Rainer Friedrich Formular Economy in Homer Rainer Friedrich Formular Economy in Homer The Poetics of the Breaches ®) FranzS teinerV erlagS tuttgart2 007 HERMES Zeitschrift fiir klassische Philologie ---------------------------- Einzelschriften HERAUSGEGEBBN VON Siegmar Dopp Karl-Joachim Holkeskamp Wolfgang Kullmann Heft 100 HERMES-EINZELSCHRIFfEN (ISSN 0341-0064) Redaktion: Prof. Dr. Sil!GMAR. DOPP, Universitat Gottingen, Seminar fur Klassische Philologie, Humboldtallee 19, D-37073 Gottingen ( verantwortlich fur Latinistik) Prof. Dr. KARL..J0ACHIHM6 LKESKAMPU, niversitat Koln, lnstitut fur Altertumskunde/ Alte Geschichte, D-50923 Koln (verantwortlich fur Alte Geschichte) Prof. Dr. WOLFGANGK ULLMANNBa, yemstr. 6, 0-79100 Freiburg (verantwortlich fur Grazistik) Erscheinungsweise: Jahrlich 3---6B ande verschiedenen Umfanges Bezugsbedingungen: Bestellung zur Fortsetzung mog:lich. Preise der Bande nach Umfang. Eine Fortsetzungsbestellung gilt, falls nicht befristet, bis auf Widerruf. 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ISBN 978-3-515-09065-0 ISO 9706 Jede Verwertung des Werkes auBerhalb der Grenzen des Urheberrechcsgesetzes_.ist unzulassig und strafbar. Dies gilt insbesondere fur Ubersetzung, Nachdruck, Mikroverfilmung oder vergleichbare Verfahren sowie fur die Speicherung in Datenverarbeitungsanlagen. Gedruckt auf saurefreiem, alterungsbestandigem Papier. © 2007 Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart. Druck: Oruckhaus Nomos, Sinzheim Printed in Germany TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface .........................................................................................................................7.. Acknowledgemen.t..s.. ........................................................... 8 e ................. ,11 ............................................................................. I. FORMULAR ECONOMY IN HOMER. OBSERVANCE AND BREACH ..........9 1. Introduction. The Four Tests of Orality ..............................................................9. 2. The Principle of Fonnular Economy .................................................................1 0 a. Economy and Schematization. .....................................................................1 2 b. What is, and What is not, a Breach of Economy? .......................................1 7 c. Fonnular Economy and Reduced Extcnsion. ...............................................2 0 d. Metrical Equivalen~e and Semantic Difference ..........................................2 2 c. The •A rgument from Thrift': Main Plank of the Theory of the Oral Homer ..........................................................................................2. 8 3. The Breaches of Formular Economy in Iliad and Odyssey ............................... 30 a. Prelude to the Economy Test ......................................................................3. 0 b. The Name-epithet Systems for Achilleus and Zeus .....................................3 2 a. Tables I and ll .......................................................................................3. 6 c. The Evidence for Breaches of Economy in Iliad and Odyssey ....................4 0 a. General Considerations on the Evidence ............................................... 40 ~. A Note on Methoo· ···••1..-.•.. ..."..'.. ...... ..................................~ ................,... ..................... ......~........ .............. ...... y. Table III. A General List of Breaches of Economy ...............................4 8 d. Formular Economy in Homer. A Preliminary Conclusion ..........................6 5 II. THE P()EflCS OF THE BREACHES. ................................................................6. 7 I. Introduction. Three Avenues to the Poetics of the Breaches .............................6 7 2. DeliberateV ariatio .................................................... .'. ...................................... 68 a. Variatio in Oral Composition and lteratio in Phrase-Clusters ....................6 8 b. Case-studies of Deliberate Variatio ............................................................. 13 c. A List of Further Instances of Deliberate Variatio ...................................... 16 3. The Avoidance of Stylistic Infelicities and Contextual Unsuitability ...............7 8 4. 'Escaping the System'. The Pursuit of Justness of Expression .........................8 3 a. A Critical Recapitulation of Parryist Reasoning on the Epithet ..................8 4 6 Tableo f Contents b. Breach of Economya nd Stylisticj ustess, in Particularized Fonnulu .......9 0 c. Thep hrast Ju.stein Homer.C ase-studie.s. ...................,..... .. ..........................9. 3 S. BeyondS chematiza.tio...n.. .........................................................................1..2..8.. ............................... a. ObliqueE x.pression..s. ......................"