Keywords: oral tradition, epic, program
Epic belongs to the category of narrative poetry. Epic is an ancient literary style, which has epoch-making significance in the history of human culture. Epic in the long process of inheritance into a large number of myths, legends, stories, songs and proverbs. Epic is a treasure house of folk literature and an encyclopedia to understand a nation. Epic had a long history as oral literature before it appeared in written records and as a literary form. Their development in literary form can be verified by literature. As the origin of oral literature, they can be traced back to prehistoric times.
Epic is a universal genre. Sumerian epics can be traced back to around 2000 BC, Babylonian and Greek epics appeared in 1000-400 BC, and a large number of epics appeared in the history of medieval and modern European literature. It is generally believed that the discussion on epic and its nature in the history of literature began in Europe. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Geras and other ancient Greek philosophers all discussed epic, but it was not until Aristotle's Poetics was rediscovered in the16th century that people began to discuss epic in theory. European classicism has accumulated a profound academic tradition in the field of epic research. /kloc-The European Romantic Movement in the 0/8th century set off a wave of collecting and studying folk epics, which promoted people's exploration of the origin, spread and creation of epics. European folklore rose in the middle of19th century, and epic, as a genre of folklore, once again entered the field of vision of modern scholars, opening up a new era of epic research in methodology. In sharp contrast, China's epics have never received due attention and have no place in the history of world literature. This is very regrettable.
The study of world epic in the 20th century entered a new historical stage. Inspired by historical research and increasingly rigorous analysis procedures, people calmly think about the accumulated large amount of data. Bowler, a British classical scholar, initiated a comparative study of oral poetry and written poetry, redefined heroic epic and profoundly expounded its genre significance. From 65438 to 0960, American scholar Lord founded a new field of comparative oral tradition research, revealed the creative power of oral epic tradition, and established a set of rigorous oral poetics analysis methods. Lord's research shows that epic research is no longer synonymous with European classicism, but has become a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary comparative oral tradition research. After 1970' s, new theories such as performance theory and ethnography poetics made full use of the living data of oral tradition and absorbed the achievements of contemporary linguistics, anthropology and folklore to construct theories and methodologies, which greatly improved the academic status of oral epic research and made it an innovative field.
In sharp contrast to China's rich epic tradition, our research started late, the theoretical discussion is still very weak, and the international academic influence is not great. The discipline construction of China's epic research is a systematic project, including integrating research teams, establishing a database conforming to modern academic norms, gradually improving the theories and methods of standardizing academic research, and concretizing and systematizing the research direction. Judging from the existing conditions and the work that has been done, the study of China's epic is developing in a healthy direction and has a very broad prospect.
Based on the representative epics of contemporary European and American scholars, this paper expounds the basic concepts, research methods and formation process of oral poetics, confirms its position in the history of western folklore, and illustrates its connection with folklore research in China with examples. As far as epic research is concerned, the west has accumulated rich academic traditions since Aristotle in ancient Greece, while China's epic research has developed on a large scale for only half a century. We have studied epics, but this kind of research is not the subjective consciousness in the sense of epicology, which is manifested in that most scholars do not study oral epics as oral folklore, but start from classical dogma, academic research is confused with national consciousness and national ideology, and writers' literature research and oral inheritance research are confused with each other. The crux of the matter is that today's scholarship is international, but our understanding of the world is one-sided. Our scholars often dare to borrow its theoretical concepts just by reading a book. Therefore, a systematic study of one school may be beneficial to the academic community. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehensively introduce and study the methodology and theory of folklore, establish a new concept system, effectively use new methods, and conduct standardized academic research. China is a country rich in oral epics, and the theory of oral poetics has a broad development prospect here.
