Discourse and Performance: Involvement, Visualization and "Presence" in Homeric Poetry

Abstract

W ITHIN THE CHANGING CLIMATE of folklore studies, anthropology, the so cial sciences, and linguistics, the study of oral is gradually increasing in depth, scope, and variety. To the line of research initiated by Milman Parry and Albert Lord that has been known for decades as oral-formulaic theory, a number of new approaches have been added, not necessarily supplanting Parry's original insights, but adding new dimensions to them and placing them in novel perspectives. In particular, current thought tends to focus on what it means for verbal art to be traditional, which in a sense entails a return to Parry's earliest ideas on traditional poetry and a relative shift in the thinking about the function of formulas: from metrical utility to traditional situatedness and from structure