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Formulas
competence as well as reproduce a traditional language, but their imagination
could only feed on what was familiar to them, their own world. Formularity
therefore potentially increased the power of expression of the
gifted &oi86s, a power that the acquisition of the basic poetical diction had
already enhanced. At its best the formular style can be read in the quarrel
of book 1, in the discourses of book 9, and in that tour de force of battle
narrative, 16.306-50. 28 A reading of such passages removes the lingering
pejorative sense that clings to the word 'formular'. Yet there would be areas
where formalization was strong, and these would limit the imagination of
the ungifted ccoi56s and give the impression that he never sought to express
anything in word or tone or content that tradition did not supply. Such
themes, like beaching or launching a ship in the Iliad, are like glosses,
waiting for rejuvenation (cf. Od. 5.243-61 for a good &0180S doing just
that). Ossified language and concomitant ossified thought are the vices of
formular composition, but they are vices that do not afflict its best exponents.
In the Iliad variation on a theme is the norm, as in the confident and
supremely competent descriptions of the individual combats during the
Great Battle of books 11-17 (see 11.92-ioonn.).
The Iliad is formular ('formular' in the broadest sense) throughout. Its
formularity must be accepted, but it can now also begin to be appreciated
as a mode of discourse that despite its formidable technicalities made possible
the creation of one of the finest narrative styles in literature. 29
28 Kirk, HO T 74-81, discusses in detail several passages from this standpoint.
29 For a comprehensive bibliography of the Homeric formula see M. W. Edwards, Oral
Tradition 1 (1986) 171-230, and 3 (1988) n-60.
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