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The Complexity of Epic Diction The Complexity of Epic Diction Ahuvia Kahane Royal Holloway, University of London [email protected] Abstract This article offers a revised interpretation of the relationship between form and mean- ing in Greek epic hexameter diction, binding our understanding of traditional lan- guage and idiolects as well as patterns and their exception within a single, systematic approach. The article draws on methodological (and underlying philosophical) prin- ciples embedded in contemporary cognitive functional linguistics, usage-based gram- mar, and the study of language as a complex adaptive system (which emerges from the study of complexity in the sciences). Fundamental to work within these fields in recent decades is the rejection of paradigmatic linguistic approaches (such as tradi- tional Greek and Latin grammar, Saussure and his emphasis on langue, Chomskyan transformations) and the polarities of form and content paradigmatic analysis often assumes. Usage-based linguistics place emphasis on signification and symbolic func- tions, communicative exchange, and contingent historical evolutionary processes as the primary realities of language and language formation. Grammar is regarded, not as an underlying universal structure, but as an epiphenomenal linguistic symptom. The study of complexity in linguistics expands such perspectives to provide a deep, scientific argument that binds rule-based usage and unpredictable exceptions and anomalies within a single, integrated system. Key elements of these perspectives can be extrapolated already from Milman Parry’s early observations on analogy—even as the full implications of these observations could not have been understood within the historical framework of Parry’s methodology. Various examples from the Iliad and the Odyssey, especially the usage of the formula ton d’ apameibomenos, illustrates the argu- ment for the complexity of epic diction. Keywords complexity – formula – epic – Homer – usage-based linguistics © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/24688487_00201003Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:06:29AM via free access the complexity of epic diction 79 1 Introduction For a long time now,* we have recognized that Homeric diction contains a mix of formulaic and non-formulaic elements, that orality and literacy can coex- ist, that modalities of performance, reception, and cognition can be interlaced, that in some ways all language is formulaic, that repeated phraseology can res- onate with traditional themes, situations, and meanings.1 The divide between “oralists” and “Neonalysists” has, at least in some parts, given way to several flex- ible and nuanced integrative arguments. Scholarly emphasis has shifted away from technical questions,2 but even today substantive underlying polarities continue to affect the discussion of Homeric diction and poetics.3 Questions * I am very grateful to two anonymous referees and to the editors of YAGE for helpful sugges- tions. Translations in this article are mine. 1 “There are more general types of formulas, and one could make no greater mistake than to limit the formulaic element to what is underlined [as formulaic in the analysis on pp. 301– 2]” (Parry 1971: 313). Cf. “The word formula proved to be a poor thing, hopelessly inadequate to cover the different kinds of formulaic realities in Homeric diction. And it is reasonable to assume that the talented traditional poet would always have been capable of some non- formulaic, original language” (Russo 1997: 259–260, emphasis in original). Of course, many modifications to Parryan theory have been proposed over the years. I do not propose to survey these in this article: see M. Edwards 1986, 1988; Russo 1997, 2011. For oral and literate states, see Finnegan 1980; Ong 1982; Zumthor 1990; Thomas 1992; Oesterreicher 1997; further bibliogra- phy in the context of Homer in M. Edwards 1986, 1988; recent work in Lardinois, Blok, and Van der Poel 2011; Minchin 2012; Scodel 2014. For formulae in ordinary language, see Kiparsky 1976; Russo 1976; generally Corrigan et al. 2009; Wood 2015. For theme and meaning, see Burgess 2006, 2015; Tsagalis 2011; Montanari, Rengakos, and Tsagalis 2012; Bakker 2013; Nagy 2015; Cur- rie 2016; Schein 2016: 117–137. 2 The once constant flow (Hoekstra 1965; Hainsworth 1968; later work by Nagy, Russo, Nagler, Finkelberg, Kahane, Bakker) has dwindled: “in recent decades, the number of scholarly pub- lications on matters of formulaic analysis has sharply decreased, and the enthusiasm with which the essentials of oral formulaic theory were discussed in the 1960s has given way to expressed fatigue and a defensive, if not apologetic, attitude” (Finkelberg 2012: 63). 