Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Ernest L. Abel. "The Psychology of Memory and Rumor Transmission and Their Bearing on Theories of Oral Transmission in Early Christianity." Journal of Religion, 51:270-81.

Since the earliest Christian traditions existed in oral forms, the principles of oral transmission must be considered in any determination of authenticity of New Testament materials. Notes that oral transmission tends to eliminate original details but preserves general outlines, a fact undermining many of the conclusions of Bultmann (e.g. 1957) and the Form Critics. Contends that repetition and mnemonic devices are indications of authenticity.
Area: BI

Roger D. Abrahams. "Creativity, Individuality, and the Traditional Singer." Studies in the Literary Imagination, 3:5-34.

Warns against ethnocentricity in the study of the aesthetics of folk art. In an effort to recover the real meaning of "individual creativity within a tradition-oriented community" (7-8), he examines the performance attitudes and aesthetic philosophy of Almeda Riddle, a traditional ballad singer from White-Cleburn County, Arkansas. Compares her repertoire with that of Marybird MacAllister from Albemarle County, Virginia. Includes texts of 19 songs.
Area: US, FB

Roger D. Abrahams. A Singer and Her Songs: Almeda Riddle's Book of Ballads. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970.

The autobiographical reminiscences of Almeda Riddle, renowned Arkansas ballad-singer, interspersed frequently with ballad texts and melodies. Many of her comments bear on her own practice of the oral art of balladry. Includes editorial afterword, notes on musical transcriptions, and three appendices.
Area: US, FB

Roger D. Abrahams. "The Training of the Man of Words in Talking Sweet." Language in Society, 1:15-29.

In the course of describing a diglossia situation and the teaching of a "high" variety of speaking in the British West Indies, he mentions the role of Parry-Lord formulas and the learned ability to improvise (espec. 22-23).
Area: WI

Roger D. Abrahams. "License to Repeat and Be Predictable." Folklore Preprint Series (Indiana University Press), 6, iii:1-13.

Accuses Parry-Lord theorists of employing a naive notion of memory and of not adequately providing for the many kinds of oral literature to be found in various parts of the world. The emphasis on generic variety is salutary, but the pseudo-scientific analysis according to Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is reductive and distracting.
Area: TH

Kamal Abu-Deeb. "Towards a Structural Analysis of Pre-Islamic Poetry." International Journal of Middle East Studies, 6:148-84.

Primarily a formalist investigation of poetic structure, with frequent reference to Lévi-Strauss, but the hypothesis of oral composition and tradition is considered throughout. Feels the poet is an individual craftsman not bound by tradition. Concluded in Abu-Deeb 1976.
Area: AR

Kamal Abu-Deeb. "Towards a Structural Analysis of Pre-Islamic Poetry (II): The Eros Vision." Edebiyât: A Journal of Middle Eastern Literature, 1:3-69.

Using the tools developed in his 1975 article, he probes the structure of the mu'allaqa of `Umru' al-Qays.
Area: AR

Robert J. Adams. "Folktale Telling and Storytellers in Japan." Asian Folklore Studies, 26, i:99-118.

A short review of relevant background studies is followed by a report on his fieldwork in Japan, particularly on the circumstances of collecting, the current state of the oral tradition, and the transmutation of oral stories to literary versions.
Area: JP

Kenneth Adams. "The Metrical Irregularity of the Cantar de Mio Cid: A Restatement Based on the Evidence of Names, Epithets, and Some Other Aspects of Formulaic Diction." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies,49:109-19.

Sees the Cid's metrical character as a condition of the "original" work rather than as a latter-day phenomenon of scribal transmission. Finds the origin of such irregularity in the formulaic structure of the diction.
Area: HI

Kenneth Adams. "The Yugoslav Model and the Text of the Poema de Mio Cid'," in Medieval Hispanic Studies Presented to Rita Hamilton. Ed. Alan D. Deyermond. London: Tamesis. pp. 1-10.

After a brief history of early research on the Yugoslav material, he compares the SCHS oral epic texts with the Poema de Mio Cid and looks for traces of oral performance in the latter. Concentrating on slips of the tongue, scribal errors, "flaws" in line construction, repetition, "stalling," and the prosodic properties of assonance, rhyme, and caesura, he finds parallel features and considers them evidence of an original oral text behind our manuscript of the Cid.
Area: HI, SC, CP

Arthur W. H. Adkins. "Orality and Philosophy." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. Ed. by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy/The Hegeler Institute. pp. 91-109.

Disputes Havelock's claims that in a non-literate society solely metrical or rhythmic action sequences can be memorized and that an oral culture cannot think systematically or make statements with abstract subjects. Citing the equivalency of such passages as Phaedo 100e7-101b2 and Iliad 3.168-94, attempts to show that members of an oral culture were capable of raising philosophical questions. Concludes that there is not a necessary link between literacy and abstract thought, since non-literates could be concerned with abstract language, as in Odyssey 9.406ff.
Area: AG

F. N'sougan Agblemagnon. Sociologie des sociétés orales d'Afrique noire: Les Eve du Sud-Togo, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Le Monde d'Outre-Mer Passé et Présent, 10 ser., 35. Paris: Mouton.

An ethnographic and sociological survey of oral forms (charms, riddles, proverbs, music, and folktales) collected by the author among the Eve.
Area: AF, MU

J.M. Aguirre. "Epica oral y épica castellana: Tradición creadora y tradición repetitiva." Romanische Forschungen, 80:13-43.

A consideration of Castilian epic tradition, especially the Cid, in light of the Parry-Lord oral theory. Following a review of the theory, he demonstrates the existence of traditional elements in the Cid and argues that viewing the poem as oral traditional resolves the major textual difficulties, such as metrical irregularity, the questions of dating and authorship, and related problems. Suggests that there were two distinct stages in the evolution of the Castilian epic: (1) the oral and creative tradition of the troubadour and (2) a later stage that was popular, conservative, and unartistic. Selective bibliography appended.
Area: HI

G.W. Ahlström. "Oral and Written Transmission: Some Considerations." Harvard Theological Review, 59:69-81.

Discusses various possibilities for transmission, including fixed (memorized) and flexible (recomposed) oral forms. Cautions against regarding repetition as a certain sign of oral composition, preferring to see it as a stylistic feature.
Area: BI

A.J. Aitken. "Oral Narrative Style in Middle Scots." In Actes du 20 colloque de langue et de littérature écossaises (Moyen age et renaissance), Universite de Strasbourg 5-ll juillet 1978. Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg. pp. 98-112.

Basing his analysis on three Middle Scots texts (John Campbell's Complaint [c. 1613], a sermon by James Ross [1638], and the sixteenth-century comic poem The Wyf of Awchtirmnchty), he locates a group of syntactic and rhetorical features he considers oral in origin, characteristic of "impromptu memorial story-telling" (p. 108). Postulates that these and other texts were written in the available and familiar idiom of oral narrative, with implications for Blind Hary and the Scottish Chaucerians.
Area: ST

Ebiegberi J. Alagoa. "Oral Tradition among the Ijo of the Niger Delta." Journal of African History, 7:405-19.

A modest but exacting study of the authenticity and the authority of oral tradition as a historical source, as well as a discussion of collection procedures, within a self-contained community.
Area: AF

Ebiegberi J. Alagoa. "The Use of Oral Literary Data for History: Examples from the Niger Delta Proverbs." Journal of American Folklore, 81:235-42.

One of the five oral literary genres among the Ijo, Nembe proverbs can furnish valuable historical information on figures, events, institutions, and rules of conduct. The possibilities of their use are illustrated by an analysis of 17 proverbs.
Area: AF

W.F. Albright. "Some Oriental Glosses on the Homeric Problem." American Journal of Archeology, 54:162-76.

Brings to bear literary and archaeological evidence concerning the Hittite, Phoenician, Mycenaean, Canaanite, Assyrian, and Babylonian civilizations on a complex of Homeric questions, including the mixed epic dialect, oral composition, and a continuous tradition of writing, as these matters affect the date of composition and the events recounted in Homer.
Area: AG, HT, BY, CP

Maureen Alden. "When Did Achilles Come Back?" In Mélanges Edouard Delebecque. Aix-en-Provence: Publications of the Université de Provence. pp. 3-9.

Addresses the problem of Achilles' return to battle in the Iliad, concluding that the epic contains three versions of the story, one in which the return is precipitated by the embassy of Book IX, one in which he returns upon the firing of a ship and the entreaty of Patroclus, and one in which he returns to avenge the death of Patroclus.
Area: AG

Maureen Alden. "The Role of Calypso in the Odyssey." Antike und Abendland, 31:97-107.

Argues that the Odyssey-poet did not invent Calypso but that analogs with the Taín Bó Buailnge suggest that he drew upon traditional sources of Indo-European origin.
Area: IE, AG, OI, CP

Bengt Alexanderson. "Homeric Formulae for Ships." Eranos, 68:1-46.

Examines phrases expressing the idea of "the ships" or "the Achaean ships" as a test of Parry's notions of formulaic economy and extension. Reviews the textual material systematically by case and by metrical position, commenting on relations between phrase boundaries and "cuts" (caesuras or diaereses). Finds a considerable amount of extension but less clear results concerning economy.
Area: AG

Margaret Alexiou. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reviews the development of the lament from Homer to the present. Part I examines the lament for the dead in relation to the funeral rite; Part II defines a common ground among different kinds of laments (for gods, cities, and men); Part III explores the interaction of poetic originality with a "common tradition" of poetic conventions and structures, themes, formulas, images, and symbols. Includes occasional references throughout to possible relations between the lament material and oral tradition.
Area: AG, BG, MG, CP

Margaret Alexiou. "The Lament of the Virgin in Byzantine Literature and Modern Greek Folk-Song." Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1:111-40.

The modern ballads and the Byzantine examples share enough elements to establish them as stemming from a common oral tradition. Changes occur through "the principles and techniques of oral poetry, the three essential ingredients of which are variation, selection, and continuity" (140).
Area: BG, MG, CP

Louise H. Allen. "A Structural Analysis of the Epic Style of the Cid." In Structural Studies on Spanish Themes. Ed.H. R. Kahane and Angelina Pietrangeli. Urbana and Salamanca: University of Illinois Press and University of Salamanca. pp. 341-414.

A structural investigation at the levels of narrative (literary taxeme), phraseology (morpheme), and sound (phoneme). Does not directly engage oral theory, but would be useful as an index of traditional structure.
Area: HI

Richard Allen. Fire and Iron: Critical Approaches to Njáls Saga. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Argues that the sagas (including Njáls Saga) were literary imitations of primary oral narratives (pp. 11-28). This resemblance appears in the paratactic saga style as well as in the encyclopedic memorial function. Scholes and Kellogg's (1966) discussion of topoi is central to Allen's analysis of the "elements" of the saga. Other scattered references to oral tradition throughout.
Area: ON

John R. Allen. "The 1976 Annual Meeting of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, Proceedings." Olifant: A Publication of the Sociéte Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 4:162-85.

Contains a good deal of discussion of oral-formulaic theory and its application to the chanson de geste, with initial reference to Spraycar 1976.
Area: OF

Rosamund Allen. King Horn: An Edition Based on Cambridge University Library MS Gg. 4.27 (2). Garland Medieval Texts, A.S.G. Edwards, General Editor. New York and London: Garland Publishing.

This edition contains an extensive analysis of the textual transmission of King Horn, including discussion on the textual tradition, analyses of variation (conscious and unconscious variation are treated separately), and unresolvable residual variants of the manuscripts.
Area: ME

Barry Alpert. "Post-Modern Oral Poetry: Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, and David Antin." In The Oral Impulse in Contemporary American Poetry. Ed. William V. Spanos and Robert Kroetsch. A special number of Boundary 2, 3, iii:665-81.

