Beowulf - Literature versus Oral Tradition

Video Title: Oral Tradition 1/2. Source: Theudebrand. Date Published: December 25, 2016. Description: 

The law itself in oral cultures is enshrined in formulaic sayings, proverbs, which are not mere jurisprudential decorations, but themselves constitute the law. A judge in an oral culture is often called on to articulate sets of relevant proverbs out of which he can produce equitable decisions in the cases under formal litigation before him. 

Oral tradition never was the primitive, preliminary technology of communication we thought it to be. Rather, if the whole truth is told, oral tradition stands out as the single most dominant communicative technology of our species as both a historical fact and, in many areas still, a contemporary reality. 

The theory of oral-formulaic composition originated in the scholarly study of epic poetry, being developed in the second quarter of the twentieth century. It seeks to explain two related issues: the process which enables oral poets to improvise poetry; and why orally improvised poetry has the characteristics it does. 

The key idea of the theory is poets have a store of formulas (a formula being ‘an expression that is regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea’) and that by linking these in conventionalised ways, they can rapidly compose verse. 

In the hands of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, this approach transformed the study of ancient and medieval poetry, and oral poetry generally. The main exponent and developer of their approaches was John Miles Foley. 

Lord, and more prominently Francis Peabody Magoun, also applied the theory to Old English poetry (principally Beowulf), where formulaic variation such as the following is prominent:

Hrothgar mathelode helm Scildinga (“Hrothgar spoke, protector of the Scildings”) Beowulf mathelode bearn Ecgtheowes (“Beowulf spoke, son of Ecgtheow”) 

Magoun thought that formulaic poetry was necessarily oral in origin. This sparked a major and ongoing debate over the extent to which Old English Poetry – which survives only in written form – should be seen as, in some sense, oral poetry. 

The theory of oral tradition would undergo elaboration and development as it grew in acceptance. While the number of formulas documented for various traditions proliferated, the concept of the formula remained lexically-bound. However, numerous innovations appeared, such as the “formulaic system” with structural “substitution slots” for syntactic, morphological and narrative necessity (as well as for artistic invention). 

Sophisticated models such as Foley’s “word-type placement rules” followed. Higher levels of formulaic composition were defined over the years, such as “ring composition”,”responsion” and the “type-scene” (also called a “theme” or “typical scene”). Examples include the “Beasts of Battle” and the “Cliffs of Death”. Some of these characteristic patterns of narrative details, (like “the arming sequence;” “the hero on the beach”; “the traveler recognizes his goal”) would show evidence of global distribution. 

Very large units would be defined (The Indo-European Return Song) and areas outside of military epic would come under investigation: women’s song, riddles and other genres. 

Within Homeric studies specifically, Lord’s “The Singer of Tales”, which focused on problems and questions that arise in conjunction with applying oral-formulaic theory to problematic texts such as the Iliad, Odyssey, and even Beowulf, influenced nearly all of the articles written on Homer and oral-formulaic composition thereafter. 

Eric Havelock’s “Preface to Plato” revolutionized how scholars looked at Homeric epic by arguing not only that it was the product of an oral tradition, but also that the oral-formulas contained therein served as a way for ancient Greeks to preserve cultural knowledge across many different generations. 

Watkins’ “How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics” is both an introduction to comparative poetics and an investigation of the myths about dragon-slayers found in different times and in different Indo-European languages. Watkins claims that it is not possible to understand fully the traditional elements in an early Indo-European poetic text without the background of what he calls a “genetic intertextuality” of particular formulas and themes in all languages of the family.