Prosody and Formulaic Structure: Their Interrelationship

Implicit in my opening discussion of methodology was an assumed relationship between prosody and formulaic phraseology and, by extension, a secondary relationship between prosody and larger narrative units, which, for all their apparent structure as action-patterns or typical scenes, depend finally on phraseology for their expression. In the early stages of development of the oral-formulaic theory, such an assumption would have encountered no resistance whatever, since prosody was a fundamental part of the concept of formula: thus Parry's original definition, as "an expression regularly used, under the same tactical conditions , to express an essential idea" (1928a, in 1971, 13; my emphasis).^[25] Without those "same tactical conditions," the formula could not exist; prosody was a crucial and limiting factor in the process of definition. This procedure amounts to claiming that formulaic diction is, to use a favorite philological term, metri causa , that it arises from the constraints of meter and, the argument would continue, is retained because it fits the meter. In fact, this was precisely the direction Parry took in illustrating the thrift of Homer's diction. Observing that almost always only one noun-epithet formula was available to name a given god or hero in a given metrical segment of the line, he maintained that this characteristic was a sign of a traditional diction, a sign that the phraseology was itself a dynamic poetic entity epitomized by generations of individual singers.^[26]

This fundamental aperçu was, like so many of Parry's theses, a uniquely rigorous and characteristically creative extension of the preliminary work of others, in the present case of Ellendt, Düntzer, and other classical linguists of the late nineteenth century.^[27] Parry was proceeding, in other words, from a belief in the shaping and determining function of meter, and he would maintain this view throughout his published and unpublished writings on Homer and Serbo-Croatian epic. Some scholars who have followed Parry, upset with the supposed mechanistic operation and suppression of aesthetic choice that they see in metri causa , have tended to "soften" the prosodic requirements originally a part of the formula, or at least to redefine or investigate the flexibility of those requirements.^[28] But for all except the most subjective of critics,^[29] meter has remained an integral part of the formula's definition and of its very identity.

The fact of such a relationship, whatever its exact nature may be, is important. For whether we choose a formula-meter model as reductive as the "Lego-set" or one as complex as the newer generative or formalist-traditional theories (e.g., Devine and Stephens 1984), we are dealing most basically with language indissolubly allied with prosody. Laying aside for the present the many fascinating questions that could be asked about meters other than the Homeric hexameter and concentrating on the ancient Greek texts out of which formulaic theory was born, we must be struck by the overwhelming consensus (not to say observable fact) that Homer's traditional words are metrically defined. That is, rather than being merely lexical, phonological, morphemic, and syntactic entities, they are metrical or prosodic entities as well, and that prosodic character emanates not from lexical features but from verse structure.^[30] Moreover, we would do well to remember that this metrical dimension also proclaims unambiguously the identity of these words as traditional sound, as opposed to the printed transcriptions we have trained ourselves to interpret back toward their original form. Perhaps this is why Yugoslav guslari , when

asked what a "word" (rec ) in an epic song is, respond with a couplet or a single ten-syllable poetic line rather than with what we might expect—the dictionary denotation of word (see chapter 2). For them too, it would seem, a word is no word unless it is a prosodic word .

This line of inquiry holds out the promise of productivity, and I shall return to it at the appropriate time. For the moment, however, let us consider a relatively recent development which cannot help but cast some doubt on the doctrine of metri causa in the generation of the formula. In his 1974 monograph Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter , Nagy proposes three bold new hypotheses, all of them interrelated. First, he traces the Homeric hexameter to a pherecratic^3d precursor, as illustrated earlier. Second, he dismisses the usual chronology of Greek lyric poetry growing out of epic and argues for independent Indo-European roots of lyric. But most important for the present discussion is Nagy's third and overarching hypothesis, which unites the first two. By taking a diachronic or evolutionary view of Greek meter and collecting comparative evidence from Vedic and Homeric material, he formulates a history of development which seems to reverse the accepted relationship between formula and meter (p. 145):

At first, the reasoning goes, traditional phraseology simply contains built-in rhythms. Later, the factor of tradition leads to the preference of phrases with some rhythms over phrases with other rhythms. Still later, the preferred rhythms have their own dynamics and become regulators of any incoming non-traditional phraseology. Recent metrical developments may even obliterate aspects of the selfsame traditional phraseology that had engendered them, if these aspects no longer match the meter.

Far from adopting the consensus correlation, then, Nagy posits that "traditional phraseology had generated meter rather than vice versa." Although this is at best a telegraphic restatement of his position, the essentials are clear enough: the new theory threatens to overturn the mechanical-generation theory of Homeric formulaic diction by placing phraseology in the diachronically determinate position.^[31]

Without questioning either Nagy's methods or his evidence,^[32] which provide imaginative and far-reaching insights into nagging problems in a number of fields, I would make one simple point about his results, for his

proposal that diachronically formula generates meter^[33] may well seem to qualify the present approach to comparative prosody and the tradition-dependence of the formula. As time goes on, what was originally a phraseology-based interaction between formula and meter becomes a meter-based interaction. Another way of explaining the same development is to observe that, over time, the diachronic generation of meter gives way to the synchronic generation of formula. Because my major focus in these studies must remain on the texts that have survived and are the products of the development, I shall be viewing the process from the chronologically later end of the shift and shall thus look to meter as the prosodic "partner" of phraseology in the Homeric and other oral epic poems.^[34]

To this distinction may be added an observation that will indicate further the indissoluble link between formula and meter and the necessity for a comparative study of prosody to begin by recognizing that link. If Nagy's description of the earliest stage of formula-meter interaction is correct, then we have in the generation of meter from phraseology perhaps the most direct proof possible of the influence of natural-language characteristics on meter. What is more, we have evidence of a tradition-dependent meter based on the singularity of a given language from a very early time, since a meter must, we can suppose, be as singular as the language from which it arose. Even when, in the latter stages of the process, prosody came to have a life of its own and was therefore able to accept or reject combinations of elements from its parent language, it was originally that very language which gave it birth and to which it still owed its tradition-dependent identity. With this sort of direct link between a formulaic phraseology and an incipient prosody, there can be no question of persisting in philological reductionism: meters must be as different and idiosyncratic as the languages that spawned them.

In the remainder of this chapter I provide short accounts of each prosody assembled according to the principles explained above.