An oral (tape-recorded) discussion of the oral and improvisational nature of artistic creation as practiced by these three modern composers. Makes frequent reference to the work of Lord among the Yugoslav singers.
Area: CN, CP

Richard d'Alquen and Hans-Georg Trevers. "The Lay of Hildebrand: A Case for a Low German Written Original." Amsterdamer Beiträge zur altern Germanistik, 22:12-72.

Area: OHG, OLF, CP

José Alsina. "En Torno a las repeticiones homéricas." Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 31:27-34.

Discusses and illustrates formulaic technique in Homer, with comparisons to Beowulf and the Cid. Finds the "ornamental epithet" described by Parry to be unique to Homer. Insists that the formulaic content of the Iliad and Odyssey is a stylistic phenomenon, and that the oral poet was free to cultivate his personal sense of artistry within the traditional idiom. Inveighs against the mechanistic model of phrase generation.
Area: AG, HI, OE, CP

Alster, Bendt. Dumuzi's Dream: Aspects of Oral Poetry in a Sumerian Myth. Copenhagen Studies in Assyriology, vol. 1. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.

A reconstruction of the Sumerian poem from fragments, with particular attention to oral traditional structure. He includes a formulaic analysis of the first 18 lines with commentary (pp. 15-27) as well as a description of thematic patterns (pp. 33-44), the latter in connection with the narrative inconsistencies characteristic of orally composed poetry.
Area: SU

Manuel Alvar López. Cantares de gesta medievales. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua.

Edition of five cantares with an introduction that discusses traditionalism, the origins of Spanish epic, French influence, and the romancero as a traditional poetry. His critical perspective reaches back to the nineteenth century, well before the work of Menéndez Pidal.
Area: HI

Manuel Alvar López. El Romancero: tradicionalidad y pervivencia. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta.

Using the ideas of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, he attempts to establish the Spanish intellectual roots of the study of the romancero. Also seeks the historical sources of the poetic tradition prior to the Middle Ages. Among other subjects, he looks at Moorish elements in the Iberian romance and the Sephardic tradition, from which he traces the work of García Lorca.
Area: HI

Manuel Alvar López. El Romancero viejo y tradicional. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua.

Largely a collection of medieval and modern poems in the Iberian languages, with an introduction which treats the genre, its history and criticism, its continuity with gestes, the oral troubadours, and geographical distribution. Emphasizes writing over orality in composition and transmission.
Area: HI

Semha Alwaya. "Formulas and Themes in Contemporary Bedouin Oral Poetry." Journal of Arabic Literature, 8:48-76.

Through a comparative analysis of the theme of hospitality, and more specifically the offering of coffee, in five versions of a poem, he finds a common structure within the multiformity. Identifies associated systems of formulas as further evidence of orality.
Area: AR

Anne Amory [Parry]. "The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope." In Essays on the Odyssey: Selected Modern Criticism. Ed. Charles H. Taylor, Jr. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 100-21, 130-36.

An exercise in literary criticism concerned with explaining Penelope's motivation in setting the contest of the bow and with interpreting the theme of revenge in general. Assumes a poet fully in control of his verse medium and able to exploit formulaic diction for artistic purposes.
Area: AG

Anne Amory [Parry]. "The Gates of Horn and Ivory." Yale Classical Studies. 20:3-57.

Imagines an oral traditional poet able to manipulate the smallest elements of formulaic diction to accord with anaesthetic design. Argues that the associations of horn with Odysseus and ivory with Penelope characterize the two types of dreams, the former powerful in its reality and the latter incorporeal and dangerous to believe. Homer develops the horn and ivory duality purposefully as a thematic line. An important revisionist paper which sees too much mechanism in Parry-Lord orthodoxy and attempts to define and illustrate a Homeric poetics.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Anne Amory [Parry]. "Homer as Artist." Classical Quarterly, 65:1-15.

Detailed rejoinder to Lord 1968 that calls for the interpretation of the Homeric poems first and foremost as art. Judges the Serbo-Croatian analog inferior in quality to Homer and thus an unsatisfactory and misleading comparand.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Anne Amory [Parry]. Blameless Aegisthus: A Study of AMUMON. and Other Homeric Epithets. Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava, Supplementum 26. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Challenges the usual etymology of amumon as "blameless" and, arguing for an interpretation primarily concerned with physical beauty and strength, examines all of the passages in which the word is employed. Sees Parry's contention that Homer sometimes used stock epithets and adjectives clumsily (more for the sake of metrical value than semantic appropriateness) as shortchanging Homer's specificity of connotation. Suggests of Homeric phraseology that "the fact that it was an oral diction, filled with repetitions and formulae, had a great deal to do with restricting the connotations of words" (p. 165). Views the occurrence of adjectives in an unsuitable context as very rare: ornamental epithets are true to character, "but they do not have the flatness,the lack of force, and the irrelevance that our words `brave' and `handsome' and `strong' would have if we used them as he uses his, because their more distinctive connotations endow them, at every occurrence, however casual, however traditional, however subject to the metrical exigencies of oral composition, with a flash of individual light" (p. 167).
Area: AG

Wolfhart H. Anders. Balladensänger und mündliche Komposition: Untersuchungen zur englischen Traditionsballade. Bochumer Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.

Applies Parry-Lord methodology to folk ballads in the British-American tradition. Examines various kinds of formulaic patterning in a single singer's repertoire, that of a district, and in the tradition as a whole. Notes that "für die Traditionsballaden hat die formelhafte Diktion eine doppelte Bedeutung: sie gibt den Sängern die Möglichkeit, ihre Versionen mündlich zu komponieren und trägt als wesentlicher Faktor dazu bei, dass die einzelne Ballade für den Sänger ein unfestes Gebilde ist" (p. 61). On the question of orality, he concludes that "die Traditionsballade wurde definiert als eine mündlich erlernte, mündlich komponierte und mündlich weitergegebene Liedform" (p. 230).
Area: BR, US, FB, CP

Flemming G. Andersen. Commonplance and Creativity. Odense University Studies from the Medieval Centre, vol. 1. Odense: Odense University Press.

The first comprehensive study of oral-formulaic narrative technique in the traditional ballads of England and Scotland, this work offers a new definition of the ballad formula in which "formulas combine narrative and supra-narrative functions, and are characterized by variation on the narrative level, and stability on the supra-narrative level. Ideally, formulas can thus be seen to operate on three levels in all" (pp. 33-34): the supra-narrative or associative level, the level of formulaic lines and stanzas (the surface structure level), and the deep structure level, or that of the basic narrative idea. Part I of the book is dedicated to the development of this definition. Part II describes the narrative function of ballad formulas, including discussion of the linear and stanzaic formulas and the "formulaic situation" (pp. 59-67), with special emphasis placed upon the role of the formula in ballad transmission. Part III deals with the supra-narrative function of the ballad formula and analyzes separately the introductory, situational, transitional, and conclusion types, noting that, while the specifics of the ballad formula cannot be transferred from one tradition to another due to significant differences in subject matter, "this particular stylistic function of formulaic diction may be a characteristic feature of traditional balladry in general" (p. 285). Part IV is an application of the author's ideas to ballad texts from Falkland, Gloucestershire, and Aberdeen.
Area: FB, ST, FA, BR, TH

Flemming G. Andersen and Thomas Pettitt. "Mrs. Brown of Falkland: A Singer of Tales?" Journal of American Folklore, 92:1-24.

Reviews the history of the oral-formulaic theory in ballad studies and concludes that the ballads of the eighteenth-century compiler/composer Mrs. Brown represent memorial transmission and not oral improvisation and re-creation, although she may have changed or improvised "individual phrases, lines, or stanzas" (23).
Area: BR, FB

Flemming G. Andersen, Otto Holzapfel, and Thomas Pettitt. The Ballad as Narrative: Studies in the Ballad Traditions of England, Scotland, Germany, and Denmark. Odense: Odense University Press.

A two-part series of ten essays on the ballad traditions of England, Scotland, Germany and Denmark. Part One is a chronological sample of narrative techniques in English and Scottish ballads; Part Two a stylistic sample of Danish and German ballads. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that places the subsequent findings within the perspective of contemporary ballad research. Emphasis is placed upon the study of narrative technique, especially with respect to oral-formulaic phraseology and structure, but considerable attention is paid to the socio-cultural role of the ballad as well. The text of each ballad, with English translations when appropriate, is provided at the beginning of each essay. An annotated bibliography is also appended.
Area: FB, CP

L.F. Anderson. The Anglo-Saxon Scop. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

An early review of evidence from OE poetry and some comparative sources on the singer's métier in Anglo-Saxon England.
Area: OE, CP

Earl R. Anderson. "Flyting in The Battle of Maldon." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 71:197-202.

Discusses the density of ironic verbal echo and formulaic diction in the flyting between Byrhtnoth and the Viking messenger in Maldon, arguing by reference to the OHG Hildebrandslied that such irony is a conventional feature of heroic verbal engagement.
Area: OE, OHG, CP

Earl R. Anderson. "Saemearh and Like Compounds: A Theme in Old English Poetry." Comitatus, 3:3-10.

Contends that "compounds like saemearh had conventional associations in Old English poetry, and were commonly used to suggest either the danger of sea travel, or the speed of a voyage at sea" (10).
Area: OE

Earl R. Anderson. "Passing the Harp in Bede's Story of Caedmon: A Twelfth Century Analogue." English Language Notes, 15: 1-4.

Brings to light the twelfth-century Latin Prose De Gestis Herwardi Saxonis, in which the custom of passing the harp at a feast is mentioned. Unlike Caedmon, Hereweard seizes the harp to prove that he is a skillful singer.
Area: OE, LT, CP

Earl R. Anderson. "Formulaic Typescene Survival: Finn, Ingeld, and the Nibelungenlied." English Studies, 61:293-301.

Posits the type-scene "tragic court flyting," composed of (1) a tense situation created by arrival of strangers in a hall, (2) verbal surfacing of hostilities, (3) appearance of special weapons, and (4) battle and destruction of the hall. Appears twice in Beowulf (in the Finn and Ingeld episodes) and once in the Nibelungenlied (Aventiuren 28,29, 33, and 36). Anderson terms this element a traditional survival on the model of Renoir 1964.
Area: OE, MHG, CP

Theodore M. Andersson. "The Doctrine of Oral Tradition in the Chanson de Geste and Saga." Scandinavian Studies, 34:219-36.

Pointing out the origin of oral theory in classical studies (HÇdelin 1715, Wolf 1795, etc.) and its common application in an early form by 1830 to medieval European literatures, he sketches the history of the study of Old French and Old Norse literature as oral tradition from Fauriel's initial steps and Herder's doctrine of Naturpoesie through Bédier, Lachmann, and Nordal. Feels that the concept of oral tradition should not be blindly accepted but scrutinized more closely, especially by scholars working with the sagas.
Area: OF, ON, CP

Theodore M. Andersson. The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins. Yale Germanic Studies, 1. New Haven: Yale University Press.

After a review of the history of relevant scholarship, he reconstrues the evidence, adding a substantial appendix on variants (pp. 129-82) to illustrate the multiformity typical of oral tradition. Rejects the idea of a completely fixed, memorized oral version, maintaining that the narrative framework rather than its details is fixed: "The writer undoubtedly could and did use written sources, supplementary oral sources, his own imagination, and above all his own words, but his art and presumably the framework of his story were given him by tradition. The inspiration of the sagas is ultimately oral" (p. 119).
Area: ON

Theodore M. Andersson. "The Textual Evidence for an Oral Family Saga." Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 81:1-23.

Collects and analyzes 231 references to oral tradition in the sagas, finding about 75% spurious (mannerisms, rhetorical flourishes, or formulas) and about 25% genuine. Of those judged genuine, there are two significant groups, one having to do with death, old age, or progeny and the other with conflicts. Does not claim that his findings decide the traditionalist-individualist debate, but notes that the genuine references must be taken into account by anyone considering the origins of the saga because they indicate precursive oral traditions about two important and recurrent ideas.
Area: ON

Otto Andersson. "Homeriskt eko." In his Studier i Musik och Folklore, vol 2. Abo: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland. pp. 277-94.

