The Parry-Lord Theory Meets Operational Structuralism

Abstract

EVEN TODAY MANY FOLKLORISTS, classicists, and Anglo-Saxonists, unconvinced that the oral-formulaic theory is anything more than hypothesis, explain recurring units, whether Homeric epithets, Old English formulas, or ballad commonplaces, as the result of either or memorial transmission.1 In a profoundly different approach, the Parry-Lord theory focuses on the compositional process: the way in which the poet generates formulas from his internalized grammar of the poetry (Lord 1965:35-36). The crucial distinction between the oral-formulaic theory and hypotheses about borrowing or epic commonplaces is the theory's emphasis on the compositional process. The theory is concerned with the structuring or compositional nature of the materials under study. From this perspective, the texts are seen as a means of revealing, through a consideration of their underlying structure, the process that shaped them. Significantly, Parry and Lord eschew literary interpretation; neither presents an explication de texte. Instead, their concern is with a distinctive type of convention by which ordinary language becomes poetic discourse. Through a systematic study of Homeric and Serbo-Croatian poetry, they attempt to specify the conventions responsible for this process and the role of these conventions in meaning. The Parry-Lord theory is a structural account of narrative discourse (Culler 1977:8) from a particular point of view: that of its formation and its potential for change. The focus of the oral-formulaic theory on process owes a great deal to Milman Parry's study of a living traditional Parry recognized that in order to relate Homeric formulas to the manner in which the poems were composed, he had to study a living tradition in its cultural context, and thus to collect materials in the field.2 Once Parry elected to study Yugoslavian guslars, he set up a field hypothesis that proposed differences of form between oral poetry and written poetry. These structural differences, Parry hypothesized, derive from the compositional process: