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III. Craft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

The conventions of an art have never yet confined genius and mediocrity in equal chains.’ To our minds, insensible as they are to the conventions of our own thinking, the Homeric fetters of tradition appear conspicuously onerous. Greek epic thought and expression is typical, generic, stylized, and repetitive. Despite the frequency with which its implications are ignored, this statement does not need to be argued: it is plain to every reader of the Greek, without the confirmation of Schmidt’s Parallel-Homer, the lexica, and the concordances.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 3: Homer , 1969 , pp. 19 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1969

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References

page no 19 note 1 Page, Homeric Odyssey, 142.

page no 19 note 2 Notopoulos (see p. 17 n. 3) and Lord, Singer, 30 ff., use the structural criterion, but distinguish the formula proper, a verbal repetition, from the formula by analogy or formular phrase, whose nature is revealed by its structure: Russo, J.A., ‘A closer look at Homeric Formulas’, TAPA 94 (1963), 235-47Google Scholar, and ‘The Structural Formula in Homeric Verse’, YCS 20 (1966), 219-40, drops the distinction. Criticism by Minton, W.W., ‘The Fallacy of the Structural Formula’, TAPA 96 (1965), 241-53Google Scholar, , Hainsworth, ‘Structure and Content in Epic Formulae’, CQ 14 (1964), 155-64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Rosenmeyer, T.G., ‘The Formula in Early Greek Poetry’, Arion 4 (1965), 295–311 Google Scholar. Nagler, M.N., ‘Towards a Generative View of the Oral Formula’, TAPA 98 (1967), 269–311 Google Scholar, sees the formula as essentially a pre-verbal association of sound and idea.

page no 20 note 1 Page, Homeric Odyssey, 139, in a characteristically lucid description of the theory; cf. Parry, , HSCP 41 (1930), 77 Google Scholar, and 43 (1932), 7.

page no 20 note 2 See Goold, G.P., ‘Amatoria Critica’, HSCP 69 (1965), 1-107Google Scholar; C. Conrad, ‘Traditional Patterns of Word-order in Latin Epics from Ennius to Vergil’, ibid., 195-258.

page no 20 note 3 YCS 20 (1966), 236 n. 27.

page no 20 note 4 As was shown by O’Neill, E.G., ‘The Localisation of Metrical Word-types in the Greek Hexameter’, YCS 8 (1942), 105-78Google Scholar.

page no 21 note 1 More examples in Bowra, Heroic Poetry, 223.

page no 21 note 2 L’ Épithète traditionnelle dans Homère (Paris, 1928); ‘Homer and the Heroic Style’, HSCP 41 (1930), 73-147: summaries in my The Flexibility of the Homeric Formula (Oxford, 1968) and Pope, M.W.M., ‘The Parry–Lord Theory of Homeric Composition’, Acta Classica 6 (1963), 1–21 Google Scholar.

page no 21 note 3 Many examples and excellent discussion in Page, History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), 266 ff.

page no 22 note 1 Acta Classica 6 (1963), 11.

page no 22 note 2 Parry, HSCP 41 (1930). 77.

page no 22 note 3 Witte, K., s.v. ‘Horneros: Sprache’ in Pauly—Wissowa, , RE viii, coll. 2213 ff.Google Scholar; Meister, K., Die homerische Kunstsprache (Leipzig, 1921 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. 1966).

page no 23 note 1 HSCP 43 (1932), 43 ff., cf. Ruijgh, C.J., Mnemosyne 14 (1961), 214ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page no 23 note 2 So K.Strunk, , Die sogennanten Aeolismen der homerischen Sprache (Köln, 1957)Google Scholar; cf. Webster, From Mycenae to Homer, 159 ff.

page no 23 note 3 Cf. Chadwick, J., ‘Mycenaean Elements in the Homeric Dialect’, Minoica (Berlin, 1958), 116-22Google Scholar (= Language and Background, 119 ff.); Ruijgh, C.J., L’élément achéen dans la langue épique (Assen, 1957)Google Scholar. Chadwick’s word-list was criticized by Shipp, G.P., Essays in Mycenaean and Homeric Greek (Melbourne, 1961), 1-14Google Scholar (= Language and Background, 126 ff.).

page no 23 note 4 But the new view (expounded by Chadwick, , ‘The Greek Dialects and Greek Prehistory’, Greece & RomeN.S. 3 [1956], 38–50 CrossRefGoogle Scholar [= Language and Background, 106 ff.]) has been impugned by Palmer, L.R., The Interpretation of Mycenaean Greek Texts (Oxford, 1963), 60ffGoogle Scholar.: see also Studia Mycenaea (Brno, 1968), App. i, ‘Dialectal classification of Mycenaean in the opinion of various scholars’.

