Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Jean Ritzke-Rutherford. "Formulaic Macrostructure: The Theme of Battle." In The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem. Ed. Karl H. Goller. Arthurian Studies, 3. London and Totowa: D.S. Brewer and Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 83-95, 169-71.

Complements Ritzke-Rutherford 1981a. Examines the Alliterative Morte Arthure poet's aesthetic manipulation of the formulaic theme of battle, maintaining that the individual use of the conventional is the key to the poem's art: "Ancient conventions, such as the formulaic type-scene of battle, are reduced ad absurdum by techniques of burlesque or contextual estrangement, but at the same time are deployed in a careful and elaborate design that recalls the intricate structures characteristic of the best poems of the Ricardian era, such as Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl" (p. 95).
Area: ME