Abstract
The epic is an intriguing genre, claiming its place in both oral and written systems. Ever since the beginning of folklore studies epic has been in the centre of interest, and monumental attempts at describing its characteristics have been made, in which oral literature was understood mainly as a primitive stage leading up to written literature. With the appearance in 1960 of A. B. Lord’s The Singer of Tales and the introduction of the oral-formulaic theory, the paradigm changed towards considering oral literature a special form of verbal art with its own rules. Fieldworkers have been eagerly studying oral epics all over the world. The growth of material caused that the problems of defining the genre also grew. However, after more than half a century of intensive implementation of the theory an internationally valid sociological model of oral epic is by now established and must be respected in cognate fields such as Homeric scholarship. Here the theory is both a help for readers to guard themselves against anachronistic interpretations and a necessary tool for constructing a social-historic context for the Iliad and the Odyssey. As an example, the hypothesis of a gradual crystallization of these two epics is discussed and rejected.
Highlights
The understanding of epic as a folklore genre is closely interwoven with how the corresponding literary form is read
The basic question whether a given genre in folklore should be defined as part of the system of genres of the community in question, or of a general, worldwide system of genres suffers under an extra complication: Is it possible to reach a definition which takes into consideration all three sets of relations, epic as a literary genre, as part of a general system of folklore genres, and as belonging to a local spectrum of folklore forms?
Folklorists and anthropologists as well as philologists studying ancient or medieval epics, set out to find and record traditions of oral epic. They were eagerly analyzing the texts they found with a mind to verifying or falsifying the oral-formulaic theory and to ascertain the extent of its relevance
Summary
The understanding of epic as a folklore genre is closely interwoven with how the corresponding literary form is read. Oral literature is composed with greater or lesser success, by greater or smaller artists In this way the Parry-Lord theory confirmed what the young Roman Jakobson had stated in 1929: Folklore is a special kind of creativity (eine besondere Form des Schaffens) (Bogatyrev and Jakobson [1929] 1966). Folklorists and anthropologists as well as philologists studying ancient or medieval epics, set out to find and record traditions of oral epic They were eagerly analyzing the texts they found with a mind to verifying or falsifying the oral-formulaic theory and to ascertain the extent of its relevance. A rich flow of editions of hitherto unknown epics as well as of new versions of well-known ones appeared, and the scholars published texts recorded from specific singers, no longer attempting to establish the best or most original example of a tradition.
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