3 For the divide, see Fowler 2004: 230n42 (“It is difficult to reconcile Neoanalysis with an oral perspective.”). For integrative arguments, see Bakker 2005, 2013 (“interformularity”); Bierl 2012; Bozzone 2014 (“constructions”); Burgess 2001, 2006, 2012 (“meta-Cyclic” poetry); Čola- cović 2006, 2019 (“post-traditional” poetry; on which see also Danek 2005); Currie 2016 (allu- sion); Danek 1996, 1998, 2002; Finkelberg 1990, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2015 (“meta-epic”); Friedrich 2007 (interpreting exceptions to economy and an oral/literate “tertium”); Lord’s later work (1995); Montanari, Rengakos and Tsagalis 2012 (orality and Neoanalysis—with overviews by Montanari 2012 and Kullmann 2012 with bibliography; cf. Kullmann 2015); Nagler 1974 (Gestalt, “family resemblance,” and “sphota”); Nagy 2015; A. Parry 1966 (“post-orality”); Pucci 1987 and Peradotto 1990, both pioneering early intertextual readings (see Pedrick 1994); Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:06:29AM via free access 80 kahane remain about the relations between highly regular formulaic repetition and exceptional, non-formulaic usage, about tradition and individual diction, and about the relation between the formal grammar of epic diction and the way in which such distinct and structured diction signifies and renders meaning in performances.4 In this article, I want to try to bridge some of these basic polarities by look- ing again at the nature of epic diction. I will sketch out an argument that links formal structure and meaning, order and spontaneous diction, and formulaic and other rule-bound systematic diction and its seemingly anomalous excep- tions.5 My discussion follows several recent studies of Homeric diction and poetics and especially work rooted in usage-based linguistic approaches that I consider briefly in section 2. In that section I also highlight the function of basic mechanisms of cognition and language development and explain how such mechanisms can contribute to our understanding of the diction of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I invoke further important insights from recent studies of the complexity of language and of language as a complex adaptive system. The term “complexity” designates more than just a multiplicity of constitutive ele- ments. As I will explain in greater detail, its use marks a fundamental scientific principle with far reaching practical and philosophical implications. Complex- ity is that aspect of contemporary science that attempts to account for precisely the relationship between rule-bound order and spontaneous behavior within a single, systematic framework. In its wider disciplinary contexts, it separates contemporary science from classical, Newtonian accounts of the world. In lin- guistics, the term complexity and the ideas it represents help distinguish so- called principles and parameters approaches from usage-based discussions. As I will try to show, both usage-based linguistics and the study of complex adaptive systems in language can provide important insights into both gen- eral and particular aspects of the sprawling, highly ordered but diverse diction of Homeric epic, its flexibility, and its capacity for nuanced, context-specific Schein 2016: 117–137; Tsagalis 2008, 2011, 2014 (“intratraditionality”); also Foley’s notion of “traditional referentiality” (1991, 1999; cf. Lord 1960: 148; Danek 2002; Bozzone 2014: 46–49; Currie 2016: 4–9); work on epic and hypertext: Bakker 2001; Balling and Madsen 2003; Trends in Classics 2.2 (2010) (but see important qualifications in Riffaterre 1994, not accounted for in many studies of Homeric hypertextuality). 4 Cf. “In more recent times positions have softened, but not due to any systematic rethinking of the original concept of ‘formula’ that informed the ‘oral poetry’ approach to Homer” (Bakker 2013: 158). 5 Free of its mechanical constraints, anomaly is often assumed to carry individual, context- specific rather than traditional meaning more easily. See Fortassier 1989 (hiatus); Friedrich 2007 (exceptions to economy; cf. Wyatt 1992); Finkelberg 2012. Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:06:29AM via free access the complexity of epic diction 81 signification. As part of this argument, we shall in section 3 invoke—perhaps unexpectedly—some of Milman Parry’s early observations on the nature of epic diction and especially his work on anomaly and analogy. Reinterpreted outside of Parry’s paradigmatic framework and reframed, his analysis of anal- ogy can, I suggest, provide important evidence in support of an argument for complexity. It will help us to sketch out the potential for closer links between what may otherwise seem like incompatible or even contradictory elements of epic diction and to argue not merely for their coexistence as a diachronic mix but rather for their interaction within a single formal yet open semantically resonant continuum of epic
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