Year: 2001
Type: article
Abstract: ULTIFORMITY, according to Albert Lord, is a basic feature of oral traditional poetry.1In his writings, lectures, and conversations, Lord preferred to use the terms multiformity and multiform instead of variation and variant in order to emphasize the fluidity of oral poetry, to be contrasted with the fixity of written texts.Lord was worried that those who are unfamiliar with the workings of any given oral tradition might easily be misled to think of its variants exclusively in terms of a preexisting fixed text:[I]f one believes in a fixed text, then the idea of variants-even the word-indicates a deviation from a fixed entity.In one's thinking of the composition of oral traditional poetry, the word multiform is more accurate than "variant," because it does not give preference or precedence to any one word or set of words to express an idea; instead it acknowledges that the idea may exist in several forms.2This concept of multiformity, as Lord acknowledges, challenges the student of literature with a basic problem: Our real difficulty arises from the fact that, unlike the oral poet, we are not accustomed to thinking in terms of fluidity.We find it difficult to grasp something that is multiform.It seems to us necessary to construct an ideal text or to seek an original, and we remain dissatisfied with an ever-changing phenomenon.I believe that once we know the facts of oral composition we must cease trying to find an original of any traditional song.From one point of view each performance is an original.3As we see from Lord's formulation, the concept of "original" is relative in terms of oral traditions.In what follows I argue that multiformity in oral traditions likewise needs to be defined in relative rather than absolute terms.
Source: Classical Philology
DOI: 10.1086/449533
Author: Gregory Nagy
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2158879255