Coda

Over the next three chapters on traditional phraseology I shall be applying the insights gained in this treatment of comparative prosody to the ancient Greek, Serbo-Croatian, and Old English epic traditions. As we proceed it will be well to recall that while numerous parallels can be drawn among the three phraseologies, with productive results, we must also remember their individuality. Milman Parry's theory of the formula was, after all, based firmly on determining the "same metrical conditions" that made possible the recurrence of elements of diction, and we have discovered in the present chapter that each epic tradition has an idiosyncratic, tradition-dependent prosody that we may expect to exist in symbiosis with a correspondingly idiosyncratic and tradition-dependent phraseology . As noted in earlier chapters, and as will be evident throughout the volume, the double focus of comparison and contrast must inform the study of structure in oral traditional epic.