Year: 1984
Type: article
Abstract: S INCE THE Second World War, Homeric scholarship has taken two different courses, one in America and England and the other in most parts of Europe, particularly the German-speaking countries.In the former the theory of oral poetry propounded by Milman Parry has been predominant, while on the continent the approach which probably contributed most to Homeric research has been neoanalysis.1 Fortunately, the time of separate development is now over: several treatises on oral poetry theory have been written in Germany, 2 and neoanalysis has increasingly been taken notice of in America and Great Britain.3 In spite of this welcome development, no systematic comparison of the two theories and their results has as yet been made.It is only in a special area, the battle scenes of the Iliad, that such a comparison of the methods of the two approaches exists: Bernard Fenik has provided an important and fair examination from the point of view of oral poetry theory.4I shall attempt here to confront the two approaches with each other on a general level.In this brief space, however, the examination is bound to be rather cursory.I propose first to summarize the main points of the two theories~ then to compare the methods applied; and finally to discuss the respective conclusions about the main issues of Homeric scholarship.I shall give particular consideration throughout to the form of the large-scale epic and to the question of oral versus written composition.
Author: Wolfgang Kullmann
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1889635743