Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

G.R. McLennan. "Enjambement in the Hymns of Callimachus." Hermes, 102:200-6.

Using Parry's categories of periodic and unperiodic enjambement (1929), he explains the large amount of enjambement in Callimachus as a function of the poet's tendency to place a noun and modifying adjective in contiguous lines and of his habit of "overrunning the sense from one line to the first foot of the next" (205). Argues against Parry's assumption of a correlation between infrequent necessary enjambement and oral poetry. Notes that Callimachus' Hymns reveal a low formulaic density.
Area: AG