....'.. ............................ ....".....'.. ................... .."....'.. ............ ..." ..'. 128 b. The Stylistic Effect of Oblique Expressions. Some Cases in Point. ......... 130 6. Conclusion.T owards Schema-freeC omposition.. ........................................1..3 7 a. The Relaxationo f FormularE .conomya nd Schematization.. ...................1 38 b. Panyism's Dilemma and its PossibleR esolution ..................................... 140 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 147 Indices .. .. .• . . . .. . .. . . . . .. .. . . . .. . . . .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. . .. . . .. . . . .. .. .. . .. . .. . . .. . . . .. .. . .. . .. . .. . .. .. . .. . .. .. .. . .. .. . .. . .. . .. . 151 Indexr e.rum... .................................................................................................1..5..I . .................................................... Indexl ocorum ..................................................................................................... 153 PREFACE A title containing the term formular economy suggests a highly technical mono graph. Yet, as the word poetics in the subtitle intimates, the significance of this principle of oral diction and especially its breaches extends far beyond the merely technical. A probe into its observance and breach goes to the heart of Homeric diction. It also has a bearing on the New Homeric Question, which turns on the role of orality and literacy in the genesis of the epics. Denoting as it does the avoidance of semantically and metrically equivalent formulas, the principle of fonnular economy is designed to protect the oral singer's fonnular apparatus against overburdening with unnecessary doublets. In this capacity fonnular economy belongs exclusively to oral poetry. Essential as it is for oral composition in performance, it is pointless in written composition: this renders formular economy the clinching argument in favour of Homer's orality. As it is predicated on the belief in the strict observance of formular economy in both Homeric epics, the 'argument from thrift' requires examination. What fol lows in the largely technical Part I is a clarification of, and a critical reflection on, the theoretical underpinnings of fonnular economy and the narrative style it connotes, as well as the marshalling of the available evidence of its observance and breach in Homer. The focus of the exegetical Part II will be the poetic sig nificance of this evidence. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Professor Sam ScuJly of Dalbousie University has read the whole manuscript and offered invaluable critical comment that has greatly improved this book. It is with profound gratitude that I acknowledge his contribution. For encouragement and most helpful critical advice I wish to thank Professor Wolfgang Kullmann. I also wish to express thanks to Professor Stephen Scully of Boston Univenity, the most ardent tm8e-ro+1Ao(cs;i t venia verbo), for stimulating debates on the glory of the Homeric epithet. In preparing the camera-ready copy I gratefully received most expert help from Christopher Wright of Dalhousie University's Academic Computing Services. I also wish to thank the crew of the Dalbousie Computer Help Desk for their very competent aid. Boston, Massachusetts, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 2006 Rainer Friedrich I. FORMULAR ECONOMY IN HOMER: OBSERVANCE AND BREACH 1. INTRODUCTION.T HE FOUR TESTS OF ORALITY Fonnular economy-the avoidance of metrically equivalent phrases expressing the same idea-is the hallmark of oral diction. It ranks as the differentia specijica that distinguishes oral poetry from written literature in kind: an indis pensable aid to the oral singer's craft, it would be an unacceptable encumbrance on the pen-poet's art. It is patently the chief category of Oral Theory Known as 1. the Hargumentf rom thrift" and said to clinch the proof of Homer's orality, for mular economy constitutes the main plank of the Theory of the Oral Homer. In The Singer Resumes the Tale (1995), the sequel to the canonical The Singer of Tales( 1960). A.B. Lord had therefore proposed to add to the three existing tests of orality (formula-test, thematic test, enjambement-test) a fourth one: the econ omy test, better known as the "test by thrift""l.T his test has never been fonnally applied to the Homeric epics. Instead, Parry, Lord, and nearly all Parryists have always held as self-evident the belief in Homer's strict observance of the princi ple of fonnular economy in Iliad and Odyssey, save for a handful of breaches- A.B. Lord protests that "the phrase •orat theory' with regard to the investigations into South Slavic oral epic by Parry and me is a misnomer", since, as he rightly claims, "these findings do