First of all, we should understand the premise of Parry-Lord theory, that is, its academic background. This problem should start with classicism, ethnography and linguistics since19th century. [ 1]
The classic takes Homer's problem as the touchstone, which is also a fundamental problem of Parry-Lord's oral poetry theory. However, since ancient times, the explanation of this problem has been limited to the explanation of myth. /kloc-the discovery of oral culture by European romantics and nationalists in the 0/9th century made the Homer problem become an oral tradition problem. Since then, the Homer problem has also become a question of how people view ancient classics. The sanctity of Homer's epic makes people used to thinking that it is the original work of a saint from the transcendental concept. For nearly 200 years, European classicism has been troubled by the following questions: Are there any words in the legendary Homer era? How to explain the inconsistency of epic? Without the help of words, how can such a long epic be created and preserved? How to treat the myths and legends about epics? How to explain the cultural deposition phenomena of different times in epic, such as dialects and old sayings. The research shows that whether there are words in Homer's era has nothing to do with Homer's problem. It is undoubtedly progress to push the author of Homer's epic to the oral age of pre-script, but there is still a fixed text belief that hinders people's thinking. The idea of folk collective creation has spawned many authors' opinions, short songs and prototype exploration ... all of which have not touched the essence of oral poetry. 1 century: Josephus raised a question from the inconsistency of Homer's epic narrative. After about 1700 years, there was no argument except war and plague. Abbe d'Aubignac pointed out in 17 15: "In fact, Homer has never written a book without Homer's signature. If he doesn't write anything, Homer doesn't exist at all. " 1795, Friedrich Wolff provoked an argument between analysts and monotheists in the19th century, an argument between one Homer and many Homers. One of the two sides of the argument is the so-called resolution faction, which concocted the "synthesis theory" of the epic. Led by Karl Rahman, he put forward in 18 16 and 1836. For centuries, different poets and editors have created, processed and edited Homer's poems, which is the result of language and narrative defects. On the other side of the argument is the so-called unification faction. This faction has no standard bearer. They are a minority and are constantly under attack. However, the attacker's argument is not detailed. They think epic is Homer's life-long creation. As a result of the argument, the resolution faction won. Parry met the last scene of this long debate. He took Homer as the academic starting point and inherited some viewpoints and methods of the Determined School.
Philology is the main source of Parry-Lord theoretical methodology. The study of Homer's epic style by German classical linguistics has inspired Parry a lot. Most of the followers of later oral programming theory started from modern linguistics. Modern linguistics is the focus of humanistic research. Descriptive linguistics, especially structuralism, holds that language is a structure. Oral poetics researchers emphasize the study of the internal structure and function of oral poetry with language and text as the main empirical reality. The gist of historical linguistics: establishing continuous meaning in tradition is helpful to explore the poetic tradition of language. Frye believes that philology (historical linguistics) provides methodology for Parry and Lord. In 1860, Ellentt and Duntzer noticed the relationship between meter and text. Witte talked about the morphology of words in 19 12. A.Meillet specializes in oral creation. [2] Parry was influenced by him and began to study the style of epic. Parry's theory draws on the research results of all the above scholars, and many of his views are separated from the previous discussion. Parry perfected his theory with ethnography. Parry and Lord went to Nasrallah to investigate in A.D. 1930, and tested their theoretical hypothesis from the oral traditional scene.
Ethnography provides a poetic reality that can be directly observed outside the text for oral poetry theory; Facts have proved that the empirical study of classical studies can draw lessons from anthropological comparative research methods between different traditions. Radloff: In the study of Central Asian epics, he touched on the expression of oral poetry, improvisation, variation of stories, typical scenes and cliches, and compared the living epic tradition with Homer's epics in a comparative way. Murko: His ethnographic report proves that the Yugoslav oral epic tradition is similar to Homer's epic. Radloff: 1885 pointed out in his field report of Epic of Central Asia that people have never regarded variation in performance as a new creation. He studied singers, proved his point of view and put forward the so-called mediocrity. Klaus: He did a field survey in Yugoslavia from 65438 to 0908. He confirmed that singers use "stereotypes" to create and also rely on memory to perform. Gennep) 1909 discussed the same phenomenon. Gersmann discovered a "composition scheme" from his oral creation, that is, the narrator has a narrative structure to fill his lines. Murko: Using the method of modern ethnography, the author investigated the Yugoslav oral epics and singers who had the greatest influence on Parry, and decided Parry's class leap: traditional Homer-oral Homer. [3]
Finally, Parry established his own theory, which changed the traditional ideas of classical scholars and made people see the oral tradition of Homer's epic from the text. Parry studied the text of Homer's epic we have today, and he also went to Yugoslavia to verify it with the oral tradition on the spot. Lord inherited the teacher's career and tested the theory with a more oral tradition. Lord conducted a survey of singers. After years of research, he proved the teacher's theory, completed the research on the mystery, and published The Story Singer at 1960. This landmark work was made into the "Bible" of oral literature by friel.
