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The Iliad as heroic poetry
In view of the extensive use made of the South Slavic tradition since it
was popularized by M. Parry it is worth mentioning:
M. Braun, Das serbokroatische Heldenlied (Gottingen 1961)
S. Koljevic, The Epic in the Making (Oxford 1980)
and, as studies that apply the comparative method to Homer:
A. B. Lord, Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., i960)
B. C. Fenik, Homer and the Nibelungenlied: Comparative Studies in Epic Style
(Cambridge, Mass., 1986)
J. M. Foley, Traditional Oral Epic (1990).
'Oral poetry' (for we are primarily concerned with oral or oral-derived
poetry) is obviously a congeries, not a genre. In order to discuss so much
material of diverse date, provenance, and character the obvious expedient
is to draw a metaphorical line around that part of it that seems to promise
results; and having done so it is well not to exclaim in wonder that the
material does in fact exhibit the properties that were used to define it in the
first place. The Chadwicks used ethos and social function for classification:
(1) narrative poetry or saga (= prose narrative orally preserved) intended
for entertainment; (2) poetry in semi-dramatic form; (3) gnomic poetry
intended for instruction; (4) celebratory poetry (hymns, panegyrics);
(5) personal poetry. There is much overlapping here, notably between
narrative and dramatic form (cf. vol. 11 29—30). Bowra used the concept of
'heroic poetry', a more narrowly defined portion of the Chadwicks' 'narrative
poetry intended for entertainment'. But heroic poetry is not a concept
analogous to that of, say, epic poetry in classical and modern literature.
Epic poetry in those fields is a genre whose poets were self-consciously aware
of the form that they were using, a form ultimately traceable to the Homeric
epics. The similarities between Homer, Apollonius, Virgil, Tasso, Milton,
and the rest are not fortuitous; the similarities between Iliad, Gilgamesh,
Beowulf, Roland, Digenis, Manas, etc., are at best attributable to similar
causes (orality, war, religion, etc.), not to any filiation. We can trace the
evolution of the classical and neo-classical epic; we have to assume that the
emergence, development, and maturity of traditions of heroic poetry were
parallel.
There can be no necessary connexion between heroic poetry and, for
example, techniques of composition, modes of performance, or the emergence
of monumental epics. Other criteria for classification are equally
valid. If the Homerist's purpose is to elucidate techniques of composition,
then 'stichic verse' should be the area for investigation. Whatever the
criteria the investigator is likely to be confronted with a continuum. There
are no sharp distinctions between oral and literary (though that has been
fiercely contested), between folktale and saga, between lyrical balladry and
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