A comparative look at oral theory from a historical point of view, emphasizing the work of Parry and Lord, Magoun (1953a), Herzog (1951), and Einarsson.
Area: AG, SC, OE, CP

Theodore M. Andersson. "The Icelandic Sagas." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 144-71.

Includes consideration of oral origins and manuscript transmission of sagas, and of the effect of these developments on their interpretation.
Area: ON

Theodore M. Andersson. The Legend of Brynhild. Islandica, vol. 43. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

In Chapters 5 and 6 (pp. 151-228), he agrees with and explicates Heusler's position on Part I of the Nibelungenlied--that there was an "independent transmission of the two legends, the tale of Brynhild and Siegfried in an oral lay and the fall of the Burgundians in a written epic" (p. 205).
Area: MHG

B.W. Andrzejewski. "Sheikh Hussen of Bali in Galla Oral Tradition." In IV Congresso Internazionale di Studi Etiopici. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. [= Problemi Attuali de Scienza e di Cultura, quaderno 191]. Vol. l: Sezione Storica. pp. 463-80.

Examines the oral traditions concerning Hussen, a Muslim saint venerated in Ethiopia. A study of the oral legend and the Muslim prayer-poem reveals the quasi-historical image of the benevolent man who inspired those around him and the legend that survives.
Area: AF

B.W. Andrzejewski and I. M. Lewis. Somali Poetry: An Introduction. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Part I (pp. 3-60) provides basic information on the social and cultural setting, the Somali language, and Somali verse characteristics. Refers briefly to oral transmission, which according to the authors stems from feats of memorization (pp. 44-46). Part II (pp. 61-167) contains 31 poems in translation.
Area: AF

Cora Angier. "Verbal Patterns in Hesiod's Theogony." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 68:329-44.

Studies various kinds of repetition as characteristic of orally composed poetry: key words, syntactic patterns, assonantal patterns, repeated or formulaic lines, etymologies, and type-scenes. Providing numerous examples within the Theogony and discussing their role, she concludes that "the repetition which is a feature of this [oral traditional] technique can also serve as an organizing device, to mark divisions of the narrative and remind the audience of the point of departure for an episode, and also to emphasize certain key ideas, and in this way also impart unity to the composition" (343).
Area: AG

David Antin. "what am i doing here?" In The Oral Impulse in Contemporary American Poetry. Ed. William V. Spanos and Robert Kroetsch. Special number of Boundary 2, 3, iii:575-93.

A spontaneous, improvised "poem-talk" delivered at the San Francisco Poetry Center in April 1973. Intended to explain and illustrate this avant-garde poet's method of composing "oral poetry."
Area: CN

M.J. Apthorp. The Manuscript Evidence for Interpolation in Homer. Bibliothek der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaften, Neue Folge, 2. Reihe, Band 71. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Agrees (pp. 56-74) with Parry that many manuscript variations are of the sort that would arise within an oral tradition. Adopts Kirk's hypothesis of accurate memorization by reciters without the aid of writing, assuming that the recoverable written tradition goes back to a unique sixth-century B.C. manuscript and that a form of oral transmission was concurrently available. Also discusses (pp. 195-200) the importance of manuscript history for formulaic analysis, literary criticism, and the Homeric Question.
Area: AG

Patricia Arant. "Formulaic Style and the Russian Bylina." Indiana Slavic Studies, 4:7-51.

Application of Parry-Lord theory to the bylina and a review of collections and singers. Finds a formula distinctive to the Russian tradition, with a syllabically irregular line, moveable caesura, much variation in the verbal component, an interplay between melody and meter, syntactic patterns, and syllable or word-groups around primary accents. Argues that "we can expect less possibility for exact repetition because of the loose verse structure" (18). From sample analyses she concludes that the half-line unit is more useful to the composing singer than the whole line. Studies the formulaic system and the "terrace" (after Austerlitz 1958), and offers revised concepts for formulaic structure sensitive to the bylina prosody: characteristics include fixed position of phrases, grammatical declension of phrases, key word substitution, syntactic parallelism,and acoustic patterns. The inaugural article on oral theory in Russian.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Excursus on the Theme in Russian Oral Epic Song." In Studies presented to Professor Roman Jakobson by His Students. Ed. Charles E. Gribble. Cambridge, MA: Slavic Publishers. pp. 9-16.

Study of two themes (or "thematic systems"), each of which can take two forms, in the byliny of the oral singer Rjabinin. Notes the basic structure and adaptability of each in various situations. Emphasizes the conservative nature of a singer's theme and the role of the traditional unit in oral composition.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Concurrence of Patterns in the Russian Bylina." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 7:80-88.

Illustrates the traditional solution to the problem of moving from one story-pattern to another in three of Rjabinin's texts: he interposes between stories the theme of the hero stopping to spend the night on his journey home(a "point of thematic concurrence"). Stresses the innate conservatism of oral tradition.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Repetition of Prepositions in the Russian Oral Traditional Lament." Slavic and East European Journal, 16:65-73.

Examines the role of this sort of repetition in the composition of lines of oral lament verse from the Fedosova repertoire. Comments on meter, colon structure, alliteration, line types, syntactic patterns, formulas, and line clusters.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Alliteration and Repeated Prepositions in Russian Traditional Lament." In Slavic Poetics: Essays in Honor of Kiril Taranovsky. Ed. by Roman Jakobson, C.H. van Schooneveld, and Dean S. Worth. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 1-3.

Brief discussion of the tectonic function of alliterating prepositions in the laments of Fedosova. Cp. Arant 1972.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "The Persistence of Narrative Patterns: Variants of `Dobrynja and Vasilij Kazimirov' and Homer's Odyssey." In American Contributions to the Seventh International Congress of Slavists (Warsaw, August 21-27, 1973), vol. 2: Literature and Folklore. Ed. Victor Terras. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 9-21, with summary in Russian.

Sees both the Odyssey and the Russian heroic poem (sung by Rjabinin and collected by Hilferding) as narratives produced by the combination of two patterns, that of the novice hero and that of the "Return Song." Notes that at the point of convergence the thematic content is the same for novice and mature hero, and understands this mode of story composition as oral traditional.
Area: RU, AG, CP

Patricia Arant. "Figurative and Literal Coupling in Russian Oral Traditional Genres." Slavic and East European Journal, 19:411-20.

Examines the coupling of a figurative image and its literal interpretation in a variety of non-narrative oral genres:lyric songs (whether connected with rituals or not), short lyrics of recent origin (astuski), incantations, riddles, and proverbs. Demonstrates how this coupling is affected by genre requirements. Notes spread of this oral traditional device across genres and suggests that it is a general feature of oral style.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "The Intricate Web: Thematic Cohesion in Russian Oral Traditional Verse Narrative." In Oral Tradition Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers, rpt. 1983. pp. 123-41.

Studies the binding forces within themes drawn from more than 5000 lines of Rjabinin's byliny: repeated prepositions, alliterating cola, syntactic parallelism, repetition of a single word over a sequence of lines. Emphasizes the fluidity and yet the conservativism of traditional compositional devices, accounting for movement forward as well as a characteristic "retarding" tendency.
Area: RU

Patricia Arant. "Aspects of Oral Style: Russian Traditional Oral Lament." In Oral Tradition. Ed by John Miles Foley. Special issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 15, i:42-51.

Analyzes 11 oral lament texts by Irina Andreevna Fedosova to illustrate formulaic and line-to-line patterns typical of oral tradition.
Area: RU

A.J. Arberry. The Seven Odes. London and New York: Allen & Unwin and Macmillan.

Includes a brief section on oral composition and transmission (pp. 13-24).
Area: AR

Walter Arend. Die typischen Scenen bei Homer. Problemata: Forschungen zur Klassischen Philologie, Heft 7. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.

Opens with a history of the problem of repetition and parallel scenes in Homer, including analysis of typical modes of question and answer, some of it at the level of phraseology. Greater part of the volume is devoted to individual descriptions of typical scenes and their variants, such as Arrival, Sacrifice and Feast, Departure (of ships and other vehicles), Armor and Dressing, Sleep, Pondering (usually with internal monologue), Oath, and Bath. A conclusion makes comparisons with Apollonios and Virgil. This monograph prompted Parry 1936a.
Area: AG

Samuel G. Armistead. "The Structure of the Refundición de las Mocedades de Rodrigo." Romance Philology, 17:338-45.

As an alternative to Menéndez Pidal's scheme of episodic division, he proposes a single-cantar structure, observing that "the Refundición is a profoundly anti-traditional work" and that "its author seems to have delighted in wilfully altering the epic heritage on which his narrative rests" (345).
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead. "Para el texto de la Refundición de las Mocedades de Rodrigo." Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 3:529-40.

Uses repeated syntactic patterns and formula preferences to emend the text of the Mocedades.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead. [Supplement to Haymes 1973]. Modern Language Notes, 90:296-99.

A listing of books and articles, mostly having to do with the Romance language traditions, not included in Haymes 1973. No annotations.
Area: BB, CP

Samuel G. Armistead. "Two Further Citations of the Libro de Buen Amor in Lope García de Salazar's Bienandanzas e Fortunas." La Corónica, 5, ii:75-77.

Describes two additional citations of Juan Ruiz's masterpiece Libro de Buen Amor in the works of Salazar, one a free rendering of quatrain 71, the other a closer rendering of quatrain 105b-c attributed to Solomon, that suggest a considerable literate transmission of the material from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead. "The Mocedades de Rodrigo and Neo-Individualist Theory." Hispanic Review, 46:313-27.

Authoritatively enters the traditionalist-individualist fray, acknowledging the role of learned clerics in the transmission of Hispanic epic but maintaining that "what such learned, clerical intervention has to do with the origins and the essential nature of the epic poems in the multi-secular trajectory of their traditional existence remains to be demonstrated" (324). Understands the prior stage of epic as oral traditional.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead. "Existió un romancero de tradición oral entre los moriscos?" In Actas del Coloquio Internacional sobre Literatura Aljamiada y Morisca (Departamento de Filología Románica de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Oviedo 10 al 16 Julio de 1972). Colección de Literatura Española Aljamiado-Morisca, 3. Ed. Alvaro Galmés de Fuentes. Madrid: Gredos. pp. 211-32; "Discusión," pp. 232-36.

Makes the case for the existence of the romancero in the Moriscan oral tradition. Affirms the traditionalist argument, demonstrating the wide dispersion of the genre elsewhere and gathering external evidence of oral tradition.
Area: HI, AR, CP

Samuel G. Armistead. "Romancero Studies: 1977-79." La Corónica, 8:57-66.

Contains a number of studies that bear on the application of the oral theory to the Romancero.
Area: HI, BB

Samuel G. Armistead. "Review Article: Neo-Individualism and the Romancero." Romance Philology, 33:172-81.

Treats five essays from N. D. Shergold's Studies of the Spanish and Portuguese Ballad (1972). Commends their scholarship but warns against their exclusively Neo-Individualist orientation. Notes that by viewing the ballad as principally a vehicle for learned authors, "numerous other developments, such as the Romancero's origins, the complexity of its early tradition, its 17th-19th-c. `estado latente,' its rediscovery in a rich, geographically diverse oral repertoire in the late 1800's, and the splendid fruits of 20th-c. fieldwork have, in general, been disregarded" and "an intermediate trajectory, that of the pliegos sueltos vulgares--between learned poetry and oral tradition--has been almost completely neglected" (181). Calls for recognition of the oral traditional provenance of the ballad.
Area: HI, FB

Samuel G. Armistead. "Epic and Ballad: A Traditionalist Perspective." Olifant: A Publication of the Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 8:376-88.