Since the 1930s, Parrillod's theory has been challenged by various academic fields. People question the reliability of this theory as follows: the theory is too mechanical and only extracts and studies some phrases of epic; Whether this theory can be used in other styles of folklore is uncertain; Is this theory aimed at all the epics in the world (is epic a universal style)? If so, then this theory has not been verified in the world; If there is no premise of "improvisation", then the theory of oral programs is useless. Therefore, it is just a theory, which may never be proved, let alone satisfied by everyone.
Contrary to critics' criticism, the theory of oral programming has been applied to the study of more than 100 language traditions in the world, which has gone beyond the theoretical stage.
Parry's concept of oral poetry provides a key to Homer's problem. Parry believes that understanding the essence of oral poetry is the essence of Homer's epic. Parry believes that to solve Homer's problem, we must start with the study of the internal operation process of oral poetry, so as to gain a unique knowledge against literature. Parry's scholarship shows the rigorous scientific attitude of humanities researchers: observing phenomena, establishing hypotheses, verifying hypotheses with experiments, and confirming or correcting the conclusions of hypotheses. Parry's main problems are: the singer's dependence on tradition, the stability and variability of oral poetry, the inheritance mode of oral poetry, the selection of epic materials, and the connection between epic and historical events. [4] Parry data collection: the natural environment of the epic, that is, the performance level: the length, pause and creative characteristics of the epic, which require songs to be performed in a particularly natural way. Parry collects historical poems from Yugoslav song culture, and his purpose is to focus the collector's attention on the performance-the real performance, which is endowed by the audience in the song culture. Palizzo: A collection of Yugoslav epic texts, preserved in the form of records and manuscripts, is a laboratory record of Yugoslav living epic tradition. The scientific nature of Parry's theory comes from the quality of arguments.
Parry's definition of oral poetry. Parry studied how oral poets learn and write historical poems, as well as the actual existence process. He believes that oral poetry is a living organism, consisting of procedures and themes. He emphasized that every performance of a song, that is, the poetry creation in the performance, is a traditional and creative artist. Parry studied a unique process: oral song learning, oral creation and oral communication. These three processes almost overlap and are different aspects of the same process. There is no fixed text for this process. Parry's research became a typical case of folklore in the 20th century.
Parry's academic contribution is that he first discovered and demonstrated "traditional Homer". Through the linguistic analysis of Homer's epic texts, Parry found the traditional narrative units, such as procedure, procedural law, frugality, cross-line sentence connection and so on. Secondly, he discovered "oral Homer" and the oral tradition behind Homer's epic texts. He thinks Homer's dependence on traditional expressions shows that he is an oral poet. In addition, Parry pioneered the method of analogy verification, and The Living Epic of Yugoslavia provided him with the reality of oral poetry experience.
As a student of Parry, Lord's contribution is not inferior to that of his teacher. Lord studied oral traditional narrative songs, and he abandoned the words of epic, heroic poem, folk epic, national epic, popular or primitive. He thinks the battle of terms is very important. [5] Lord is the founder of oral poetics, and The Story Singer is an original work of oral poetry research. Based on rigorous first-hand field data, it answers what is oral inheritance, its structure and function, and its internal operating mechanism from the perspective of structuralism. The story singer began: "This is a book about Homer. He is our story singer. In a larger sense, he represents all story singers from ancient times to the present. " Contemporary Yugoslav singer "Avdo is Homer of our time." Lord's words revealed the facts handed down orally. The parallel comparison of different nationalities and traditions is also a historical comparative study that runs through ancient and modern times.
