Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Barbara C. Raw. The Art and Background of Old English Poetry. London: Edward Arnold.

Views OE poetry as in general belonging to an oral tradition, with "some poems... composed while being recited while others were more probably composed in writing, but in all cases there was the same emphasis on the poem as something to be performed" (p. 6). Speaks of a tension between the poetic tradition and individual artistic design, with descriptions of the poet and his audience and world taken from the poems themselves. In Chapter 7 ("Rhythm and Style," pp. 97-122), she makes a case for rhythm as a central stylistic device, an aural rhetoric analogous to verbal designs.
Area: OE