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A Formula For Genius

Homeric Epics: A Formula for Genius

For centuries the Homeric question has plagued mankind. Who was he? How did he conjure up such poems with out the aid of writing? Were the poems his own or a combination of poems he put together? What type of authorship do we owe Homer? Milman Parry has given us a grounding to help us better understand Homer and his poems. One may come to the conclusion that Parry’s Theory of Oral Composition is likely to be the methodology used in creating the Homeric Epic’s and other oral poems after a study of the progression of thought on the subject by scholarly classicists and a analysis of Homer’s Iliad in conjunction with the formulaic system.
Milman Parry laid the foundation of the oral theory in his 1923 thesis at the University of California at Berkeley. In this opening paragraph, he also relates that the poems are a product of time and tradition.

Jus as the story of the Fall of Troy, the tale of the House of Labdakos, and the other Greek epic legends were not themselves the original fictions of certain authors, but creations of a whole people, passed through one generation to another and gladly given to anyone who wished to tell them, so the style in which they were to be told was not a matter of individual creation, but a poplar tradition, evolved by centuries of poets and audiences, which the composer of heroic verse might follow without thought of plagiarism, indeed, without knowledge that such a thing existed. This does not mean that personal talent had no effect on style, nothing to do with the choice and use of the medium whereby an author undertook to express his ides: Aristotle points out Homer’s superiority to other writers of early epic verse in the organization of his material. It does not mean, though, that there were certain established limits of form to which the play of genius must confine itself. (Foley 20)

Parry is also making the point that the genius of Homer is still plausible with the...