Systematization) passim 11; 19; 50–52; 56; 55; 97; 110–13; 190; 243 f. of diction 11; 19; 30; 41; 49; 51; 55; 63; 113; 198 of theme 136–42; 50–52; 135 ff.; 151 f. residual/receding in Homer 113; 144 184; 186; 186; 195; 243 f. its twin categories ‘economy’ & ‘extension’ 19; 55; 59; 66; 110 f. marginalized in oral formular theory 96 ‘scripsist’ 36 f. Shakespeare 11; 12; 20; 100; 187 Shame-culture & guilt-culture 231

272

Indices

‘Skewed sentence’, see s. v. ‘Enjambment’ Sophocles 100 ‘Tragic aura’; the ‘tragic’, tragic-heroic, see s. v. ‘Homeric Iliad’ Tragic loss of Achilleus 200; 230; 237 f. of Hektor 239; 241 Transfer of motif (‘Motivübertragung’) 211 f.; 219; 223 Rigid/semi-rigid adaptation in t. of m. 223 f. Ante-Iliaca/Post-Iliaca 223–25 Transitional stage/text: oral>literate 11 f.; 174–76.; 182; 18279; 186 “Two Iliads”, hypothesis of 217–221 straight heroic Iliad/tragic-heroic Iliad 225 Type-scenes 30; 136–39 ff.; 157 ff. arming as t. 197 f. aristeia as t. 136; 198; 199–201

plot-structure & type-scenes 199; 199130 pondering (mermhrivzein) 196 f. Under-representation 77 f.; 77196; 98; 204 Uniformity of formular diction , assumption of 43; 45; 66; 106–109; 155 tenet in oral theory 66; 155 chimaera in Homer 106 f. fallacy in formular analyses of Homeric verse 66; 107; 156 its end for Homeric diction 106 ff. Unique expressions 69; 73–78; 105; 110 f. Utility, see s. v. ‘Orality/oral poetry’ Vergil 33; 39; 41; 48; 51; 80; 81 f., 83; 85; 119 f.; 119307; 121; 131; 156 ‘Vergilian pattern’ 81; 83 Word-group (=formula) vs. single word 199 Yugoslav analogy 26; 30; 32; 39; 56; 176; 179

INDEX LOCORUM Aristophanes Ran. 939 ff.

79

Aristoteles NE 1107b 22 1123a 34 Poet. 1459a 30 1448b 35 Rhet. 1409a 24, 26

228; 228219 228; 228219 47; 214177; 222 222 114293

Cypria frg. 1

222

Eusthatius 1696. 63

227

Hesiod Theog. 247

232227

Homerus Ilias I 1–2 1–7 1–10 1–15 1–25 1–307 2, 6, 8 3 7 8

116f. 102 67; 69; 70 66;74;78;101 102 144; 148–51 68; 72 103; 200 107271 68; 72

12–611 24 190 54–56 57 f. 77 72; 107274 122 149 138 149–71 150 171 173–75 173–87 175 184–87 188–92 188–94 203 207 214 225 275 f. 330 410–12 411 f. 417 446–474 505

143 f. 139 133 194 194 227 104; 249 72; 107274 227 173; 191 105; 249 228 191; 227 130 196; 227 173 227 173 194; 227 2228 227 173 172; 229 212173 104;108;138;248 212173

273

Indices II

III

IV

V

VI

11–15 23–33 60–70 65–69 87–94 110–211 111–18 139 ff. 284–332 381 382–90 391–93 402 ff. 402–33 455 ff. 459 ff. 484–759 493–760 695–710 688 816–76

102261 102261 102261 102261 108277 223 189 189 132 128 131 f. 131 124; 141 142 206 206 141 f. 223 141 f. 58 224

328–38 339

197 197

75 ff. 234–39 415–17 422 ff. 482 ff.

205 108 128 206 206

1–3 5 f. 21–24 85 125 136–43 311–13 520–26 782 f. 860 f.

130 206 99

1–36 32 51–65 147–51 337–43 411–20 433–39

103; 248 93 228 114; 168 192 227 239

441–46 445 490–93 498 500 504 506–11 617

240 f. 240 241 193106 193106 197 202 125

VII 103 161–69 256 f. 337–43 433–44

197 104;140; 248 202; 207 192 192

VIII 1–3 222 338 ff. 388

131 88 206 197

IX

105; 250 129 129 202; 207 202 XI

14 f. 18–28 96–99 96–113 110–113 115–119 122–157 160 186–91 264–98 328 f. 346–52 356–63 410–13 421–26 533 607 f. 619 f. 629–37 650–55 698–700

202 189; 192 117 105; 249 f. 228 173;229; 187; 201; 228 192 215 187 60 229 229 f. 212173 129 229 230; 237 230 229 230 229

5 15–55 45 f. 54 f. 55 72; 200 62 f. 101–20

88 197 199 207 206 228

274 104–6 111 f. 140 155 172 292 f. 297 f. 299 f. 324 f. 369–72 401 ff. 548 ff.

Indices 228 228 72 206 206 206 206 123; 126 206 122; 126 198 202

XII 41–49 131–34 242 278–87

206 206 239 132

XIII 62 ff. 137 ff. 178 ff. 241 243 ff. 389 ff. 389–91 471–5

205 206 206 197 206 206 202 206

XIV 65–81 83–102 148 f. 317–27 414 ff.

