Antoine Meillet and Homeric Studies
At the Sorbonne, beginning in 1924, Meillet supervised Milman Parry. In 1923, a year before Milman Parry began his studies with Meillet, Meillet wrote the following (which, in the first of his two French theses, Parry quotes):
Homeric epic is entirely composed of formulae handed down from poet to poet. An examination of any passage will quickly reveal that it is made up of lines and fragments of lines which are reproduced word for word in one or several other passages. Even those lines of which the parts happen not to recur in any other passage have the same formulaic character, and it is doubtless pure chance that they are not attested elsewhere.
Meillet offered the opinion that this pattern (the so-called Oral Formulaic Hypothesis) might be a distinctive feature of orally transmitted epics (which the Iliad was said to be). He suggested to Parry that he observe the mechanics of a living oral tradition to confirm whether this suggestion was valid; he also introduced Parry to the Slovene scholar Matija Murko, who had written extensively about the heroic epic tradition in Serbo-Croat and particularly in Bosnia with the help of phonograph recordings. From Parry's resulting research in Bosnia, the records of which are now housed at Harvard University, he and his student Albert Lord revolutionized Homeric studies.
Read more about this topic: Antoine Meillet
Famous quotes containing the words antoine, homeric and/or studies:
““Come, boys, I know there’s kindly hearts among so good a
crowd—
To be in such good company would make a deacon proud.”
—Hugh Antoine D’Arcy (1843–1925)
“Carlyle has not the simple Homeric health of Wordsworth, nor the deliberate philosophic turn of Coleridge, nor the scholastic taste of Landor, but, though sick and under restraint, the constitutional vigor of one of his old Norse heroes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Recent studies that have investigated maternal satisfaction have found this to be a better prediction of mother-child interaction than work status alone. More important for the overall quality of interaction with their children than simply whether the mother works or not, these studies suggest, is how satisfied the mother is with her role as worker or homemaker. Satisfied women are consistently more warm, involved, playful, stimulating and effective with their children than unsatisfied women.”
—Alison Clarke-Stewart (20th century)