Literature .sx The spellbinding story-tellers .sx Oral epic from Homer to Hercegovina .sx ERICH SEGAL .sx In the beginning were the words , wing e d at first until , paralysed , they fell to earth and were imprisoned by their nemesis , the alphabet .sx The late E.A. Havelock , a brilliant , controversial classicist , made this paradox about Homer the focus of his scholarship during the entire second half of his long life :sx " two poems we can read in documented form , the first 'literature' of Europe .sx .. constitute the first complete record of 'orality' , that is 'non-literature' .sx .. a statement of how civilized man governed his life and thought during several centuries when he was entirely innocent of the art ( or arts ) of reading " .sx This is dramatic enough , and one need not go to the extreme of B.B. Powell whose recent Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet ( reviewed in the TLS on June 14 , 1991 ) puts forth the rather too coincidental notion that the Greek alphabet was invented by a single man - in Euboia , to be precise - for the specific purpose of recording the two Homeric epics .sx It is enough to say that , when committed to writing , the unique character of oral poetry evanesces .sx Anyone who has studied Homer in the second half of this century is aware of the pioneering work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord , and the conclusions they extrapolated from studying and recording the works of Serbo-Croatian bards .sx In " L'Epith e-grave te traditionelle dans Hom e-grave re " ( 1928 ) and subsequent essays , Parry called attention to the use of formulas in traditional poetry , groups of words " regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea " .sx In various articles and his landmark book , The Singer of Tales ( 1960 ) , Lord explained the nature of thematic composition :sx " groups of ideas regularly used in telling a tale in the formulaic style of traditional song " .sx We now understand that when Homer 'nods' with repetition , or seems to assign banal or inappropriate epithets to various characters , these features are likely to be reflexes of the traditional diction that the bard finds metrically useful , while inwardly he busies himself composing what will follow .sx Oral poetry presupposes illiteracy on the part of the audience no less than the minstrel .sx Since by its very nature it has no universally fixed text , how can one address the material using the conventional critical armamentarium ?sx The printed grapheme is vastly different from the ephemeral phoneme .sx In Havelock's words , " oral language does not fossilize " .sx In fact , what we have in the Homeric epics is at best oral- derived poetry , edited most famously under Pisistratus in the sixth century BC and meticulously divided into their now canonical twenty-four books by the librarians at Alexandria in the third .sx The words were now trapped on papyrus .sx The music was lost for ever .sx John Miles Foley , one of the distinguished scholarly heirs of Parry-Lord ( they have become a critical hyphenate ) , has attempted to bring the discipline of oral studies to its necessary conclusion - the establishment of an appropriate poetic .sx At the outset of Traditional Oral Epic , his second book on the subject ( a third is already in progress ) , he puts forth the reasoning behind his methodology :sx " A traditional text is not simply a synchronic lattice-work , but also a diachronic document of great age and depth .sx For tradition is nothing if not diachronic :sx it has roots which reach back into its pre-textual history and which inform the present avatar of its identity .sx " Foley employs linguistic , metric and thematic analysis to compare the Odyssey , Beowulf and Return Songs by three guslari from the Stolac district of central Hercegovina .sx He is splendidly trained for this daunting task , conversant not only in the classical and medieval Germanic tongues but in the Slavic dialects as well .sx Traditional Oral Epic begins with a microscopic examination of so-called formulaic phrases to distinguish what is truly the stuff of traditional poetry .sx Understandably , this yields special riches where field-workers have been able to converse with living authors .sx What do the singers themselves mean by 'words' ( epea in Greek - whence epic - rije c-hacek i in Serbo-Croatian) ?sx How can a Yugoslavian singer repeat a familiar episode using different vocabulary and still insist he is telling it rije c-hacek za rije c-hacek , word-for-word ?sx As Foley explains , the bard's idiosyncratic concept regards 'words' not as verbatim echoes , but as " poetic lines , units that epitomize what Parry called an 'essential idea' and which are governed by the metrical structure of the tradition " .sx Demonstrating the enormous complexity involved in the contemporary study of epic diction , Foley convincingly argues that some of the poetic language can be non-formulaic but still highly traditional .sx He devotes three chapters to careful readings of " the prosodies that exist in symbiosis with the ancient Greek , Old English , and Serbo-Croatian epic phraseologies , and which thus ultimately figure in the verbal expression of narrative patterns " .sx At this point , he cites Roman Jakobson's comparison of the Yugoslavian epic line and metres from other Slavic traditions , all of which provide a 'third witness' ( in addition to Greek and Vedic ) to the foundations of Indo-European verse .sx Examining the 'inner metric' ( a phrase coined to complement the 'outer metric' described by Eugene O'Neill Jr in an important 1942 article ) , Foley argues that the hexameter and the Serbo-Croatian epic decasyllable can " reach beyond the synchronic surface of the texts to their diachronic roots " .sx He carefully evolves a set of " traditional rules " which provides new insights for oral poetry ( including Old English , whose prosody is somewhat different) .sx Fine examples of Foley's method in action include his discussion of the formulaic density in the famous 'octopus simile' ( the hero clinging desperately to a rock ) at Odyssey 5.432 , his analysis of an extract of a Yugoslavian Return Song and a treatment of Beowulf 717b , one of the several passages that contain the phrase ham gesohte ( " he sought his home " ) .sx In each instance he goes beyond the simplistic exhuming of formulaic devices , some of which he has already found hidden , not merely in hemistichs and full lines but even in enjambed verses .sx We now enter the realm of what might be called macro-criticism .sx Following the pioneering study of W. Arend , Die typischen Szenen bei Homer ( 1933 ) , Foley analyses