The Formula: Original Concepts And Developments

As many scholars have noticed, it was not until his "Studies" I (1930) and II (1932) essays that Parry first broached the possibility that his earlier demonstration of the traditional character of Homer's epics must also mean that they were composed orally .^[3] What has not been as clearly noted is that Parry also expanded his claims from the limited arena of the noun-epithet systems in the Iliad and Odyssey to the whole of Homer's diction, and that he did so without the laudable rigor exhibited in his studies of the "traditional epithet" (1928a). His explanation of the term "formula" in the 1930 essay provides an illustration. After defining this phraseological unit as "a group of words regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea" (1930, in 1971, 272), he goes on to give three examples (Parry's trans.):

("when it was morning")
("he went")
("he said to him")

While all of these phrases can profitably be termed formulas, they are not, like the noun-epithet formulas, of uniform type or structure. The first is a whole-line recurrence, a dependent clause that introduces an action; the second and third are core sentences that combine with subjects that specify their predicates. Moreover, there is a large metrical disparity among the three phrases, which, on the model of the hexameter developed in chapter 3, would be classed as whole-line, colonic, and hemistich formulas, respectively. Parry recognized some of the dimensions of this elaboration in a footnote that precedes his formulaic density analysis (p. 275 n .1):

Formulas, in the strictest sense of the term, may be of any length, but in studying them we are forced to exclude the shorter word-groups, for the following reasons. If we dealt with formulas of all sizes we should have an unwieldy mass of material of varying importance, and it would be impossible to compare the formulaic clement in different poets by means of the number of formulas found in their verse. In the second place, we must set a limit which will shut out any groups of words which are repeated merely by chance, or as the result of their natural order in the sentence. Accordingly I have regarded as formulas, or possible formulas, only expressions wade up of at least four words or five syllables, with the exception of noun-epithet phrases, which may be shorter.

Parry's first criterion for this typology or distinction is subjective: he believed that five syllables would command the hearer's attention and four would not. But the second justification reveals much more about his method and goals,

[3] On the role of his teacher Antoine Meillet and of Matija Murko in the evolution of his thought, see Parry's own remarks in "Cor^[*] Huso" (Parry 1933-35, in 1971, 439-40).

for he argues (ibid.) that "by insisting on four words in a shorter phrase one puts aside almost all chance groups of connective words." Here and elsewhere it becomes clear that Parry's goal is a quantitative profile, a numerical measure of "traditionality" and, he contends, therefore of orality. He sought, in other words, to analyze and to illustrate by example only , and at no time did he contemplate a complete theory of formulaic structure. He is in fact quite forthright on this point (p. 307):

A full description of the technique [of formulaic composition] is not to be thought of, since its complexity, which is exactly that of the ideas in Homer, is altogether too great. One must either limit oneself to a certain category of formulas, and describe their more frequent uses, as I have done in my study of the noun-epithet formulas, or one must take a certain number of formulas of different sorts which can be considered typical.

The goal of his analysis, then, is a sample to be used as a litmus test for the whole work in its much greater complexity, and the limits he puts on the size of the formula are intended to facilitate his quantitative measurements.

As one example of his extension of the concept of formula from the noun-epithet combinations to other elements or phrases, let us examine the system he uses to illustrate formulas of a certain type, "But when X had Y," where X is the implicit subject of g , a verb (figure 2; I have added English translations of the verbs to Parry's diagram [1930, 276]). While this collection of phrases certainly shows a multiformity, it is far different from the particular

Figure 2. Parry's Formulaic System

systemic character typical of the noun-epithet phrases. Here the emphasis is on the substitutable nature of the verb form, with the only constraint on the actual word chosen being its metrical shape. Each phrase has a clear essential idea, but the group as a whole is too wide-ranging semantically to have one core idea behind it; we cannot treat something as amorphous as "But when X does or did Y" as an element equivalent to the noun-epithet formulas.

Again, Parry was quite aware of the differences among formulas and explicitly addressed that variance in his discussion of the phrase alge' ethêke in Iliad 1.2. Noting that this phrase, which takes the classic colonic form of the adonean clausula, is not as extensive as some of his other examples, Parry (p. 309) observes that the shorter phrase

thus belongs to the less obvious part of the technique; yet it would be false to suppose that it is any less helpful to the poet than the longer ones: it is chiefly in the formulas of these shorter types that lie the suppleness and range of the diction, and their usefulness is to be measured by the many different kinds of other short formulas with which they combine.

What emerges from the 1930 analysis, in short, is acceptance of the reality that formulaic diction is in fact a spectrum, that noun-epithet formulas are but one kind of phrase structure within that spectrum, and that the examples summoned are meant to illustrate pars pro toto rather than to assist in assembling a comprehensive theory of formulaic structure. By showing what appears to be utility, Parry reasoned, he has shown that traditional Homeric poetry, by analogy to other traditions, is oral.

