_____________________________________________________________ Volume 16 March 2001 Number 1 _____________________________________________________________ Editor Editorial Assistants John Miles Foley Michael Barnes Adam Dubé Associate Editor Kristin Funk John Zemke Heather Hignite Heather Maring Marjorie Rubright Slavica Publishers, Inc. For a complete catalog of books from Slavica, with prices and ordering information, write to: Slavica Publishers, Inc. Indiana University 2611 E. 10th St. Bloomington, IN 47408-2603 ISSN: 0883-5365 Each contribution copyright © 2001 by its author. All rights reserved. The editor and the publisher assume no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by the authors. Oral Tradition seeks to provide a comparative and interdisciplinary focus for studies in oral literature and related fields by publishing research and scholarship on the creation, transmission, and interpretation of all forms of oral traditional expression. As well as essays treating certifiably oral traditions, OT presents investigations of the relationships between oral and written traditions, as well as brief accounts of important fieldwork, a Symposium section (in which scholars may reply at some length to prior essays), review articles, occasional transcriptions and translations of oral texts, a digest of work in progress, and a regular column for notices of conferences and other matters of interest. In addition, occasional issues will include an ongoing annotated bibliography of relevant research and the annual Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lectures on Oral Tradition. OT welcomes contributions on all oral literatures, on all literatures directly influenced by oral traditions, and on non-literary oral traditions. Submissions must follow the list-of reference format (style sheet available on request) and must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope for return or for mailing of proofs; all quotations of primary materials must be made in the original language(s) with following English translations. Authors should submit two copies of all manuscripts. Most contributions will be reviewed by at least one specialist reader and one member of the editorial board before a final decision is reached. Review essays, announcements, and contributions to the Symposium section will be evaluated by the editor in consultation with the board. Oral Tradition appears twice per year, in March and October. To enter a subscription, please contact Slavica Publishers at the address given above. All manuscripts, books for review, items for the bibliography updates, and editorial correspondence, as well as subscriptions and related inquiries should be addressed to the editor, John Miles Foley, Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, 21 Parker Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. Printed in the United States of America. EDITORIAL BOARD Mark C. Amodio Joseph J. Duggan Vassar College Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Old and Middle English French, Spanish, comparative Patricia Arant Alan Dundes Brown University Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Russian Folklore Samuel Armistead Mark W. Edwards University of California/Davis Stanford University Hispanic, comparative Ancient Greek Richard Bauman Ruth Finnegan Indiana University Open University Folklore, Theory African, South Pacific Dan Ben-Amos Thomas Hale University of Pennsylvania Penn. State University Folklore African Mary Ellen Brown Lee Haring Indiana University Brooklyn College, CUNY Folklore, Balladry African Chogjin Joseph Harris Chinese Academy Harvard University of Social Sciences Old Norse Mongolian, Chinese Bridget Connelly Lauri Harvilahti University of Cal./Berkeley University of Helsinki Arabic Russian, Finnish, Altai Robert P. Creed Lauri Honko Univ. of Mass./Amherst Turku University Old English, Comparative Comparative Epic Robert Culley Dell Hymes McGill University University of Virginia Biblical Studies Native American, Linguistics Thomas DuBois Martin Jaffee University of Wisconsin Hebrew Bible Scandinavian Univ. of Washington EDITORIAL BOARD Minna Skafte Jensen Shelly Fenno Quinn Odense University Ohio State University Ancient Greek, Latin Japanese Werner Kelber Burton Raffel Rice University Univ. of Southwestern Biblical Studies Louisiana Translation Françoise Létoublon Université Stendahl Karl Reichl Ancient Greek Universität Bonn Turkic, Old and Middle English Victor Mair University of Pennsylvania John Roberts Chinese Ohio State University African-American Nada Milošević-Djordjević University of Belgrade Joel Sherzer South Slavic University of Texas/Austin Native American, Anthropology Stephen Mitchell Harvard University Dennis Tedlock Scandinavian SUNY/Buffalo Native American Gregory Nagy Harvard University J. Barre Toelken Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Utah State University comparative Folklore, Native American Joseph Falaky Nagy Ronald J. Turner Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles Univ. of Missouri/Columbia Old Irish Storytelling Susan Niditch Andrew Wiget Amherst College University of New Mexico Hebrew Bible Native American Walter J. Ong St. Louis University (Emeritus) Hermeneutics of orality and literacy Contents Editor’s Column.......................................................................................... 