Counters the individualist view of separate, learned traditions of epic and ballad with a traditionalist exposition: "In the Hispanic world, epic and ballad constitute a single system of oral, traditional poetry, extending from the epic's remote and unknown origins, in an uninterrupted continuum, down to the twentieth-century tradition of the Romancero" (384). Sees the epic as essentially an oral genre with a complex variety of influences: learned, hagiographic; French, Germanic, Arabic, and Latin. Feels that an understanding of the oral-written interaction should be substituted for polemics.
Area: HI, FB, CP

Samuel G. Armistead. "Hispanic Folk Literature Among the Isleños." In Perspectives on Ethnicity in New Orleans. Ed. John Cooke and Mackie J-V. Blantan. New Orleans: The Committee on Ethnicity in New Orleans. pp. 21-31.

Describes examples of forms of oral literature, including the décima, coplas, cumulative song, counting rhyme, riddles, folktales, and memorates from the Isleño people of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Discusses social and geographic influences on the transmission of the traditionally Hispanic forms to the present day Isleño population.
Area: HI, US

Samuel G. Armistead. "Greek Elements in Judeo-Spanish Traditional Poetry," Laographia, 32:134-64.

Includes illustration of the origin of the Judeo-Spanish ballad El pozo airon in a Greek counterpart, The Haunted Wall. Reveals that "the Greek poem has been translated formula-by-formula and topos-by-topos, by someone who obviously knew both languages and both poetic traditions very well indeed, but who undoubtedly never set pen to paper in fulfilling his poetic task" (142). Sees this pair of ballads as furnishing "a splendid example of how ballads migrate across linguistic boundaries in oral tradition and, at the same time, it allows us to see the process of oral formulaic composition--as analyzed by Parry and Lord--at work, at least in the initial creation of Hispanic ballads, if not in their subsequent performance" (142-43).
Area: HI, MG, FB, CP

Samuel G. Armistead. "Spanish Riddles from St. Bernard Parish." Louisiana Folklore Miscellany, 5, iii:1-8.

Describes the author's new collection of nine riddles from the Isleño oral tradition first collected in the St. Bernard Parish of Louisiana and published by Raymand R. MacCurdy in 1948.
Area: HI, US, FK

Samuel G. Armistead. "The Ballad of Celinos at Uña de Quintana (In the Footsteps of Americo Castro)." In Essays on Hispanic Literature in Honor of Edmund L. King. Ed. Sylvia Molloy and Luis Fernandez Cifuentes. London: Tamesis. pp. 13-21.

An account of the author's fieldwork in collecting three repetitions of Celinos, a modern peninsular romance that is derived from an unquestionably epic source, from performances by the folk poet Dona Martina of Uña, Spain on July 22, 1980. He compares these repetitions with a text collected by Don Americo Castro in 1912.
Area: HI, FB

Samuel G. Armistead. "The Initial Verses of the Cantar de Mio Cid." La Corónica, 12, ii:178-86.

Studies the Crónica de Veinte Reyes (Chronicle of Twenty Kings) in the beginning of the Cantar de Mio Cid and provides transcriptions of the passages from the Cantar discussed, concluding that "...in the late fifteenth or early sicteenth century, the famous initial verses of the Cantar were still circulating in the oral tradition" (182).
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Israel J. Katz. "Tres cuentos tradiciónales de la Provincia de Soria." Celtiberia, 47:7-20.

Descriptions of three traditional "cuentos" representative of the popular oral tradition of the province of Soria, Spain, collected in 1973. The first and second are variants of the "Love Like Salt"/"Cinderella" narrative type, and the third is representative of the "Three Golden Sons" type.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Israel J. Katz. "El Romancero tradiciónal en la Provincia de Soria." Celtiberia, 58:163-72.

Descriptions of five traditional romances from the oral tradition of Soria collected in 1972, with background information on collection procedures and methodologies.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and James T. Monroe. "A New Version of La Morica De Antequera." La Corónica, 12, ii:228-40.

A description of a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century manuscript found in a convent wall in Albacete, Spain during construction in 1982 that contains the longest known variant of La Morica Garrida de Antequera. They address the problem of oral and literate textual transmission, concluding that "not to take into account the possibility, indeed the probability, of such lost texts and intermediate versions is to remain limited to a distorted, chronologically and culturally subjective view of the problems of textual transmission in early Hispanic literature" (236).
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "Sobre los romances y canciones judeoespañoles recogidos por Cynthia M. Crews." Estudios Sefardes, 2:21-38.

Surveys a total of 37 Sephardic songs and romances collected by Crews and provides annotations, commentary, and complete bibliographical information as well as thematic, title, and first-line indexes.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "Sobre las Coplas sefardes de Alberto Hemsi." Sefarad, 40:423-47.

Surveys a total of 60 Sephardic coplas identified by Alberto Hemsi from the years 1932-38 and 1969-73, providing annotations, commentary, and complete bibliographical information, as well as thematic and title/first line indexes.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "El Romancero etre los Sefardies de Holanda." In Etudes de philologie romane et d'histoire littéraire offertes à Jules Horrent. Ed. Jean Marie d'Heur and Nocoletta Cherubini. Liège: Gedit. pp. 535-41.

Describes three variants of the Sephardic romance Jardin de amadores found in a Brussels manuscript of the seventeenth century and suggests the significance of their coincidental lines and structure.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "El Antiguo Romancero Sefard: Citas de romances en himnarios Hebreos (Siglos xvi-xix)." Nueva revista de filología hispánica, 30:453-512.

Surveys 76 old Sephardic romances, providing annotations and commentary, and concluding "...en cuanto a) nos proporcionan citas de romances hoy desconocidos, b) nos suplementan en varios casos los testimonios quinientistas impresos y c) nos caracterizan una tradición oriental más conservadora y temáticamente más rica que la de hoy, los incipits aqudeg. esudiados nos permiten vislumbrar una etapa temprana y sensiblemente divergente de las tradiciones actuales y se nos ofrecen como un complemento precioso e indispensable de lo que hasta ahora se ha recogido de la tradición oral moderna" (497).
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "Adivinanzas Judeo-Españolas de Turquía: Los `Enigmas' del Rabino Ménahém 'Azôz." In Philologica Hispaniensia: In Honorem Manuel Alvar. Madrid: Editorial Gredos. pp. 81-92.

Reviews nine Sephardic enigmas published as Hîdôth (Enigmas--Enigmas) in the Israeli review Hêd ha-Mizrâh, (3, xxxvi(1945):7 and 3,xl/xli(1945):12) by Rabbi Menachem 'Azoz with excerpts from the original introduction and commentary of Rabbi 'Azôz. Provides further annotations and commentary for each enigma.
Area: HI

Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman. "Two Judeo-Spanish Riddles of Greek Origin." Laographia, 33:169-75.

Describes variants of two Judeo-Spanish riddles, one regarding a radish, the other a rooster, and provides analogs from the Greek tradition, arguing that "the Judeo-Spanish repertoire clearly reflects the diverse cultural contacts experienced by the Sephardim during the half millennium since they were forced to leave their Spanish homeland" (173).
Area: HI, MC

Samuel G. Armistead, Israel J. Katz and Joseph H. Silverman. "Judeo-Spanish Folk Poetry from Morocco." 1979 Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 11:59-75.

Describes eighteen versions of various Sephardic romances collected from the Moroccan oral tradition by Franz Boas and Zarita Nahon in 1930, providing transcriptions and edited text where appropriate. Musical annotations as well as information regarding the collection of the material, bibliographic and discographic data on recorded variants, and full annotations of recorded variants of lines are also provided.
Area: HI

J.I. Armstrong. "The Arming Motif in the Iliad." American Journal of Philology, 79:337-54.

From an analysis of several "arming the hero" passages, he argues that Homer molds the tradition to suit the specific narrative context.
Area: AG

J.I. Armstrong. "The Marriage Song, Od. 23." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 89:38-43.

Contends that the section of the Odyssey occurring after what is commonly termed the telos (23.296-end) is in fact an integral, organic part of the whole. Mentions during his exposition that "... as is the manner of Homeric oral locution, there is repetition of Odysseus' words in formulaic lines, repetition with variation of the substance of his commands" (42).
Area: AG

Herbert A. Arnold. "Oral Tradition and Critical Song in Contemporary Germany." Journal of Popular Culture, 15, iii:144-54.

Describes an oral tradition of popular ballads, mountebank songs, and street songs that stems from (1) a continuing but transformed tradition originating in the Middle Ages and (2) the Cabaret tradition of nineteenth-century France. The Liedermacher compose either for entertainment or for cultural criticism.
Area: CN, GM

Claudeen Arthur et al. Between Sacred Mountains: Navajo Stories and Lessons from the Land. Chinle, AZ: Rock Point Community School. Rpt. as Sun Tracks, 11. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984.

A compilation of history and stories about the Navajo land and culture in Arizona; much of the material was transcribed from oral sources.
Area: AI

O.A. Asagba. "The Folk-Tale Structure in Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drunkard." Lore and Language, 4, i:31-39.

A discussion of the "folktale structure and content" of the contemporary Nigerian author Amos Tutuola's short novel The Palm-Wine Drunkard which illustrates the infusion of themes and mifs such as the quest, the "quarrel between heaven and earth," the trickster, and magical transformations into the literate compositions of authors who are the product of traditional cultures. Also provides a brief Proppian analysis of the structure of the novel and demonstrates Tutuola's "episodic linkage" of episodes, which approximates the aesthetics of oral tale-telling.
Area: AF

Genette Ashby. "A Generative Model of the Formula in the Chanson de Roland." Olifant: A Publication of the Société rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch, 7, i:39-65.

Consisting of "a generative component (deep structure), a transformational component (shallow structure), and a paraphrastic component (surface structure)," Ashby's model demonstrates "the generation of formulaic variants... from the underlying semantic string or preformula" (42). Contends that context affects the final shape of the formula and that formulaic production is highly regulated. Compare Nagler 1967, 1974 on a similar model in ancient Greek.
Area: OF

Pauléne Aspel. "`I Do Thank Allah' and Other Formulas in the Fulani Poetry of Adamawa." In Oral Literature and the Formula. Ed. Benjamin A. Stolz and Richard S. Shannon. Ann Arbor: Center for the Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies, University of Michigan. pp. 177-202.

Understands Fulani epic formulas as tools available to the oral composer; they are among the elements which render discourse poetic but in no way imprison the bard. As stylistic devices with a traditional history, they are rich in poetic associations. See further the response by L. Johnson (1976).
Area: AR, FU, CP

Clifford W. Aspland. A Syntactical Study of Epic Formulas and Formulaic Expressions Containing the -ant Forms in Twelfth Century French Verse. St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland Press.

After reviewing the critical contributions of Parry and Rychner (1955), as well as the controversy surrounding oral formulaic diction in medieval poetry in the Romance languages, he studies -ant forms in a variety of syntactic constructions. Finds that the metrical form of the hemistich, with four or six syllables, to a large extent determines syntactic structure, particularly in decasyllable and alexandrine meters.
Area: OF

Kenneth J. Atchity. Homer's Iliad: The Shield of Memory, Literary Structures. Carbondale/ Edwardsville and London/Amsterdam: Southern Illinois University Press and Feffer & Simons.

By examining the great symbols of Helen's loom and Hephaistos' shield made for Achilles, he seeks to illustrate the method of Homer's own artistry as (re-)creator of the "encyclopedia" of behavior patterns similar to that described by Havelock (e.g., 1963). In arguing that the Iliad is essentially a poem of love (Achilles' love first of Patroklos and Briseis, then of Priam) that heals disorder by the reestablishment of order after the funeral games, he assumes a writing poet who recites before an audience familiar with the major themes and motifs of the epic. A critically annotated, highly selective bibliography is appended.
Area: AG

Erich Auerbach. Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Trans. Ralph Manheim. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Includes a brief allusion to the probable oral transmission of vernacular poetry (pp. 287-88).
Area: CP

Robert Austerlitz. Ob-Ugric Metrics: The Metrical Structure of Ostyak and Vogul Folk-Poetry, FFC vol. 174. N Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.