192 192 202 201 206

XV 80 ff. 170 ff. 263–68 381 ff. 479–82 592 618–21 630

205 205 202 206 197 207 206 206

XVI 3–4 46 f. 97–100 126–130 130–54 141–44

202 237 238 132 197; 200 200

156–65 179–92 220 f. 346–49 457 482 ff. 482–84 675 693 742 ff. 745 ff. 855–57

106; 251 133 126 f. 95 235 206 202 235 188 206 206 188

XVII 53 ff. 61–69 91 ff. 194 346–9 547 ff. 657–64 747 ff.

206 106; 251 196 197 95 205 202 206

XVIII 35–64 39–49 94–96 70–126 98–126 121 254–83 285–309 293 f. 305–9 336 f. 458 491–540

212173 140 2121736; 219 232 212173 230 241 102; 241 240 240 234 212173 239241

XIX 55 58 68–71 146 199 264 f. 275 364–424 365–68 368–74 373–75 374 374–79 375 ff. 388–91

129 194 194 129 128 197; 200 230 f.; 231225 243 200 242 200 206 200

275

Indices 399–423 416 f. 420–23

201 212173 2121736

XX 1–66 29 f. 66 75–352 164–75 381–489 403 ff. 445 490 ff. 490–503

243 230 68; 72; 107274 243 105; 250 f. 243 206 58; 62 206 243

XXI 1 ff. 2 26–32 93 74–75 100–102 130–32 136–38 139 ff. 211 ff. 211–21 218 219 f. 223–26 233–50 233–71 241–43 241–48 257–64 265–68 281 342 ff. 385–514 527 543 f. 550 553 ff. 573 ff.

243 232 234 206 231 231 232 232 232 243 232 252 232 233 253 233; 252 117 253 253 129 233 243 243 57 232 62 196 206

XXII 26 ff. 91 ff. 92 98–130 99 ff. 104

206 243 57 241 196 241

105 262–68 297 317 f. 345–54 346 f. 361–63 370 376 ff. 393–95 395–98 422 437–76

241; 241245 234 188 206 237239 234 188 63 219 63 193; 234; 237 72 193

XXIII 9 22–23 141–53 175 f. 180–82

235 234 232227 234 234

XXIV 22 63 33–44 40 ff. 50–2 80 ff. 113–14 155–59 229–37 249–51 424–44 503 f. 553–58 559 576–602 580–89 569 f. 583–86 621 ff. 724 734–39

235 205 63 205 235 235235 144 144 88 236 236 58 237239 193; 234; 237 236 237 141 193106 193106

Odyssea I 1–2 2 21 72 32–44 33–39 132–35

116 f. 62 105; 250 130 130

276 II

III V

VI

17 93 ff.

72 18788

421 ff.

137

122 424–44

76 86 f.

48 f. 331

125 72

VIII 222 492 f. IX

X

XI

Indices

90 221

20 97 485 504

87 62; 62145

49–52 330

130 57

385–87

134

XII 353 ff. 369 396

137 76 76

XIII 126

72

XIV 379 413 ff.

72 137

XVII 103–7 303–27 373

102 102 125

XIX 138 ff.

18785

XXII 291

72

446–77

243636

XXIII 205

125

XXIV 127

18788

Hom. H. Merc. 313

70

Scholia Homerica AT ad. Il. 1, 1 A ad Il. 8. 555 bT ad Il. 8. 555 bT ad Il. 10. 14 HMQS ad Od. 2.94 EHPV ad Od. 6.74

242249 60136 60136 234 56123 60136

Ovidius Am. II. 165 Ars II. 473 Fast. III.655 Met. II. 490 III. 714 IV.87 VII. 534 f. X. 477 XII. 209 XIV.422 XV. 100

89 89 89 89 89 89 89 89 89 89 89

Mededovic The Wedding of Smailagic Meho 150–153 Plato Politeia. 390e 392a–394c

236 103

Vergilius Aeneis I. 1–11 IV. 181 VI. 283 VI. 552 VII. 170 XII. 697

83 f.; 85; 245 ff. 81 81; 81206 81 81 81

Milman Parry’s comparative study of Homer and Southslavic oral song had demonstrated the existence of an oral tradition behind and within the Homeric Epic, thus establishing an indisputable link between Homer and oral poetry. Yet its exact nature has remained a moot point. For equally indisputable is the fact of the coexistence of oral and literate features within the Homeric Epic. Thus not behaving as either a straight oral song or as a straight literate text tout court, the Homeric Epic calls into question the prevailing Parryist axiom of the oral Homer. The link between Homer and oral poetry

ISBN 978-3-515-12048-7

9

7835 1 5 1 20487

has thus become an open question again: it is, in fact, the New Homeric Question that turns on the roles of orality and literacy in the genesis of the Homeric Epic. To clarify it this book experiments with a third term: postorality. As a postoral poet, having initially been trained as an oral bard absorbing the Hellenic oral tradition, Homer would have acquired literacy in the course of his career as an oral singer. It enabled him to widen, deepen, and refine his epic art, thereby giving rise to an epic as complex and unique, in terms of structure, characterization, and intellectual substance, as the Iliad.

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