1 Linda White Orality and Basque Nationalism: Dancing with the Devil or Waltzing into the Future .........................................................................3 H. C. Groenewald I Control the Idioms: Creativity in Ndebele Praise Poetry ......................29 John F. Garcia Milman Parry and A. L. Kroeber: Americanist Anthropology and the Oral Homer ...........................................................58 Anatole Mori Personal Favor and Public Influence: Arete, Arsinoë II, and the Argonautica .................................................................................85 Guillemette Bolens The Limits of Textuality: Mobility and Fire Production in Homer and Beowulf ...........................................................................107 Derek Collins Homer and Rhapsodic Competition in Performance .............................129 Stephen A. Mitchell Performance and Norse Poetry: The Hydromel of Praise and the Effluvia of Scorn ........................................................................168 About the Authors .................................................................................203 Editor’s Column Over this and the next issue Oral Tradition will be following a double path it charted a decade and one-half ago and seeks still to follow. The present number houses a miscellany of articles on Basque, Ndebele, ancient Greek, Native American, Old English, and Old Norse traditions, and their authors employ perspectives as diverse as politics and nationalism, comparative anthropology, myth studies, lexicography and semantics, performance studies, and rhetorical theory. In this way we hope to encourage a “polylogue” that avoids the special pleading of disciplinary focus and welcomes a host of divergent viewpoints on what is after all a remarkably heterogeneous species of verbal art. Linda White begins the colloquy with her examination of the Euskara (Basque) oral genre called bertsolaritza, dealing not only with its language and structure but also with the history of its recording and its identity against the political background in the context of a society’s “rush to literacy.” Next in line is H. C. Groenewald’s study of creativity and innovation in the Zulu oral tradition of praise-poetry. Based on ten years of field research, his article shows how the practice of praising involves memorization and recitation, composition, and even the importing of poetry from other cultures. On a different note, John F. García reports on the fruits of his archival research to contend that Milman Parry’s groundbreaking work on Homer’s oral tradition had deeper roots in his graduate school training than has heretofore been realized, specifically that the anthropological writings and teachings of the Native Americanist A. L. Kroeber were of foundational significance for Parry’s theories on ancient Greek poetry. From anthropology Anatole Mori turns to historical reflections in ancient epic, exploring the link between the real-world Ptolemaic monarchy and the Phaeacian episodes in Homer’s Odyssey and Apollonius’ Argonautica against the backdrop of oral tradition. Guillemette Bolens investigates evidence of mobility, a phenomenon she sees as inherently a property of oral as opposed to written, textual expression, and finds evidence of movement and fire associated with Homer’s Hephaestus and the dragon in Beowulf. Derek Collins reinterprets the Homeric “rhapsodes,” once thought to be workaday performers of static versions of the epics, as competitive poets who used fixed texts as a basis for innovations in live performance; in doing so he makes reference to Turkish games of verbal dueling and other analogues. Finally, we are very pleased to present the Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lecture for 2001, on “Performance and Norse Poetry,” by Stephen Mitchell. Indeed, there is some special justice in Professor Mitchell’s having delivered this lecture, since he serves as Curator of the Milman Parry Collection, whose contents Albert Lord initially brought before us, as well as co-editor of the second edition of Lord’s The Singer of Tales. Here Mitchell advocates a performance-oriented approach to medieval sagas, which of course now exist only as artifacts, and shows convincingly how this approach goes well beyond traditional philology and mythology. In the next issue