Oral-formulaic composition

Oral-formulaic composition is a theory that originated in the scholarly study of epic poetry and developed in the second quarter of the twentieth century. It seeks to explain two related issues:

1. the process by which oral poets improvise poetry
2. the reasons for orally improvised poetry (or written poetry deriving from traditions of oral improvisation) having the characteristics that it does

The key idea of the theory is that poets have a store of formulae (a formula being 'an expression that is regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea')^[1] and that by linking the formulae in conventionalised ways, poets can rapidly compose verse. Antoine Meillet expressed the idea in 1923, thus:

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.^[2]

In the hands of Meillet's student Milman Parry (1902–1935), and subsequently the latter's student Albert Lord (1912–1991), the approach transformed the study of ancient and medieval poetry and of oral poetry generally. The main exponent and developer of their approaches was John Miles Foley (1947–2012).