Linguistic analysis of sung and recited oral texts (mostly cosmogonical works, epics, totemic songs, and idylls) to establish syntactic boundaries, lineation, and metrics. Discusses parallelism, terracing (repetition of the concluding portion of one line at the head of the next), and various kinds of repetition.
Area: OS, VG, CP

Norman Austin. "The Function of Digressions in the Iliad." Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 7:295-312.

Fears that oral theory may dismiss aesthetic questions by allowing apparent infelicities of structure and meaning as part of the bardic style. Argues that the digressions are not simply paratactic and ornamental additions but rhetorically and dramatically forceful passages of relevance both to the moment and to the poem as a whole.
Area: AG

Norman Austin. Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer's Odyssey. Berkeley: University of California Press.

In Chapter 1 ("The Homeric Formula," pp. 11-80), he attempts to free Homer from what he sees as Parry's imprisonment of the poet in a mechanical formulaic diction. Seeks to demonstrate Homer's lack of dependence on formulas and the creativity evident in the phraseology. Comparative remarks on Yugoslav epic are ill-informed.
Area: AG, SC, CP

Norman Austin. "Odysseus and the Cyclops: Who is Who." In Approachers to Homer. Ed. by Carl A. Rubino and Cynthia Shelmerdine. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 4-37.

A psychoanalytical reading of the Cyclops episode which rejects the view that the structural anomalies in the passage are to be attributed to the multiple authorship of an oral poem.
Area: AG

Robert Auty. "Serbo-Croat." In Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Volume One: The Traditions. Ed. by A.T. Hatto. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 9. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, pp. 196-210.

A general overview of Serbo-Croatian oral epic tradition, with attention to history, philology, genre, heroism, oral performance, language, and narrative structure. Relatively little on the Moslem SC epic; concentrates largely on the Christian tradition of shorter songs.
Area: SC

Juan B. Avalle-Arce. "El Poema de Fernán González: Clerecía y juglaría." Philological Quarterly, 51:60-73.

Studies the relationship between the Poema, written in the thirteenth century by a monk at the Benedictine monastery at San Pedro de Arlanza, and a hypothetical earlier oral version. Uses the Crónica General de 1344 and the Primera Crónica General together with earlier scholarship by Menéndez Pidal to establish the existence of the lost oral work and to reconstruct some of its characteristics.
Area: HI

Paul Bénichou. Creación poética en el romancero tradicional, Biblioteca Románica Hispánica. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.

Assumes Menéndez Pidal's theory of traditionalism and argues for parallels between the relationships of literate and oral poets to their respective traditions. Feels that the oral tradition of the "autor-legión" is in its way as creative as the method employed by the literate craftsman. Pictures the activity of the modern oral poet as rhapsodic, an elaboration of the received tradition and a function as important as that of any age.
Area: HI

Franz H. Bäuml. "Der Übergang mündlicher zur artesbestimmten Literatur des Mittelalters: Gedanken und Bedenken." In Fachliteratur des Mittelalters: Festschrift für Gerhard Eis. Stuttgart: Metzler. pp. 1-10.

Discusses the transition from oral tradition to the written word and the difficulties that ensue, e.g. the loss of rhythm associated with the use of formulas as the oral poet dictates his work to a scribe. The transition period really amounts to a mixture of audiences, some nonliterate (who were dependent on the oral tradition) and some literate (who could deal with works in a written format). Feels that this situation explains the blend of oral-formulaic diction with written style.
Area: MHG, CP

Franz H. Bäuml. "Transformations of the Heroine: From Epic Heard to Epic Read." In The Role of Woman in the Middle Ages, Papers of the Sixth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 6-7 May, 1972. Ed. Rosemarie T. Morewedge. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 23-40.

After a brief review of oral theory, he traces the reception of female characters in MHG epic through three stages in the social development of the works, poets, and audiences: (1) functional nonliteracy, or preliteracy; (2) the nonliterate subgroup within medieval literate society; and (3) the literate poet and his public.
Area: MHG

Franz H. Bäuml. "Lesefaehigkeit und Analphabetismus als Rezeptionsbestimmende Elemente: Zur Problematik mittelalterlicher Epik." In Akten des V. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Cambridge 1975. Ed. Leonard Forster and Hans-Gert Roloff, Heft 4. Bern and Frankfurt: Herbert Lang. [= Jahrbuch für internationale Germanistik, Reihe A, Band 2/4]. pp. 10-16.

Argues that the formulaic aspect of the oral tradition serves as a mnemonic to help the oral poet reduce the "distance" between himself and his audience in order to accomplish his purpose: the passing on of myths, laws, morals, genealogies, and so forth through the spoken word. Homeostasis of the audience is characteristic of the oral tradition and of an illiterate audience within a culture also capable of written transmission. This phenomenon cannot occur in the written medium because of the stability of a written text, wherein the narrator is further distanced from his audience, enabling authorial commentary and even irony.
Area: MHG, CP

Franz H. Bäuml. "The Unmaking of the Hero: Some Critical Implications of the Transition from Oral to Written Epic." In The Epic in Medieval Society: Aesthetic and Moral Values. Ed. Harald Schol. Tübingen: Max Niemayer. pp. 86-99.

Concerned with the effect on textual meaning when a work modulates from oral to written and/or its audience changes from oral to written. Sees the Nibelungenlied as shifting media about 1200, Orendel as an oral text reworked by a literate poet. Advises considering the mode of existence of a text, especially on the part of the critic who perceives it through a model or set of models.
Area: MHG

Franz H. Bäuml. "Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy: An Essay toward the Construction of a Model." In Germanic Studies in Honor of Otto Springer. Ed. S. Kaplowitt. Pittsburgh: K&S Enterprises. pp. 41-54.

Receptionalist analysis of written versus oral texts, stressing oral tradition's identification of audience, poet, and narrative. Understands the written transmission of a text as a process which must demonstrate "norms" within the text, whereas in the oral text tradition predetermines expectations and perceptual cues. The model also prescribes two kinds of audiences, one created by each form. Notes that oral versions of MHG epics such as the Nibelungenlied and Kudrun have never been in dispute, that the real problem is to recover the social context of literacy and nonliteracy that prevailed as these oral works passed into print.
Area: MHG

Franz H. Bäuml. "Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy." Speculum, 55:237-65.

Probes the complex social history of literacy in the medieval period, illustrating its class-dependent nature and various uses in different contexts. Employing Receptionalist theory, he describes the kinds of audiences created by oral and written narrative. Distinguishes (1) three socially conditioned approaches to the transmission of knowledge (fully literate, dependent on another's literacy, and pre- or illiterate), (2) written versus oral transmission, and (3) functional differences between the oral and the written word. Concerned with the creation of traditional expectations and compares oral epic and Romanesque pictorial art for their recognizable narrative structures. Argues that "with the evolution of vernacular literacy, textual as well as pictorial narrative changes its communicative function from commenting on `reality' to constituting a `reality'" (265).
Area: CP

Franz H. Bäuml. "Zum Verständnis mittelalterlicher Mitteilungen." In Hohenemser Studien zum Nibelungenlied. Ed. A. Masser. Dornbirn: Vorarlberger Verlagsanstalt. pp. 114-24 [= "Montfort" Vierteljahresschrift für Gerschichte und Gegenwart Vorarlbergs, Heft 3/4:288-98].

An argument for the fact and function of oral tradition by contending that, in a culture where writing is not yet wide-spread, the oral epic serves to transmit and preserve necessary knowledge in the vernacular, whereas writing is initially carried on in Latin. About 1200 the commission of oral tradition to writing begins to be done with greater frequency (thus the MHG Nibelungenlied, for example). Discusses the change of authorial perspective that attends the shift of poetry from oral recitation before an audience to an independent written text: the work is no longer itself culturally didactic but now takes on an aesthetic function.
Area: MHG, CP

Franz Bäuml. "Medieval Texts and the Two Theories of Oral-Formulaic Composition: A Proposal for a Third Theory." New Literary History, 16:31-49.

Studies the structure of the theory of oral-formulaic composition with regard to primary and secondary oral cultures, critiques the theory with a view toward its application to medieval texts such as the Rolandslied and Orendel, and proposes a tertiary theory, with the written texts as its basis, to place such texts "which never were part of the oral tradition in the sense of the Theory" (42) within their literary and sociohistorical contexts.
Area: OF, MHG, OE, TH

Franz H. Bäuml and Agnes M. Bruno. "Weiteres zur mündlichen Überlieferung des Nibelungenliedes." Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 46:479-93.

Discusses oral-formulaic theory, with special reference to the question of the "transitional text." Focuses on the oral traditional aspects of the Nibelungenlied and on a computer program for stylistic analysis designed to quantify formulaic study (espec. 486-93).
Area: MHG, CP

Franz H. Bäuml and Eva-Maria Fallone, eds. A Concordance to the Nibelungenlied, with a Structural Pattern Index, Frequency Ranking List, and Reverse Index. Leeds: W.S. Maney and Son.

Key-word-in-context listing with enumeration, line context, and line reference. Also includes syntactic pattern grouping (pp. 769-854), single word listing (pp. 857-77), and reverse index (pp. 881-901).
Area: MHG, CC

Franz H. Bäuml and Edda Spielmann. "From Illiteracy to Literacy: Prolegomena to a Study of the Nibelungenlied." In Oral Literature: Seven Essays. Ed. Joseph J. Duggan. Edinburgh and New York: Scottish Academic Press and Barnes and Noble, 1975. [= Forum for Modern Language Studies, 10, iii (1974)], pp. 62-73.

Emphasis on the cultural context of the Nibelungenlied. Questions of literacy and illiteracy, written and oral transmission, formulaic structure, the traditional audience, and the meaning of traditional diction are examined within historical, sociological, and psycholinguistic contexts. Concerned with the shift from oral to literate modes of perception and with the implications of the shift.
Area: MHG

Franz H. Bäuml and Donald J. Ward. "Zur mündlichen Überlieferung des Nibelungenliedes." Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 41:351-90.

Using Parry-Lord theory, they argue that the poem is a product of oral tradition, as opposed to a work stemming from a long literary tradition. Analyze a number of strophes for oral-formulaic structure.
Area: MHG

S.A. Babalolá. The Content and Form of Yoruba Ijálá. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Part I (pp. 3-84) provides a critical introduction to ìjálá, one of several genres of oral poetry among the Oyp Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria. Examines the association of ìjálá-chant with the mythic character Ogun, festival and ritual occasions of oral performance, subject matter, the poets, and the poetic language. Part II consists of representative examples in translation (pp. 85-343).
Area: AF

Pierre-Yves Badel. Le Sauvage et le sot: Le Fabliau de Trubert et la tradition orale. Collection Essais sur le Moyen Age.' Paris: Honoré Champion.

A contextual study of French fabliaux using primarily the tale-type methodology of the historico-geographical school.
Area: OF

H. W. Bailey. "Ossetic (Nartä)." In Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Volume One: The Traditions. Ed. by A.T. Hatto. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 9. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association. pp. 236-67.

A five-part introduction to the Nartä tales of the Caucasus which discusses the retention in the Modern Ossetic tales of certain archaic linguistic features. Part I provides background information on the tales and the genealogies of the five families upon which the tales are centered. Part II discusses the transmission of the tales (oral and written) and the mode of performance. Part III relates the tales to the social and religious aspects of Ossetic culture. Part IV is a discussion and explanation of the mythical world of the Nartä. Part V treats the aesthetic aspects of Nartä performance, including folklore elements, formulism, and the preservation of archaic elements of diction.
Area: NR

Joseph L. Baird. "Grendel the Exile." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 67:375-81.

