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Professor Creed and I wish to acknowledge the support given our project by a number of institutions. Colgate University provided the machine time and access necessary to the development of initial programming in 1970–71. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst made available computing time and various resources in the next stage of investigation, from 1972 to date. Emory University awarded a Faculty Research Grant, “Rhythm and Melody in Anglo-Saxon and Homeric Greek Oral Poetry: a Computer Study,” in 1974–75. We are also grateful to our programmers: David Woods, George Maiewski, and Dorothy Grannis.
Parry defined the formula as “a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea” (“Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making. I. Homer and Homeric Style,”Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 41[1930], 80, rpt. in Adam Parry, ed.,The Making of Homeric Verse: the Collected Papers of Milman Parry [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971], p. 266–324). He defined formulaic system as “a group of phrases which have the same metrical value and which are enough alike in thought and words to leave no doubt that the poet who used them knew them not only as a single formula, but also as formulas of a single type” (“Studies I,” inThe Making of Homeric Verse: the Collected Papers of Milman Parry, 275). Modern linguistics would argue against this kind of conscious awareness, and the redefinitions offered by Donald Fry for the Old English formulaic units reflect current theory. Fry sees the system as “a group of half-lines, usually loosely related metrically and semantically, which are related in form by the identical relative placement of two elements, one a variable word or element of a compound usually supplying the alliteration, and the other a constant word or element of a compound, with approximately the same distribution of non-stressed elements” (“Old English Formulas and Systems,”English Studies, 48[1967], 203). He then defines the formula as “a group of words, one half-line in length, which shows evidence of being the direct product of a formulaic system” (“Formulas and Systems,” 203).
See especially hisThe Singer of Tales (1960; New York: Atheneum, 1968).
“The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry,”Speculum, 28 (1953), 446–67.
See my “The Oral-Formulaic Approach to Old English Poetry: a Historical Bibliography,” inOccasional Papers of the Milman Parry Collection, forthcoming.
A Concordance to Beowulf, ed. J.B. Bessinger, Jr., programmed by Philip H. Smith, Jr. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969); a parallel work on all of Old English verse is about to appear as this paper is written. See also Angus Cameron, Roberta Frank, and John Leyerle, eds.,Computers and Old English Concordances (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970).
Computers and the Humanities, 6 (1971), 85–93.
See, for example, two recent studies of the Homeric hexameter: Gregory Nagy,Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), and Berkley Peabody,The Winged Word: a Study in the Technique of Ancient Greek Oral Composition as Seen Principally through Hesiod's Works and Days (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), especially pp. 30–65.
Besides St. Augustine's well-known remark about the unusual nature of St. Ambrose's reading silently, see, for example, Ruth Crosby, “Oral Delivery in the Middle Ages,”Speculum, 11 (1936), 88–110.
“A New Approach to the Rhythm ofBeowulf,”PMLA, 81 (1966), 23–33.
As an example of another reasonably effective metrical system, I mention that Thomas Cable, in hisThe Meter and Melody of Beowulf (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), p. 104, treats descriptively what he sees as “melodic formulas.”
The only exceptions are (1) those measures which cannot be recovered without emendation of the text and (2) a small number of hypersyllabic measures apparently formed on analogy with other variations on the seven basic patterns. The hypermetric lines inBeowulf can be scanned by assuming three- instead of two-measure verses. Major works on Old English metrics include Eduard Sievers,Altgermanische Metrik (Halle, 1893), and “Old Germanic Metrics and Old English Metrics,” trans. Gawaina D. Luster, inEssential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry, ed. Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. and Stanley J. Kahrl (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1968), 267–88, hereafter cited as Sievers; John C. Pope,The Rhythm of Beowulf (rev. ed., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); A.J. Bliss,The Metre of Beowulf (rev. ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1967).
On the Anglo-Saxon instrument which its makers and users calledse hearpa, but which contemporary musicologists term a “lyre,” see Rupert and Myrtle Bruce-Mitford, “The Sutton Hoo Lyre,Beowulf, and the Origins of the Frame Harp,”Antiquity, 44 (1970), 7–13.
We edited the poem primarily from the facsimiles (Julius Zupitza, ed.,Beowulf, 2nd ed., with introduction by Norman Davis, EETS 245 [1882; rev. London: Oxford University Press, 1958], and Kemp Malone, ed.,The Nowell Codex, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, vol. 12 [Copenhagen, 1963]), referring only to the transcription of Thorkelin A, the hired scribe, for an occasional gloss (Kemp Malone, ed.,The Thorkelin Transcripts of Beowulf, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, vol. 1 [Copenhagen, 1951]). We discarded the transcription done by Thorkelin B, the philologist himself, because his scholarly knowledge of Germanic languages seems often to have led him to see what he thought he should see.
All percentages reflect our edited text; they thus do not take into account the emended measures or the very few hypersyllabic patterns.
Lord,Singer, p. 68, defines themes as “groups of ideas regularly used in telling a tale in the formulaic style of traditional song.”
On the questions of verbal correspondence and ideational structure in themes, see Lord, “Perspectives on Recent Work on Oral Literature,”Forum for Modern Language Studies, 10 (1974), especially p. 209; Lee C. Ramsey, “The Sea Voyages inBeowulf,”Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 72 (1971), 51–59; and my “Formula and Theme in Old English Poetry,” inOral Literature and the Formula, ed. Benjamin A. Stolz and Richard S. Shannon (Ann Arbor: Center for Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies, 1976), pp. 207–32.
The sample of β2 measures being very small, standard deviation measurements are therefore questionable. I would, however, point to the number of occurrences as at least indicative of a metrical tendency.
See my “Formula and Theme,” especially pp. 207–14.
Special thanks is extended to Dorothy Grannis for her careful production of these CalComp plots. 21. On melodic templates in Serbo-Croatian epic, see Lord,Singer, pp. 37–38; and George Herzog, “The Music of Yugoslav Heroic Epic Folk Poetry,”Journal of the International Folk Music Council, 3 (1951), 62–64.
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An early version of this paper was presented to the Computers and the Humanities section of the Midwest Modern Language Association in Chicago, on November 7, 1975.
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Foley, J.M. A computer analysis of metrical patterns inBeowulf . Comput Hum 12, 71–80 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02392918
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02392918