Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. "Fórmulas épicas en el Poema del Cid: Cuestión metodica." Romance Philology, 7:261-67. Rpt. in Los godos y la epopeya española: "chansons de geste" y baladas nórdicas. Colección Austral, 1275. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1956, pp. 241-55. Rpt. in his En torno al Poema del Cid. Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana, 1963, pp. 95-105.

Ostensibly a response to E.R. Curtius' Antike Rhetorik und vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, this article finds Curtius guilty of failing to distinguish between "tópicos vulgares," which belong equally to all of the members of a culture, and "tópicos literarios," which are the singular creation of individual literary artists. Demonstrates the formulaic nature of commonplaces that Curtius sees as literary tropes.
Area: HI