Oral formulaic poetry, as established by Milman Parry and Albert Lord, is a poetic tradition that relies on performance. Historical examples of this tradition date back to the earliest epic poems, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, as well as the anonymous Anglo-Saxon Beowulf epic. The aesthetics of oral formulaic poetry are complex. Albert Lord provides a definition of the composition of oral poetry when he writes,
For the oral poet the moment of composition is the performance. In the case of a literary poem there is a gap in time between composition and reading or performance; in the case of the oral poem this gap does not exist, because composition and performance are two aspects of the same moment.1
It is also important to note that the oral poet does not "memorize" songs. In the early twentieth century, Milman Parry's conducted a study of illiterate Yugoslavian Bards and how they performed their poetry. Parry was intrigued by the ability of the illiterate poet to recite poetry for entire evenings with minimal breaks. The oral poet is able to do this because he or she has not memorized, line by line, the poem he or she recites, but instead utilizes formulaic devices to "improvise" the poem, based around a predetermined theme.
Oral formulaic poetry in the traditional sense has become scarce in modern society. When a culture becomes literate, the "written word" has an immediate impact on the way literature is composed. No longer are histories recounted through song, passed from one generation to the next. These stories are recorded; a static document which is essentially forgotten by the cultural psyche. This traditional oral literacy can never be recaptured in our society, the written cannot be divorced from the spoken. Proficient oral literacy, however, can be achieved in the classroom if it is practiced with a modern sensibility. Modern oral literacy may lack the "formula" of the past; it may even rely on a complimentary written text, thus creating the "gap" between composition and performance described by Lord. Modern oral literacy, however, like traditional oral formulaic poetry, is still exemplified by "performance." It is in the way the poem is performed, the improvisations and deviations from a prepared text, that embody the ideals of oral literacy. Developing personal performance skills is what I chose as the overall focus in my unit on oral poetics.
1. Lord, Albert Bates, The Singer of Tales, London: Oxford University Press, 1960, pg.13