With reference to Greenfield 1955, he argues for Grendel as a traditional exile-type, "a condition which would have entered into the deepest feelings of the Germanic audience" (380).
Area: OE

Manuel Balasch. "El Bardo épico." Convivium (Universidad de Barcelona), 15-16:193-202.

This portrait of the ancient Greek bard includes discussion of the possible origin of the Homeric poems in the Mycenaean era and of the nature of oral poetry, which he takes as a likely explanation of Homeric epic.
Area: AG

Nikola Banasevic. "Le Cycle de Kosovo et les chansons de geste." Revue des études slaves, 6:224-44.

Posits an influence on the Serbian Kosovo tales by the OF chansons de geste, in particular the cycle of Guillaume d'Orange, on the basis of shared motifs. Uses the Chancun de Willame as a primary example. Claims that the oral tradition of Serbian song was affected by the OF tales from the early sixteenth through the late eighteenth centuries.
Area: SC, OF, CP

Nikola Banasevi. "Les Chansons de geste et la poésie épique yougoslave." Le Moyen âge, 56:121-41.

Contends that SC oral tradition was influenced early in the medieval period by the OF chansons de geste, and that the most obvious traces of that influence, such as the names of heroes and of places, were eliminated over time because of separate development. Cites the Albanian-Yugoslav contact and shared epic cycles as an analogous phenomenon, the traces in this latter case still evident because of the relative proximity of and interaction between oral traditions.
Area: SC, OF, CP

Stjepan Banovi. "Motivi iz Odiseje u hrvatskoj narodnoj pjesmi iz Makarskog Primorja." Zbornik za narodni zivot i obiaje juznih slavena (Zagreb), 35:139-244.

A tabulation of similarities in plot structure between the Homeric Odyssey and a selection of SC oral heroic songs.
Area: SC, AG, CP

Nellie Barnes. American Indian Verse: Characteristics of Style, Bulletin of the University of Kansas, Humanistic Studies, 2.

Discusses the shaping forces and characteristics of style of AI verse preceding the influence of white men and the Christian religion. Within consideration of stylistic aspects are included comments on the relationship of each characteristic to the function of the poetry within the culture.
Area: AI

Daniel R. Barnes. "Folktale Morphology and the Structure of Beowulf." Speculum, 45:416-34.

Conducts a Proppian analysis of the poem in an effort to extrapolate its basic folktale structure.
Area: OE, FK

Daniel R. Barnes. "Toward the Establishment of Principles for the Study of Folklore and Literature." Southern Folklore Quarterly, 43:5-16.

General call for straightforward discriminations between oral and written narrative, arguing that if we accept Frye's distinction between oral epic and written fiction, "then we must accordingly rule out the possibility of any such thing as a transitional text'" (10). Also notes the authorial distance typical of written narrative but necessarily (and functionally) absent from oral narrative.
Area: FK, TH

Harry R. Barnes. "Enjambement and Oral Composition." Transactions of the American Philological Association, 109:1-10.

Finds statistical and methodological flaws in a recent attack (Clayman and van Nortwick 1977) on Parry's studies of enjambement. On the basis of his own measurements in Homer and later Greek hexameter verse, he concludes that "Parry was correct in positing a correlation between enjambement characteristics and method of composition" (9).
Area: AG

Jonathan Barnes. "Aphorism and Argument." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. Ed. by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy/The Hegeler Institute, pp. 91-109.

Chiefly an examination of the imitations of Heraclitus, the ancient judgments on Heraclitus the writer, and the fragments themselves in order to determine whether the prose style of Heraclitus is argumentative or aphoristic/ oral because of the infrequent use of connectives. Concludes that, despite his use of asyndeton, his proclivity for connecting and inferential particles supports a placement of Heraclitus squarely within the "newly established canon of philosophical science" (105).
Area: AG

John Barnie. "Oral Formulas in the Country Blues." Southern Folklore Quarterly, 42:39-52.

While he feels it is correct to say that country blues singers are working within a tradition similar to that described by Parry and Lord in their accounts of AG and SC oral tradition, he notes that further scholarship must take more careful account of peculiarities of meter, line and stanza structure, and thematics in the blues genre.
Area: BL, MU

Adeline C. Bartlett. The Larger Rhetorical Patterns in Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1966.

This study of envelope structure starts a critical trend that runs parallel to oral-formulaic theory in OE (e.g., Hieatt 1975), much as ring-composition and formula do in Homeric scholarship. Construes the envelope as the repetition of words or thought or both at either end of a passage, thus producing an enclosure. Appeals to Latin influence.
Area: OE, LT

William Bascom. Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

A detailed description and explanation of the Ifa divination rite, along with transcription and translation of the numerous recurrent verses that are employed in the process.
Area: AF

Ilhan Basgöz. "Turkish Hikaye-Telling Tradition in Azerbaijan, Iran." Journal of American Folklore, 83:391-405.

Comprised of prose narrative with folk songs interspersed, the hikaye is a distinctive Turkish genre similar though not identical to epic. Examines the hikaye through narrative distribution, background of the ashiks (professional wandering minstrel-performers), performance sites, manner of recitation and accompaniment, format and story selection, story content, singer-audience interactions, audience constitution and background, and repertoire. Fieldwork furnishes direct observation and interviews with ashiks.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "The Tale Singer and His Audience: An Experiment to Determine the Effect of Different Audiences on a hikaye Performance." In Folklore: Performance and Communication. Ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 153-92.

Compares the same hikaye performed on two consecutive nights in extremely different contexts by a gifted Turkish singer, Mudami. Discovers a consistency in plot, motives, and structure but a wide variation in "extra constructional elements." Investigates the contextual factors influencing inclusion and exclusion of materials, the traditional formulas, and the social background. Includes the text of one performance in translation.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "The Structure of the Turkish Romance." In Folklore Today: A Festschrift for Richard M. Dorson. Ed. Linda Degh, Henry Glassie, and Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 11-23.

Basing his analysis on nine romances and their variants, he explores the structural meaning of the tales for the teller (or ashik). Finds a basic compositional pattern underlying the repetition typical of oral transmission and offers a psychoanalytic explanation which distinguishes the romance from the epic.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "Formula in Prose Narrative Hikaye." Folklore Preprint Series (Indiana University), 6, i:1-25.

Substantiates that "the formula is... an essential element of the prose performance" (2) despite the absence of musical and metrical patterning. Examines the formulas from various perspectives-- frequency, organization, association with character and theme, modification during performance, phonological constitution and formal patterning, diffusion over national and linguistic boundaries, and use in "literary" narrative.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "Epithet in a Prose Epic: The Book of My Grandfather Korkut." Folklore Preprint Series (Indiana University), 6, i, a:1-23.

Epithets, whether "immediate" or "extended," refer to specific traits of character and episode and so relate to the context in which they appear. These epithets are imbedded in and help to support the heroic code of the tribal society represented in this fifteenth-century Turkish epic.
Area: TK

Ilhan Basgöz. "The Epic Tradition among Turkish Peoples." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 310-35.

A survey of the complex spectrum of epics composed by the Chinese Uigurs, the Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Turkmen, Azeri, Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Tatars, and other ethnic groups in Soviet Central Asia. Focus throughout is on oral tradition and its characteristic style.
Area: TK, KZ, KR, UZ, CP

Henri Basset. Essai sur la littérature des Berbères. Algiers: Jules Carbonel.

Parry read this primarily ethnographic and historical study early in his career. In the section on oral literature (pp. 101-428), Basset discusses formulas as a typical feature of oral style (pp. 105-11), musical accompaniment (pp. 315-18), and the singers (pp. 327-31).
Area: BA, MU

Samuel E. Bassett. The Poetry of Homer. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Attempts to refute two of Parry's major assertions about Homeric poetry: contends that (1) he underestimated the power of the poet's memory, his ability to originate phrases and ideas, and (2) he wrongly assumed an infinitely long, slow, and uniform development preceding Homer's poetry. Also discusses the epic illusion of objectivity, the poet's interpositions (chiefly in descriptions of persons, places, and objects), the poet's concern for his audience, the poet as singer, and the poet as both realist and idealist.
Area: AG

Mary C. Bateson. Structural Continuity in Poetry: A Linguistic Study of Five Pre-Islamic Arabic Odes. The Hague: Mouton.

Finds that composition is separated from oral recitation and the poet from the transmitter in the tradition of Arabic odes, but that there are frequent references to a "singer of tales" who could compose extemporaneously. Also cites field evidence of contemporary Bedouins who can compose orally on the spot. Although she does not exclude writing from participation in the ode tradition, she feels that the observed regularity at various levels of structure argues for an oral-formulaic type of composition. For the analytical data on which these conclusions are based, see Chapter 2, "A Survey of the Form and Background of the Mu'allaqat" (pp. 23-39).
Area: AR

Albert C. Baugh. "The Authorship of the Middle English Romances." Bulletin of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 22:13-28.

In his 1950 presidential address, he illustrates how subjective and equivocal our sharpest inferences prove in determining whether the author of an ME romance is a scholar, cleric, or minstrel. Concludes that the minstrels reciting romances were not necessarily their authors, and that in many cases literary (and even scholarly) poets are more likely candidates.
Area: ME

Albert C. Baugh. "Improvisation in the Middle English Romance." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103:418-54.

A study of oral traditional patterns and their importance in six ME romances: King Horn, Havelok, Beves of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Richard the Lion-Hearted, and Athelston. After a brief review of relevant contemporary criticism (Rychner 1955, Magoun 1953a; also Jousse 1924 and works by Parry and Lord), he cites numerous examples of formulas, explaining their syntactic and semantic functions as well as their flexibility, and of themes (e.g., arming a knight, asking a person's name or origin, and fighting between two or more knights). Also describes another improvisational feature that he takes to be of equal importance, the predictable complement, by virtue of which "certain statements seem to call up automatically in the mind of the poet or reciter a conventional way of completing the thought" (428). This element is customarily a couplet in length, the basic unit of ME romance. The importance of the complement lies in the fact that, through traditional rhyme-pairs, the narrator can complete his thought with a ready-made phrase. Since the ME romances are known in many cases to be close translations of French originals, he argues that they cannot have been orally composed. Suggests instead that many of the variations among manuscripts reflect improvisation during oral transmission and commission to writing, perhaps by minstrels who were able to consult the French sources. An important, carefully argued piece; extensive appendices with supporting evidence.
Area: ME, CP

Albert C. Baugh. "The Middle English Romance: Some Questions of Creation, Presentation, and Preservation." Speculum, 42:1-31.

Basing his remarks on a rereading of the entire ME romance canon, he concerns himself with "showing that the English romances were composed in writing" (5), that notwithstanding the frequent internal references to oral composition and the textual evidence of formulas and themes, these poems were originally written productions. Suggests that the structure and internal references stemmed from the oral medium of publication: "Since poets and versifiers were aware of [the lack of a reading public], they wrote with oral presentation in mind, adopting a style, so far as they were capable of it, natural to live presentation" (9). Examines numerous relevant passages in the light of this hypothesis. Ascribes many of the manuscript variants (as in Baugh 1959) to changes induced by oral reproduction from memory rather than to scribal error or modification. Contends that some manuscripts record a tale as one particular storyteller was accustomed to presenting it.
Area: ME, CP

Albert C. Baugh. "Convention and Individuality in the Middle English Romance." In Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley. Ed. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 123-46.

Argues that although ME romances consist largely of incidents and descriptions drawn from a storehouse of commonplaces, authorial originality of style is often evident in divergences from French sources. Reviews many examples in Bevis of Hamptoun and Octavian.
Area: ME

Richard Bauman. "Verbal Art as Performance." American Anthropologist, 77:290-311.

