Oral poetry

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Oral poetry is a form of poetry that is transmitted orally and memorized or improvised rather than written down. It exists primarily within oral cultures, though some forms of it can survive after a culture has made the transition to literacy.

Oral poetry differs from oral literature in general, which can include shorter and more variable pieces and can coexist much more with written literature, by certain consistencies within its form, which were brought to the attention of scholars by Albert B. Lord. Foremost among these consistencies is the use of formulaic language: repeated phrases that help poets and singers structure and remember their poems. Drawing on the work of his teacher Milman Parry, who first theorized that such repetitions in Homeric epics indicated that they came from a tradition of oral poetry, Lord extended the theory to modern epic traditions, in particular those of Bosnia (in what was then called Yugoslavia). Lord and other scholars also connected this theory to various medieval epics, including Beowulf and the Chanson de Roland.

Parry's and Lord's work transformed the field of Homeric studies, introducing a new vocabulary for discussing elements of Homer's work that had previously been studied only in vague terms. Work on the precise nature of the two epics and on the process by which they came to be written down has advanced enormously since then, but the basic structure of oral poetry Parry and Lord argued for remains a current subject for research and debate.

[edit] References

Lord, Albert B. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.
Parry, Milman. "Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making. I: Homer and Homeric Style." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Vol. 41 (1930), 73–143.
Parry, Milman. "Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making. II: The Homeric Language as the Language of an Oral Poetry." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Vol. 43 (1932), 1–50.
Parry, Milman & Parry, Adam (editor) (1971), The making of Homeric verse. The collected papers of Milman Parry, Oxford: Clarendon Press