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Formulas
Parry's typical formulas were expressions like KUUCC KeAccivov (9.6) or |3of]V
dyaOos Aio|jf|8r|S (9-30? nouns or personal names with a perpetual ('ornamental')
epithet. These served well for his primary argument. Such expressions
typically fall into sets: there will be an expression filling each of the
principal cola of the verse, especially those in its second half, and only
exceptionally will there be more than one expression for each colon. It must
be accepted that such a pervasive yet economical provision of metrical
diction is an aspect of the evolution of doi8f|. However, that sort of diction
is not the whole nor even a major part of what Homer sang, and when Parry
proposed (in HSCP 1930 = MHV 266ff.) as a model of Homeric composition
(which he took to be oral composition in performance) one of formulas
falling into sentence-patterns, it was necessary to understand 'formula' in a
wider sense, as any sort of repeated word-group, and to presume the formular
status of expressions where it was not demonstrable. The model
implied that any verses composed in this way would contain very little
non-formular diction. Methodologically the distinctive feature of the Parry
model is that it assigns to the formula an absolute priority.
In its stark form such a model does not commend itself for aesthetic
reasons, being inimical to the freedom of thought and expression which the
poetry of Homer seems to exemplify; but it tackled an aspect of Homeric
diction that does not yield to normal critical methods and invited refinement.
Even for scholars who accepted its implications the model posed two
important problems: (1) how to integrate into the model of composition the
many expressions which were not formulas in the sense Parry had defined,
and (2) how to describe exactly what a formula is (as opposed to defining
a class of expressions in the text which the scholar wished to study). No
solution to either of these problems has yet been propounded to general
satisfaction. 2
For a tradition of heroic narrative poetry that is long extinct how much
diction could be non-formular without invalidating the model cannot be
known, but the very nature of the Parry model stimulated attempts to
describe the formula in such a way as to embrace, it was hoped, material
that on a strict definition was not formular at all by showing that the
non-formular diction was similar to indisputable formulas. Hence the invention
of the 'formular phrase' and the 'formula by analogy'. 3
the craft of using and adapting formulas and systems of formulas, to be acquired only by long
experience' (Page, Odyssey 139). This model is strongly criticized by Foley, Traditional Oral Epic
52-120.
2 See the discussion in Austin, Archery 14-26.
3 A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., i960) 4 ('formular phrase'), J. A.
Notopoulos, AJP 83 (1962) 337-68 ('formula by analogy'). M. N. Nagler's 'pre-verbal
Gestalt', TAP A 98 (1967) 269-311, is the ultimate extension of this line of argument.