Advocates turning the focus of folklore studies from "residual" to "emergent" culture and recognizing performance, "the nexus of tradition, practice, and emergence in verbal art" (306), as a point of departure for such a shift of emphasis. Notes a variety of types of patterning in oral performance and takes account of Lord's contributions on the Yugoslav guslar.
Area: CP

Richard Bauman. Verbal Art as Performance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

In Part I he develops a conception of performance as a mode of speaking, drawing on anthropology, linguistics, and literary criticism. Part II contains supplementary essays intended to clarify, illustrate, and amplify the idea of verbal art as performance. Included are detailed treatments of metanarration, genre, and ritual speaking events.
Area: TH

Richard Bauman. Let Your Words be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers. Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, 8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A brief monograph (168 pp.) discussing in detail the Quaker symbolism of speech and silence, the role of the preacher, the preacher's rhetoric, and the speech and silence of the Quaker meeting, with emphasis upon the movement's development of institutionalism from its charismatic origins.
Area: FP, US

C.R. Bawden. "Mongol: The Contemporary Tradition." In Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. Volume One: The Traditions. Ed. by A.T. Hatto. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 9. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, pp. 268-99.

An introduction to the contemporary epic traditions of the Oirat, Buriat, and Kalmuck peoples of Mongolia providing fairly extensive information on the languages and cultures of these peoples and numerous examples from their respective epics. Discusses in detail the use of parallelism, hyperbole, and formulism in performance and composition, and delineates particular variations in delivery.
Area: MN

Samuel P. Bayard. "Prolegomena to a Study of the Principal Melodic Families of British-American Folk Song." Journal of American Folklore, 63:1-44.

Adumbrates the rich and complex store of tune families on which performers draw, describing the role of musical formulas and the lack of "authorship" of melodies in the common traditional domain. Also argues that the number of distinctly different folk melodies is smaller than supposed, that groups of closely related airs are correspondingly more inclusive, and that derivative forms are by and large current wherever folk songs in English are sung.
Area: MU, BR, US, FB

John G. Bayer. "Narrative Techniques and the Oral Tradition in The Scarlet Letter." American Literature, 52:250-63.

Claims that "the confusion over the purpose of the Custom-House sketch in toto can be allayed once it is understood as an exordium for the romance proper, an atavistic reminder of oral modes of composition" (251). This prelude to the novel, along with the scaffold scenes involving Hester and Dimmesdale, reveals Hawthorne's roots in the oral beginnings of the American literary tradition. Feels that "these oral dimensions are altogether consistent with Hawthorne's rhetorical apprenticeship in college and confirm the judgment that The Scarlet Letter is a fictional exemplar of a residually oral age" (263).
Area: AL

Monroe C. Beardsley. "Aspects of Orality: A Short Commentary." New Literary History, 8:521-30.

Review of essays on oral literature in Cohen 1977, Oral Cultures and Oral Performance (= NLH, 8, iii).
Area: CP

Bruce A. Beatie. "Oral-Traditional Composition in the Spanish Romancero of the Sixteenth Century." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 1:92-113.

Brief summary of Parry-Lord theory and its developments to date. Finds the Spanish ballads "deriving clearly from a tradition of oral composition similar to that observed and described by Parry and Lord" (108). Also discusses the problem of genre (mentioning story-pattern) and the evidence of Webber 1951 on oral composition.
Area: HI

Bruce A. Beatie. "Patterns of Myth in Medieval Narrative." Symposium, 25:101-22.

Locates pervasive narrative patterns, such as the Returning Husband, in medieval and ancient literature from various countries and describes their relation to underlying mythic schemata. Construing the process of tradition as in origin oral and following the Parry-Lord theory, he argues that "the patterns are all-pervasive not simply because they are useful (to the poet), but because, as displaced myth, they are in a real sense (to both poet and audience) sacred" (109).
Area: MHG, ME, FB, SC, BY, AG, CP

Bruce A. Beatie. "Romances tradicionales and Spanish Traditional Ballads: Menéndez Pidal vs. Vladimir Propp." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 13:37-55.

After a short review of relevant scholarship, he offers an analysis of certain traditional patterns and motifs in a ballad corpus that begins in the sixteenth century. Following Toelken (1967), he gauges the traditional nature of motifs and goes on to describe the action of thematic patterns on material entering a tradition. Argues that the romancero lies within the general area of western traditional narrative with respect to structure.
Area: HI, FB

Bruce A. Beatie. "Saint Katherine of Alexandria: Traditional Themes and the Development of a Medieval German Hagiographic Narrative." Speculum, 52:785-800.

In studying the hagiographic tradition from about the year 1000 forward to the later Middle Ages, he applies folkloric methods (especially Propp's motif analysis) and contends that the extant texts of saints' lives constitute a "reliable reflection of concomitant oral tradition" (797). Summons external evidence of oral tradition in a contemporary iconographic handbook and the sermon practice of the day. Feels some of the hagiographic texts are very close to the elusive "transitional text" which some believe spans the evolutionary gap between oral and written.
Area: MHG, CP

Bruce A. Beatie. "Traditional Structures and the Structure of Tradition: A Functional System of Ballad Classification." In Ballads and Ballad Research (Selected Papers of the International Conference on Nordic and Anglo-American Ballad Research, University of Washington, Seattle, May 2-6, 1977). Ed. Patricia Conroy. Seattle: University of Washington Press. pp. 210-20.

His descriptive and taxonomic analysis of the first 25 Child ballads, based on Propp's morphological scheme, is a tentative experiment in finding a functional system of ballad classification. Using such a systematic approach, he suggests, scholars could perceive verbal folklore as an "ordered continuum" (210) and discover whether the quest-narrative is as central to the western folk narrative tradition as it is to the literary tradition.
Area: BR, FB

Bruce A. Beatie. "Measurement and the Study of Literature." Computers and the Humanities, 13:185-94.

In reviewing the application of computer-based methods to various kinds of literary analysis, he discusses the role of data-processing in determining formulaic density and laments the lack of precision in the numerous definitions of that unit and in the even less exacting concept of the formulaic system.
Area: CP

Roderick Beaton. Folk Poetry of Modern Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Based in part on the author's own fieldwork and in part on consultation of archival and published materials, this study considers the structure and history of the demotic tradition, with special attention to formula, oral transmission, myth, the emergence of professional singers, the role of writing, and the modern avatar of the tradition in the twentieth century.
Area: MG, CP

Roderick Beaton. "Was Digenes Akrites an Oral Poem?" Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 7:7-27.

Examines the extant manuscripts of DA in the context of comparative oral theory. Argues that quantitative measures of formulaic density cannot alone determine the provenance of a text, and that a study of schematization must accompany raw measurement. Looks at the formulaic analysis figures, mode (stylization) of formulaic usage, thematic structure, and intratextual evidence, concluding that "composition by theme and a varying degree of formulaic stylisation in all three versions [studied] suggest oral composition at an earlier stage," but "no version of Digenes shows convincing signs that it is the product of composition in performance" (16). Also contends that DA, a mixed text, reflects the merging of two different traditions: the learned, literate Byzantine and the oral heroic tradition of the eastern frontier. Feels that "oral poetry" must be redefined to take account of texts like DA that reveal oral roots but which were not composed in performance.
Area: BG

John O. Beaty. "The Echo-Word in Beowulf with a Note on the Finnsburh Fragment." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 49:365-73.

Establishes the repetition of root morphemes as an aesthetic principle of poetic composition. This article begins a history of echo-word scholarship (see, e.g., Rosier 1963, 1977; Kintgen 1974, etc.) that runs parallel to oral-formulaic studies.
Area: OE

Roger Beck. "A Principle of Composition in Homeric Verse." Phoenix, 26: 213-31.

Moves from a metrical desideratum to a compositional structure which affects the syntax of the Homeric line as a whole and notes the dovetailing of the syntactic principle with the dynamics of oral tradition.
Area: AG

Becker, Alton. "The Poetics and Noetics of a Javanese Poem." In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. 9. Norwood: Ablex. pp. 217-38.

An explanation of the sinom, a type within the Javanese poetic genre called macapat, with notes on poetic formalisms and an effort to translate the grammar of the work with sensitivity to distinctions not customarily or easily made in English. Claims that the traditional language evolved out of "autochthonous oral forms" (p. 220).
Area: JV, CP

G. Becking. "Der musikalische Bau des montenegrinischen Volksepos." Archives néerlandaises de phonétique expérimentale, 8-9:144-53.

Brief description and analysis of the musical component of sung oral epic, recommending and illustrating a verse model of rhythmical and musical dimensions.
Area: SC, MU

R.S.P. Beekes. "Etos and eniautos in Homeric Formulae." Glotta, 47:138-43.

A case-study application of the formulaic method in an attempt to recover the original meaning of these two words as employed traditionally in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Area: AG

T.O. Beidelman. "Approaches to the Study of African Oral Literature" [with a reply by Ruth Finnegan]. Africa, 42:140-47.

Criticizes Finnegan 1970a on various grounds, most generally for a "false dichotomy" between literary criticism and the cultural anthropological approach to literature. Finnegan defends her study as a precise and limited approach to the sociology of literature and one which avoids the perils of overemphasis of either of the aspects mentioned by Beidelman.
Area: AF

Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Peter Foote, Andreas Haarder, and Hans Frede Nielsen, eds. Oral Tradition, Literary Tradition: A Symposium (Proceedings, Symposia at the Center for the Study of Vernacular Literature in the Middle Ages, Odense University). Odense: Odense University Press.

A collection of articles on various aspects of oral tradition. Separately annotated in this volume are: Buchan, Foote, and Shippey.
Area: BR, FB, ON, NW, OE, CP

Mohamed Belhalfaoui. La Poésie arabe Maghrébine d'expression populaire. Paris: Francois Maspero, 1973.

Examples of oral lyrics in an Arabic dialect from various parts of Africa, with an introduction covering some of the traditional "clichés."
Area: AR

Nicole Belmont. "Myth and Folklore in Connections with AT 403 and 713." Journal of Folklore Research, 20:185-196.

Studies occurrences of the narrative theme of the substituted bride and its analogs in versions of the French folktales AT 403 (The Black and the White Bride) and AT 713 (The Mother Who Did Not Bear Me But Nourished Me), comparing them to the Vedic hymns of Usas and the Roman Matralia rituals. She finds that all establish a link "between three orders of things: The regular altnernation between night and day and between the seasons, vegetal and animal fertility, and the proper rearing of children" (194). Examines the analogical relationship of false brides to false mothers as cultural symbols.
Area: FK, FR, LT, HN, CP

Dan Ben-Amos. "Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context." Journal of American Folklore, 84:3-15.

Criticizes past and current definitions of folklore, insisting on a definition and conceptualization of folklore as a communicative process. Has considerable importance for the study of oral tradition.
Area: FK, TH

Dan Ben-Amos. "Folklore in African Society." Review of African Literature, 6:165-98.

Argues that an apprehension of the principles of folklore, as illustrated in African society, depends upon identification and analysis of cognitive, expressive, and social distinctive features of various oral forms.
Area: AF

Dan Ben-Amos. "Afterword." Journal of Folklore Research, 20:243-246.

Reviews the contributions to this volume by Dégh, Belmont, Calame-Griaule and Görög Karady, Calame-Griaule et al., Duvernay-Bolens, Labrie, and Tenèze and explicates the interpretive and research methodologies of each.
Area: FK, CP

Rina Benmayor. "Current Work in the Romancero viejo tradicional: Modern Oral Tradition." La Corónica, 4:49-53.

A brief overview of current research and scholarship in the Hispanic romancero, broken down into three categories: (1) field collecting (Portuguese, Judeo-Spanish, Latin American, and North American), (2) cataloguing and publication of archival holdings, and (3) critical and theoretical studies (including comments on oral tradition).
Area: HI

Rina Benmayor. "Oral Narrative and the Comparative Method: The Judeo-Spanish Chapbooks of `Yacob Abraham Yona'." Romance Philology, 31:501-21.

