Homer's Traditional Art by John Miles Foley (review)

REVIEWS John Miles Foley. Homer's TraditionalArt. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1 999. 363p. Carol Poster Montana State University ß? Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah Homer's TraditionalArt is a summative work by a leading practitioner in the field ofwhat has been called "Oral Theory." It recapitulates and extends work done by Foley in several previous books on the subject of traditional epic, as manifested primarily in the Homeric poems and studied comparatively in the South Slavic and early English traditions. Foley's mastery ofthe relevant primary and secondary materials is unquestionable; thus the book raises questions not so much about the skills ofthe practitioner (which are above reproach) but ofthe practice itself. "OralTheory," as it has been called with significant capitals by its practitioners (e.g., Foley, Oral-Formulaic Theory andResearch ma The Theory ofOral Composition ), is what Foucault would term a discourse, with foundational authorities (Parry, Lord), and a tendency to argue in terms of orthodoxy vs. heterodoxy. It began as a discourse (although manyofits individual theorems had been advanced earlier) with Parry's analysis of Homeric epithet formulae in the 1920s (material reprinted in Parry) and subsequent comparativework by Parry and Lord on Slavic epic. The central claim of the theory was that Homeric and cognate epics were composed orally and improvisationally out of traditional formulae (at phrase, scene, and story level), and thus should not be understood in terms of romantic notions ofthe individual literate author but instead as part ofa collective oral tradition . The elements of oral composition worked like a language, and could be analyzed along typically structuralist lines in terms ofsemantic rules {langue) and individual instantiations (paroles). Despite extensive ethnographic fieldwork and historical research, Oral Theory shared in common with other forms ofstructuralist analysis a resolutely synchronic approach, namely a deliberate avoidance of consideringdiachronicchange and an assumption ofestrangement (that the realm oforal epic is self-contained and independent ofspecific historical circumstances). Through the 1960s, opposition to Oral Theory among classicists had generally been limited to asort ofnaively newcritical objection that the "great art" ofHomer could not be produced by such a dehumanized and mechanistic process as formulaic composition. More recently, however, Oral Theory, in its most orthodox FALL 2000 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 95 manifestations, has been attacked on grounds not readily dismissed as nostalgic or ill-informed, and Foley's book is an effort to reformulate the theory in face of possibly fatal objections. The problem with his enterprise is that he may, in eliminating the least tenable aspects ofthe theory, also have eliminated its raison d'être. The greatest discovery and most fatal weakness ofOralTheorywas its presumption ofa "Great Divide" between orality and literacy, a concept advocated especially by Eric Havelock and Walter Ong. Moreextensive anthropological and theoretical work, especially by Ruth Finnegan andJack Goody, has made the presumption ofa rupture between oral and literate untenable; the focus oforality/1iteracy studies has now shifted more to an examination of the interfaces among various forms of communications, much enriched by the addition ofnon-written material . Homer's Tradition Art, therefore, attempts to rescue the discoveries of Oral Theory by eliminating orality, a brilliant, paradoxical, and not entirely successful move. Foley directly confronts the problem ofthe "Great Divide," stating that it is an untenable assumption, and instead suggests that the important characteristic of "oral traditional epic" is not its orality but its traditional referentiality. Since the sort ofepic he discusses cannot, under his theoretical formulation, be distinguished from other verbal artifacts by its technology oforal composition, he shifts focus from compositional technology (metri causa) to reception aesthetics (artis causa), showing how formulae on level of phrase, scene, and story work to establish a system of traditional referentiality. Any appearance ofa traditional sign (epithet, sequence of actions accompanied by formulaic phrases, story pattern) can only, for Foley, be understood against the entire tradition ofsuch elements, a claim standard in earlier Oral Theory which Foley preserves independent ofcompositional technology. While the notion oftraditional reference, which is not tied to orality, is quite sustainable, it has consequences, which Foley does not seem to engage. Homer's TraditionalArtfollows the critical pattern mapped out by OralTheory in considering the aesthetics oftraditional epic synchronically, as a self...