conventional episodes in the three epic traditions .sx Studying the seven 'bath scenes' in the Odyssey , he concentrates on the morphology of the passage in Book 23.153ff , in which the faithful housekeeper Eurynome washes and anoints the hero , who has just dramatically announced his reappearance by slaughtering the suitors .sx This is the single occurrence where the bath set-piece does not lead directly into an equally conventional 'feast scene' .sx Instead , the poet presents Penelope confronting her long-lost husband with the riddle of the olive-tree bed .sx Foley concludes :sx " this instance of the pattern shows not a deviation from expectation but an augmentation of the conventional sequence , and its extraordinary make-up derives directly from the traditional expectation on which Homer , or his poetic tradition , has so brilliantly built .sx " Perhaps the operative word is " expectation" .sx The audience , its own mnemonic powers enhanced in a non-literate society , is assumed to know the basic narrative and hence has its sensibilities delighted just as a modern musical audience would be surprised and entertained by a 'deceptive cadence' .sx Foley also points to an analogous variation on the theme of the sea-voyage in Beowulf .sx Well before the protagonist appears , the archetypal hero , Scyld Scefing , embarks upon a maritime journey .sx The passage is laden with conventional language and we are even told that Scyld " led his men to the ship " .sx The significant difference is that this voyage is Scyld's funeral .sx Recognition of a familiar topos , so Foley argues , " enlarges our notion of thematic morphology and offers a perspective on the poet's art .sx .. This view of Scyld's passage from the world is made possible through the metonymic poetics of oral tradition , without whose associative dynamics such a perspective could not be achieved .sx " .sx In discussing the basic schema of the Yugoslavian Return Song , Foley distinguishes an archetypal story pattern consisting of five elements :sx Absence , Devastation , Return , Retribution and Wedding .sx The resemblance to the Odyssey is striking , down to many smaller details , and we are very close to the essential , irreducible elements of traditional narratology here .sx Homer is an orally derived text and Beowulf an eighth-century AD poem even more wedded to the written word by its single manuscript .sx Foley's richest lode for the establishing of an oral poetics would therefore seem the Yugoslavian connection - especially when the guslari sing into a modern tape-recorder , their words still in flight and untranscribed .sx And yet he seems to have ignored the abundant treasures of the Indian tradition .sx India has a contemporary performance tradition which includes not only folk epics but even the national Sanskrit masterpieces , the R a-length m a-length yama and the Mah a-length bh a-length rata , which , although classical texts with standard editions , also coexist in ever-changing folk reinterpretations .sx Another area still left relatively unexplored is aurality or the acoustic dimension .sx What of the 'hearer' - the traditional poet's audience in the literal sense of the word ?sx In his study of Hesiod , The Wing e d Word ( 1975 ) , Berkley Peabody called our attention to what he ( somewhat uneuphoniously ) calls " phonic clumps " .sx In the case of Homer at least , we will never be able to appreciate the true effect of his verse .sx For his performances are not only unrecorded in the electronic sense , but are by definition unrepeatable .sx In matters of Homeric diction , no scholar fails to adduce the authority of J.B. Hainsworth , whose publications include The Flexibility of the Homeric Formula ( 1968 ) and several important articles , including " The Criticism of an Oral Homer " ( 1970) .sx He is also co-editor of the first volume of a new commentary on the Odyssey .sx With The Idea of Epic , however , Hainsworth reveals a new facet of his scholarship .sx This is a delightful survey of the rise and - in the author's opinion at least - fall of a literary form .sx Though beginning with a glance backwards at the Sumerians of the third millennium BC , the vast majority of his book deals with Homer and his eight extant classical successors .sx Hainsworth pays scant attention to mock-epic .sx Petronius , for example , is not cited for his ironic parodies ( of Lucan , perhaps even of the Odyssey ) , but only for his remark on the impossibility of epic :sx " the free spirit of genius must plunge headlong into allusions and divine interpositions and rack itself for epigrams colored sic !sx by mythology .sx .. " .sx Few would dispute Hainsworth's observation that " survival is not a sure guide to quality " .sx Indeed , like the names on Koko's little list , Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica , Silius Italicus' Punic War ( which , quipped Pliny the Younger , was written with " more perspiration than inspiration " ) , Quintus of Smyrna's Posthomerica , Nonnus' Dionysiaca and Statius' Thebaid " would none of them be missed " .sx Yet Apollonius' Argonautica offers a fascinating picture of the heroic world in twilight , strains of romantic melody growing audible in the background .sx Lucan's Bellum civile , with its theme of virtue opposing tyranny , inspires the poet to passionate rhetorical heights , his concept of a political epic " the last significant development of the genre made in antiquity " .sx But Virgil's Aneid is without question an unrivalled work of genius .sx Different from Homer to be sure , but not less a classic , despite Quintilian's supercilious preference for the Greek poet .sx Not surprisingly , Hainsworth is best on Homer and Homeric Kunstsprache - that peculiar amalgam of archaisms , neologisms and various dialects which is the altogether appropriate medium for an epic that was quintessentially Greek before the notion of Greece existed .sx One might , however , take issue with one or two of his assertions .sx His statement that " in the Illiad death is absolute , unmitigated by any meaningful hope of survival " should be read against the eloquent discussion of death and heroic glory in Jasper Griffin's Homer on Life an Death ( 1980) .sx Hainsworth is also excellent on the language and style of Virgil's Augustan masterpiece .sx He reminds us of the difficult task faced by the author of the Aneid - to be as Greek as Homer , yet as Roman as his patrons :sx " Virgil makes a fantasy , the Homeric Olympus , stand for something real , the Roman sense of history " .sx Nor is he afraid to confront more difficult literary issues that might justifiably have been avoided in so brief a study .sx