Notes the possibility for evolution within an oral tradition. Surveys various schools' approaches to ballad morphology. Proposes a semiotic perspective in order to recombine the synchronic and diachronic viewpoints and to reconcile structure and meaning in the study of oral narrative. Champions the consideration of a text within its context and over time.
Area: HI, CP

Rina Benmayor. "A Greek Tragoúdi in the Repertoire of a Judeo-Spanish Ballad Singer." Hispanic Review, 46:475-79.

Offers contemporary proof of Armistead and Silverman's hypothesis of a substantial Greek influence on the Judeo-Spanish romancero. Describes the process of oral folklore migration and exchange as one involving multi-cultural peoples.
Area: HI, BG, CP

Rina Benmayor. "New Directions in the Study of Oral Literature." La Corónica, 7:39-42.

Argues that oral composition is not a single, unique process and that therefore no single model should be imposed on all situations. Consideration of nonverbal, phonic, and visual elements should be integrated into any discussion.
Area: HI, CP

Rina Benmayor. "Social Determinants in Poetic Transmission or a Wide-Angle Lens for Romancero Scholarship." In El Romancero hoy: Historia, Comparatismo, Bibliografía crítica (The Hispanic Ballad Today: History, Comparativism, Critical Bibliography). Madrid: Cátedra Seminario Menéndez Pidal. pp. 153-65.

Contends that "oral popular traditions ought to be reconsidered as artistic processes in social context" (154), with particular reference to the Judeo-Spanish romancero and its role in a changing society.
Area: HI, CP

Larry D. Benson. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

In the third chapter ("The Style," pp. 110-66), he illustrates how the diction of the Gawain-poet reflects both an original oral-formulaic tradition and a working knowledge of medieval rhetoric. Envisions a fourteenth-century literate poet who could manipulate the inherited oral style.
Area: ME

Larry D. Benson. "The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 81:334-41.

A classic contribution to the study of oral theory in OE poetry. Analyzes the probably written metrical preface to Alfred's Pastoral Care, Riddle 35, the Phoenix, and the Meters of Boethius to show that they have about the same formulaic density as Beowulf and the Cynewulf poems. He then argues for OE poetry as both formulaic and literary, thus dismissing formula-count as an unambiguous gauge of orality in OE.
Area: OE

Larry D. Benson. "The Originality of Beowulf." In The Interpretation of Narrative. Ed. Morton W. Bloomfield. Harvard English Studies, no. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 1-44.

Suggests that assumptions that Beowulf was composed out of pre-existing material deny the poet his true measure of originality and thereby render futile the attempt to interpret the poem in a unified manner. Reviewing the analogues in Germanic literature, he concludes that Gretissaga and not the Bothvar Bjarki stories contains the "kernel of tradition" upon which the Beowulf-poet, in the common fashion of writers of his day, expanded and developed.
Area: OE, CP

Iris Berger. "Deities, Dynasties, and Oral Tradition." In The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Ed. by Joseph C. Miller. Hamden, CN: Archon, pp. 61-81.

Explores the role of the orally transmitted legend of Abacwezi in determining historical fact.
Area: AF

Ann L.T Bergren. The Etymology and Usage of PEIRAR in Early Greek Poetry. American Classical Studies, no. 2. State College: American Philological Association and Commercial Printing.

Attempts to describe the aesthetic merits of Homeric poetry without ignoring or denying the formulaic method. Studies the usage of a single word--peirar--in the context of formulaic technique and shows Homeric influence on Hesiod, Archilochos, Alkaios, Pindar, and others. Argues for the interdependence of formulaic artistry, the meanings of individual words in Homer, and the connection between ancient Greek epic and lyric.
Area: AG

Ann L. T. Bergren. "Odyssean Temporality: Many (Re)Turns." In Approachers to Homer. Ed. by Carl A. Rubino and Cynthia Shelmerdine. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 38-73.

An analysis of Odysseus' poetic craft in Books 9-12 from the point of view of the theories of Gérard Gennette. Identifying Odysseus' polytropia as analeptic and proleptic, she suggests that such temporal reversal ought to be connected with epic circumstructure. Contends that, in individual episodes such as those involving Polyphemus, Teiresias, and the Cattle of the Sun, narrative anachrony as defined by Gennette proves "the tropic character of [Odysseus'] challengers and his corresponding capacity to turn, return, change, and exchange" (42).
Area: AG

Leif Bergson. L'Epithète ornementale dans Eschyle, Sophocle, et Euripide. Uppsala: Lundequist.

A significant development and extension of Parry that concentrates on the traditional ornamental epithet as variously employed by the great Greek tragedians. In Chapter 1 he defines the ornamental epithet as "un adjectif qui n'ajoute au contenu d'une proposition aucune détermination intellectuelle" (p. 18) and whose semantic value has disappeared to the point where it no longer renders the principal word more comprehensible in context. In Chapter 2, after adopting Parry's notion of economy with slight modifications, he finds that the tragedians exercise more freedom in their choice of epithets, as well as more particularization of epithet to context, than does Homer. After a review of some possible extensions in method (Chapter 3), he turns in the fourth chapter to a systematic study of ornamental epithets in tragedy. Chapter 5 correlates epithet frequency and chronology of composition, and the final chapter treats the aesthetic intention behind the use of epithets.
Area: AG

Adele Berlin. "Ethnopoetry and the Enmerkar Epics." Journal of the American Oriental Society, 103:17-24.

Provides an overview of the epic and its subtypes and discusses the narrative structure and anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and spatio-temporal contexts of the performance of the Sumerian Enmerkar epics, concluding that the Sumerian epics "share the mode, narrative structure, and contentual aspects of other epics" and that "epics are not poeticized history. They use history-like elements for a purpose which is essentially nationalistic" (24).
Area: SU

Jack Berry. Spoken Art in West Africa. London: University of London.

Outlines the major genres so far studied. Notes the limitations of existing collections and analyses, owing to the intellectual biases of former collectors and scholars who emphasized provenance and content to the neglect of style and the raconteur.
Area: AF

L. Bertelli. "Note critiche ad Hom. Il. xvi 384-393 e ad Hes. Erga 221, 224, 264." Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, 101:371-93.

Against the customary view that the Hesiodic echo of the simile in Book 16 of the Iliad is merely an example of his enslavement to Homer, and in favor of viewing the correspondence as Hesiod's creative adaptation of a formulaic system in the poetic tradition. Bases his remarks on a thorough examination of the language and phraseology of the simile and of the internal structure of the Works and Days passage, both from the point of view of formulaic composition.
Area: AG

Jess B. Bessinger. "Oral to Written: Some Implications of the Anglo-Saxon Transition." Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication (University of Toronto), 8:11-15. Also Verbi-Voco-Visual Explorations, 8. Ed. Marshall McLuhan. New York, pp. 11-15.

Discusses the denaturing of OE oral poetry brought about by its abstraction from the musical context, transcription, and the new prestige of book-learning.
Area: OE, MU

Jess B. Bessinger. "Beowulf and the Harp at Sutton Hoo." University of Toronto Quarterly, 27:148-68.

The musical accompaniment of OE poetry constituted a significant aesthetic dimension upon which the Sutton Hoo archaeological find and the reconstructed harp can shed some light: "In a word, the culture represented at Sutton Hoo seems a possible centre about which we can imagine a poem like Beowulf taking shape as oral narrative in a period of uneven transition to literary forms" (165).
Area: OE, MU

Jess B. Bessinger. "The Sutton Hoo Harp Replica and Old English Musical Verse." In Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays. Ed. Robert P. Creed. Providence: Brown University Press. pp. 3-26.

Reviews archaeological and textual evidence on harp-playing from a comparative perspective, applying oral-formulaic theory and detailing the physical characteristics and instrumental possibilities of the harp whose remains were discovered at Sutton Hoo.
Area: OE, OI, SC, AG, CP, MU

Jess B. Bessinger. "Homage to Caedmon and Others: A Beowulfian Praise Song." In Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope. Ed. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 91-106.

Outlines a pattern of thematic and formulaic correspondences between "Caedmon's Hymn" and the Creation sequence in Beowulf (lines 67b-188). Shows that both exhibit characteristics of panegyric. Argues for the distinction between creation and decoration in these traditionally cognate passages.
Area: OE

Jess B. Bessinger, ed. and Philip H. Smith, progr. A Concordance to Beowulf. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

A computer-generated concordance using a key-word display.
Area: OE, CC

Jess B. Bessinger and Philip H. Smith. A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Same format as Bessinger and Smith 1969, with coverage of the entire six-volume edition of Krapp and Dobbie. Supersedes C.W.M. Grein, Sprachschatz der angelsächsischen Dichter, rev. F. Holthausen and J. Köhler (Heidelberg, 1912).
Area: OE, CC

Charles R. Beye. "Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 68:345-73.

Locates a tripartite structure in the Iliadic Catalogue of Ships and the "battle item," also noting the systematic variation in the androktasiai.
Area: AG

Charles R. Beye. The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Epic Tradition. London and Garden City: Macmillan and Doubleday.

In Chapters 1 ("Oral Poetry," pp. 1-37) and 3 ("Epic Technique," pp. 75-110), he offers an account of Homeric formulaic and thematic technique for the nonspecialist.
Area: AG

Charles R. Beye. Ancient Greek Literature and Society. Garden City: Doubleday.

In Chapter 2 ("Winged Words," pp. 30-53), he discusses the characteristics and implications of oral poetry, including formulaic structure and its relationship to meter, the multidialectal language of Homeric epic, the emphasis on the typical or generic in narrative and characterization (various forms of parallelism and repetition), narrative inconsistencies, parataxis, the audience's prior familiarity with the story, and the similes. See also pp. 22-23 on the nature of oral epic diction and pp. 429-33 for bibliography on Homer, Hesiod, and the lyric poets.
Area: AG

Daniel P. Biebuyck, ed. Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rpt. 1972.

A collection of eight essays and commentary on the problems associated with the traditional/creative dichotomy in so-called "primitive" plastic arts. Edmund Carpenter includes in his remarks some comments on "Preliterate, Literate, and Postliterate Art" (espec. pp. 206-7).
Area: AF, CP

Daniel P. Biebuyck. "The Epic as a Genre in Congo Oral Literature." In African Folklore. Ed. Richard M. Dorson. Garden City: Doubleday. pp. 257-73.

Documents the distribution of oral epic in the Congo. Distinguishes between heroic and historical works, the latter dealing with genealogies, migrations, and rulers. Describes singers and mode of oral performance as well as form, style, and content. Notes encyclopedic function of the epic.
Area: AF

Daniel P. Biebuyck. "The African Heroic Epic." Journal of the Folklore Institute, 13:5-36.

Brief review of the state of collection and edition, also of the geographical distribution of epic, with short summaries of examples from various regions.
Area: AF

Daniel P. Biebuyck. Hero and Chief: Epic Literature from the Banyanga Zaire Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Along with translated texts of oral narrative, he includes chapters on "The Bards" (pp. 10-25) and "Formulas and Style Features" (pp. 75-92), in the latter of which he describes noun-epithet combinations, phrases for time and space, introductions, and other elements. At the same time he reports that "the conscious search for originality and nuance, for expansion or reduction, for descriptive detail or concise sonority, for repetition or ellipsis, for insertion of new motifs or reorganization and recombination of old ones, is found throughout the texts" (p. 91).
Area: AF

Daniel P. Biebuyck. "The African Heroic Epic." In Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics. Ed. Felix J. Oinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 336-67.

A slightly edited version of Biebuyck 1976, with a bibliography of primary and secondary sources added (pp. 363-67).
Area: AF

Daniel P. Biebuyck and Kahombo C. Mateene, ed. and trans. The Mwindo Epic from the Banyanga