BMCR 2009.02.29, Response: Friedrich on Beck on Rainer Friedrich

Friedrich on Beck on Rainer Friedrich, Formular Economy in Homer. The
Poetics of the Breaches.   Response to BMCR 2008.10.27


Response by Rainer Friedrich, Dalhousie University
([email protected])
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To read a print-formatted version of this response, see
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2009/2009-02-29.html
To comment on this review, see
http://www.bmcreview.org/2009/02/20090229.html
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I should like to clarify a point which I obviously did not sufficiently
emphasize in my book.

The reviewer, Professor Beck, writes: "Friedrich offers a brief
conclusion to Part I at the end of the list in which he asserts that
the breaches of economy occur in Homer to a greater extent than has
been hitherto supposed (65)."  This is how the complete sentence on p.
65 of my monograph runs: "The evidence presented in Tables I to III has
confirmed G.P. Edwards' surmise that breaches of economy occur in Homer
to a greater extent than has been hitherto supposed." It's not
post-oralist Friedrich's assertion but oralist Edwards' surmise
(paraphrased on p. 65 and previously quoted on p.30 in my book). I
mention this because two leading oralists, Richard Janko and Gregory
Nagy, seem to share Edwards' surmise: as a result, both have demoted
formular economy from "most decisive factor" in an oral diction (as
Nagy originally, in line with Parry and Lord, had categorized it) to a
mere "trend toward thrift" (Nagy) and "tendency of economy" (Janko).
This demotion may explain why relatively little has been written on
formular economy after Parry and Lord; and I think the little that has
been written I have covered in my monograph.

Nevertheless, the reviewer takes me to task for having ignored (and
possibly for being ignorant of) the rich literature on the oral formula
and on the aesthetics of oral poetry. Yet these are not the topics of
my book; its topic is specific and limited, namely formular economy.
What I say beyond that on post-orality is only tentative and designed
to adumbrate the possible larger conclusions from the evidence
concerning the roles of orality and literacy in the composition of the
Homeric epics.  Here I have to stress what I seem not to have stressed
vigorously enough: that my monograph on formular economy is only the
prolegomenon to, and thus a subordinate part of,  a larger work in
progress, with the working title  Post-oral Homer: Orality and Literacy
in Archaic Greek Epic (most likely a mega biblion mega kakon).  That
will be the proper locus where the secondary literature, which
Professor Beck finds missing in my monograph, is to be discussed,
especially the various concepts of the formula and the poetics of oral
composition.

It is one of the blessings, when focusing on formular economy, that one
need not deal with formular theory and its many definitions of the
formula (I have so far counted more than a dozen)-- for one simple
reason: the oral principle of formular economy applies to only one
concept of the formula: the verbatim repeated and metrically equivalent
expressions, those answering to Milman Parry's well-known definition.
This, I think, says something about the other concepts and definitions.
But that is another story to be dealt with in the larger piece.