The reaction to these ideas comprises an epic tale in its own right (see M. Edwards 1986, 1988), but we may point to three quite dissimilar treatments of the Homeric formula that in various ways depended on and reacted to Parry's ground-breaking theories. In 1967 Michael Nagler published an article advocating a generative, synchronic approach to what he called the "traditional phrase" (see also Nagler 1974, 1-63). In his view the locus of "tradition" was in the preconscious gestalt of associations inherited by the singer, associations which were then mapped onto the unique surface structure of the individual performance. One result of this approach is the elimination, welcomed by Nagler and many others, of the dichotomy "traditional versus original" that has gained such currency in a variety of literatures.^[4] Another, and for our purposes more significant, corollary consists of enormously multiplying the associative echoes of a given traditional phrase, much as connections between and among ideas can be made in myriad ways, often purely acoustically (Nagler 1974, 8ff.). Since, in Nagler's words (p. 26), "all is traditional on the generative level, all original on the level of performance,"

[4] This is especially true in Romance language studies, where the terms traditionalist and individualist (now provided with the prefix neo -) denominate fixed and seemingly irresolvable positions. See Faulhaber 1976; Webber 1986.

the phraseological surface of the narrative is of secondary importance to the mythic ideas that underlie it.^[5] The surface is infinitely complex because ever shifting, and "a comprehensive systematization of Homer's formulaic syntax can never be accomplished"; he goes on to say (p. 28) that "it now seems more probable that exceptionally simple patterns do not represent the real manner of composition at all, but only appear particularly simple because of secondary factors, complicated by a statistically unjustifiable separation of them from the larger class."

Although Nagler's approach differs considerably from Parry's in his concentration on the preverbal associations that make up the tradition, he too understands the phraseology as an enormously complex instrument that consists of many different types of structures. And, in a departure from more conventional theories, he offers the observation that the most common and most obvious repetitions may not be representative of the diction as a whole, but instead are merely the most immediately obvious sort of patterning discernible. From Nagler's perspective, therefore, "traditionality" cannot be measured quantitatively, since on the generative level all is traditional. In essence, Nagler attempts to detach the notion of tradition from a necessary and one-to-one relationship with formula. While this approach gives a much-needed emphasis to aesthetic considerations and uncovers patterns other investigators had not found, it does not bring us much closer to an appreciation of the actual nature of the phraseology. And unless we are willing to follow Nagler completely in his de-emphasis of the structure of Homeric diction in favor of concentration on the associational web of traditional meaning he sees as its generative matrix, we will lack a philological solution to the problem of the phraseology.

Another model for the origin and deployment of Homeric phraseology was put forth by Gregory Nagy in a book entitled Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter (1974; see also 1976 and 1979), which was also discussed in the last chapter. Nagy's theory that from a diachronic point of view formula generated meter and not vice versa, whether or not we accept it in exactly those terms, offers a starting point for a conception of phraseology that takes as its major premise the initial and continuing symbiosis of formula and meter. Certainly, as Nagy himself admits, a metrical norm we abstract from the surviving lines of Homeric epic at some point stabilized and came to serve as a filter for incoming phraseology, but even at that point formula and meter were cooperative and mutually reinforcing. In opening up the diachronic dimension, Nagy also provides a way of understanding how the phraseology is really more like a complicated mix of archaeological strata than a smooth

[5] Indeed, he contends (Nagler 1974, 40), "these meanings and the ways in which they are manipulated seem to be, at least in some cases, essentially continuous with the meanings and processes of myth."

surface of substitutable units:^[6] his chief example, the Homeric formula kleos aphthiton , has roots in Indo-European epic phraseology and is also preserved in Indic verse.

Richard Janko (1982) also furnishes a diachronic view of Homeric style in his analysis of the diction of ancient Greek epos. By testing Homer, Hesiod, and the Hymns for certain kinds of linguistic archaisms and innovations, he is able to assign a relative chronology to the poems involved and to construct a probable "stemma" for the development of the epos from Mycenaean times onward. Janko's study and mathematical analysis are complex, but the unanimity of his findings is impressive: with the exception of the frequency of n -mobile used to make position, the percentage shifts of various linguistic features are consistent as one moves from the Iliad to the Odyssey , then on to the Hesiodic poems and the Hymns (see p. 200). Like Nagy, he emphasizes the evolutionary nature of the diction; while at any one time it may behave synchronically as a substitution system, diachronically it is always developing^[7] —maintaining some older elements even as new elements enter the phraseology.

These three conceptions of the formula in Homer open up some questions that need to be addressed by both philological and aesthetic studies. First, as Nagler has shown, the "traditional phrase" can no longer be considered simply a metrical unit that serves a useful purpose in composition. Rather, we should conceive of a spectrum of different sorts of phraseological structures, each redolent with manifold traditional associations that arise as the preverbal gestalt, as Nagler calls it, comes to be realized in the varia of the diction. Nagy leads us away from a purely synchronic and deterministic view of the formation of the phraseology and toward an appreciation of the originative and continuing partnership between formula and meter. And Janko also stresses the diachronic dimension of phrase generation and retention, constructing a realistic model for the ontogeny of the composite diction and its chronologically heterogeneous parts. All three of these studies thus point toward a complication of formulaic theory, a refinement of Parry's original

[6] Cf. Peabody 1975; the same concern with diachrony is also apparent in Parry's (1932) discussion of the Homeric poetic language.

[7] Of phraseological development Janko writes (1982, 188-89): "In an oral or mainly oral tradition, especially one with a metre as complex as the dactylic hexameter, formulae are preserved over long periods for reasons of convenience, or even necessity, as an aid to composition. Many formulae are handed down through the generations and preserve archaic forms, some extremely ancient indeed. On the other hand, it is clear that there was much scope for flexibility and originality in such traditions. Formulae are modified, where it is metrically possible, in accord with developments in the spoken vernacular, and such modification is an important pan of bardic technique. Old formulae, rendered incomprehensible or grossly unmetrical by the passage of time, are replaced by more modem expressions. New formulae are constructed after the analogy of older models, and then there will be totally new elements in the poetry, as new themes are elaborated, and ancient formulae bedded in matrices of new words."

approach (intended, we must remember, only to illustrate by example the extent of schematization of Homeric diction) and a step toward an understanding of the phraseology in its complexity and its richness.