not constitute a 'theory'; rather, they provide demonstrated facts concerning oral tradi tional poctry"(L.ord 1995: 191). This is cenainly true and cannot be emphasized enough. Nevertheless, Oral Theory is not quite the misnomer Lord makes it out to be. To begin with., he himself uses Theory in the title for the first half of The Singer of Tales ("Part I. The The ory .. and "Part II. The Application"). Furthennorc, from the demonstrated facts or oral tradi tional poetry, which their field-work had produced, Parry Lord and Notopoulos drew gen eral conclusions as to the nature, style, narrative techniques, and outlook of oral poetry; de veloped a nomenclature; and formulated a poetics for analysing and interpreting oral poems. All this does constitute a theory in the sense of a generalizing synthesis of demonstrated facts. 2 On the 'test by thrift' see Lord 1995: 200, where he rcconfinns the importance of the for merly three, now four, orality tests. Further on the importance of certifying tests of orality, sec Lord 1960: 130-32; Peabody 1975: 3-4; Janko 1982: 19, 30-33; Friedrich 2002: 43. In ~ Singer of Tales, after five pages of cursory remarks on themes, formulas, and enjam bemcnti n Homer including a formular analysis of the first fifteen verses of the Iliad, Lord makes a baffling claim: "'We have now applied the three sets of tests that we recognize as valid in determining whether any given poem is oraJ or not. The Ho~ric poems haw tMt each of these tests. We now realize fully that Ho~r is an oral poet' (Lord 1960: 147, em phasisa dded). What is claimed as the application of the tests on pages 142-47 is remarkat,le flll" its perfunctoriness and lack of method; but in its heyday Parryism got away with almost anything. 10 Formular Economy:O bservance and Breach mere exceptions easily explained by the play of analogy3 This unexamined • belief arose from the straight extrapolation of Parry's discovery of fonnular economy from its operation in the deployment of name-epithet fonnulas to its operation in the whole of Homeric diction. However, mounting evidence to the contrary calls for an examination of this belief. Such an examination, as is in tended here, will substitute for the application of Lord's 'test by thrift' to the Homeric epics4. Why arc certifying tests of orality needed? Most texts, at any rate those of the past, that are claimed for the corpus of oral poetry exist as written texts, the only possible fonn in which they can be known to us-just like the Homeric texts. To claim them for its corpus Oral Theory has the onus of proving that such written texts had been oral compositions prior to their fixation in writing. For the purpose of certifying such texts as oral texts, A.B. Lord had previously devised three tests of orality, each one corresponding to a defining feature of oral poetry. Thus for a text to pass the tests and be certified as oral, it must exhibit extensive formularity (fonnula test); composition by recurrent schematized theme (the matic test); and the prevalence of parataxis in the fonn of frequent co-tenninous verses and adding, i.e., non-periodic, enjambement (enjambement test). The more recent fourth test, the "test by thrift", should be the most important, if not the decisive one, as it concerns the differentia specifica of oral poetry. While formularity, recurrent themes, and the frequency of non-periodic cnjambement may be found in oral and written texts alike, the principle or law of economy of expression belongs exclusively to oral composition; for in written composition it would be not only pointless, but counterproductive. Its consistent observance, with only infrequent breaches, could thus unequivocally attest to a text's orality. 2. THE PRINCIPLE OF FORMULAR ECONOMY "An oral poem is not composed for but in performance"5 Albert Lord's pithy • aphorism presents the very gist of oral composition in a nutshell. In the rough and tumble of composition-in-performance in front of an audience, the oral singer of tales relics on a traditional store of remembered stock phrases, on which he draws for rapid versification. This store is not, as the often used term Traditionsmasse might suggest, an amorphous mass of traditional formulas: it is, on the contrary, highly structured. This, of course, was Milman Parry's great discovery that linked the Homeric epics indisputably with oral poetry (though the exact nature of this link is a moot point, still to be determined). Parry's basic text, his 1928 Sorbonne these L 'Epithete rraditionnelle dans Homere, bears the subtitle Essai sur un probleme du style homerique. It addresses that age-old problem that has puzzled readers and vexed scholars since antiquity: the seem- 3 Cp. Parry 1971: 175-180. 4 For the enjambement test. see Friedrich 2000; for the problems of the thematic test, see Friedrich 2002. 5 Lord 1960: 13.