Person:

Elmer, David

I begin this exploration of characteristically Iliadic and Odyssean attitudes toward the traditional language in which these poems are composed by treading again a well-rutted path in the field of mid-20th century Homeric studies. In formulating his radical revision of the aesthetics of Homeric poetry, Milman Parry took as one of his guiding principles Heinrich Düntzer's notion of a contradiction between the compositional utility of the fixed epithet and its semantic value: if an epithet could be shown to have been selected on the basis of its utility in versification—and Parry's detailed examinations of extensive and economical systems of noun-epithet formulae were aimed in part at demonstrating this point—then it would be proven by that very fact that the epithet's meaning was irrelevant to its selection. Moreover, Parry asserted that the success of poetry composed in such a manner would depend on a corresponding indifference on the part of the audience, an indifference that must be, by his reasoning, categorical and absolute.

This essay provides a brief historical sketch of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature and describes recent efforts to provide electronic access to the contents of the archive. It concludes with thoughts about fruitful areas for new research on the materials in the Parry Collection.