page no 23 note 5 Parry, , ‘The Homeric Gloss’, TAPA 59 (1928), 233-47Google Scholar. But a gloss may be a (contemporary) dialect word, e.g. Aeolic ревоѕ misunderstood at X 68 according to Snell, B., The Discovery of the Mind (trans. Rosenmeyer, Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 10fGoogle Scholar.

page no 23 note 6 Homerische Wörter (Basel, 1950). The more persuasive examples are explained by Webster, From Mycenae to Homer, 94 ff., 125 ff. A syntactical parallel would be the misunderstanding of the dual Αϊαντε ( = Ajax and his brother) at N 201, etc. ( = the two Ajaces), cf. Page, History and the Homeric Iliad, 236 f.

page no 23 note 7 Details in Kirk, Songs, 179 ff.

page no 24 note 1 Numerous examples are given by Page, History and the Homeric Iliad, 218 ff. and Webster, From Mycenae to Homer, 97 ff. and 160 ff. For a sceptical appraisal see Kirk, , ‘Objective Dating Criteria in Homer’, Museum Helveticum 17 (1960), 189–205 Google Scholar, esp. 200-1 (= Language and Background, 174 ff.). Lee, D.J.N., ‘Some vestigial Mycenaean Words in the Iliad’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, London 6 (1959), 6-21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, seeks to remove metrical difficulties by translating certain formulae into Mycenaean. It is sometimes thought the poetical speech had a very remote, even Indo-European, ancestry; cf. Durante, M., ‘Ricerche sulla preistoria della lingua poetica greca’, Rendiconti Lincei 17 (1962), 25–43 Google Scholar (= Indogermanische Dichtersprache, ed. Schmidt, R. [Darmstadt, 1968], 291 ff.)Google Scholar.

page no 24 note 2 Hoekstra, A., Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes (Amsterdam, 1965)Google Scholar.

page no 24 note 3 Flexibility of the Homeric Formula, 110 ff.

page no 25 note 1 Nagler, M.N., ‘Towards a Generative View of the Oral Formula’, TAPA 98 (1967), 269–311 Google Scholar.

page no 25 note 2 Die typischen Szenen bei Homer (Berlin, 1933). See also Parry’s review, CP 31 (1936), 357-60.

page no 25 note 3 As shown by Armstrong, J.I., ‘The Arming Motif in the Iliad’, AJP 79 (1958), 337-54Google Scholar.

page no 25 note 4 Singer, 68 ff.

page no 26 note 1 Minton, W.W., ‘Invocation and Catalogue in Hesiod and Homer’, TAPA 93 (1962), 204-15Google Scholar.

page no 26 note 2 Gisela, Strasburger, Die kleine Kämpfer der Ilias (Frankfurt, 1954)Google Scholar; Friedrich, W., Verwundung und Tod in der Ilias (Göttingen, 1956)Google Scholar; Fenik, B., Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad (Wiesbaden, 1968)Google Scholar, developing Kirk’s summary treatment, Songs, 75 ff.

page no 26 note 3 As explained by Beye, C.R., ‘Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues’, HSCP 68 (1964), 345-73Google Scholar.

page no 26 note 4 Hence the term ‘ conceptual formulas’, cf. Ross, J., Modern Philology 57 (1959-60), 4 f.Google Scholar, yet another sense for ‘formula’.

page no 26 note 5 Schroeter, R., Die Aristie als Grundform epischer Dichtung (Marburg, 1950)Google Scholar.

page no 26 note 6 ‘Joining Battle in Homer’, Greece & Rome 13 (1966), 158-66.

page no 27 note 1 Bowra, Companion, 19 ff. Literature is listed by Dale, A.M., Lustrum 2 (1957), 29 ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 27 note 2 Republished in Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens (2nd edn., Munich, 1960), 100-56.

page no 27 note 3 Kirk, , ‘The Structure of the Homeric Hexameter’, YCS 20 (1966), 76–104 Google Scholar, has the best recent discussion.

page no 27 note 4 See Kirk, , ‘Verse-structure and Sentence-structure in Homer’, YCS 20 (1966), 105-52Google Scholar, and the earlier papers cited, to which add Edwards, M.W.’s extensive study, ‘Some features of Homeric craftsmanship’, TAPA (1966), 115-79Google Scholar.

page no 27 note 5 Kirk, op. cit., 136.

page no 28 note 1 Bassett, S.E., ‘The So-called Emphatic Position of the Runover Word in the Homeric Hexameter’, TAPA 57 (1926), 116-48Google Scholar, was very positive on this point. Rossi, L.E., ‘Estensione evalore del Colon nell’esametro omerico’, Studi Urbinati 39 (1965), 239-73Google Scholar, argues that short cola may bear emphasis.