The comparative method of oral poetics is firstly the analogy method of parallel research. Through the description of the process of oral poetry creation and dissemination, the basic points of comparison are determined: phonetic mode, metrical mode, syntax, stylistic mode, program and theme, story mode. For example, Lord's comparison of the story pattern of Song of Return is carried out in the following points: absence, disaster, return, revenge and wedding. In addition, there are historical comparison methods that affect the research. For example, Najib compared Homer's epic with Indian Sanskrit poetry, and he used the method of language reconstruction by comparing Indo-European languages. [6] He established a trinity hermeneutic model of performance, creation and communication. By comparing the tradition of Indian living epic with Homer's epic, he expounded the evolution mode of Homer's epic formation and the process of Homer's epic textualization. [7] G.S.Kirk put forward the four-stage hypothesis of oral tradition life cycle-start-up, creation, repeated production and decline. [8] The above research mainly focuses on the comparison of * * *, and later scholars pursue a unique tradition beyond * * *. Each oral poetry tradition has its own characteristics, and actively integrates these characteristics into the traditional criticism mode; It includes the essential features of language, the requirements of meter and other rhythms, narrative features, myths and specific historical contents. Emphasize the exact characteristics of each text: oral, oral, recorded, recited, copied, the history and collection environment of the manuscript. [9]
The theory of oral poetry has the following important concepts [10]:
Creation in performance is the core proposition of oral poetics. To understand the expression of oral poetry, we should first start with field work. Field work embodies the positivity of oral poetry research, and it is a process of collecting evidence about the performance of oral poetry on the spot, including the authenticity of oral poetry recorded, observed and studied by researchers on the spot and on the spot. We call this process field work. Field work is a major academic feature of Parry and Lord. They emphasize the sanctity of excavating the western literary heritage in oral traditional literature. Lord has been collecting data in the Balkans for years. Compared with those who entered folklore from the perspective of anthropology, Lord has rich field work experience. Lord refuted the idea that people should seek archetypes: "I doubt whether we can find archetypes in stories, songs or epics, because we should consider that every performance of an art form in oral tradition, whether it is a story or an epic, every singer has variations." People can notice Lord's viewpoint on the complex relationship between ethnography field work and the target group of this work: "Everything in poetry belongs to the people's collective, but the poem itself, the program that appears in the specific singing, belongs to the singer. All the elements are traditional. However, when a great singer sits in front of the audience, his music, his facial expressions and his special edition poems belong to him at this moment. "
The field work mainly adopts the time analysis method of folklore. The terms * * * time and duration come from linguistics. It is one of the theoretical studies of Prague School. /kloc-From the 9th century to the 20th century, linguistics can be divided into historical methods and non-historical methods. The former aims at reconstructing the history of Indo-European language families, while the latter is a comparative study of the current situation of languages. In order to study oral poetry in singing, field work needs this kind of time analysis, aiming at describing the traditional practice system. Diachronic analysis is very necessary when the research enters the traditional deep organizational principle, that is, the reality of cultural continuity. The method of language reconstruction can explain many aspects of language in the existing tradition, otherwise, these aspects are unclear. Diachronic and diachronic analysis can complement each other.
The analysis of the temporality of living oral traditional poetry shows that creation and performance are two aspects that change in different degrees in the same process. It is impossible to observe such a reality simply from the epic text level. Lord believes that the creation of oral poetry is not for expression, but for the form of expression.
Communication is a term corresponding to "creation in performance". Only through diachronic observation can we observe the characteristics of oral communication and the interaction between oral communication and creation and performance. The distribution pattern can be centripetal or centrifugal.
Theme, the most practical definition: theme is the basic content unit. The theme is related to social and cultural patterns. The theme of Homer's epic is not suitable for the theme of Indian epic. Different folklore styles have different thematic analysis modes. Program is a relatively fixed word, focusing on the theme of traditional oral poetry. The relationship between program and form is equivalent to the relationship between theme and content. The assumption of this provision is that the form and content are conceptually consistent. Parry's definition of program: programs have the same pace, express basic meaning, and are used regularly. Programs are as varied as languages.
Thrift is Parry's discovery: the language of Homer's epic is free to express, has the same prosodic value, expresses the same meaning and can be replaced with each other. This thrifty rule can only be observed at the performance level.
Tradition and innovation, oral tradition gains life in performance, and every performance here and now in turn provides opportunities for innovation. Regardless of people's persistence, any such innovation will be clearly recognized in tradition. Unity and organic, as far as oral poetics is concerned, the unity and organic whole of Homer's epic is the result of the historical development of singing tradition, not the result of the influence of the creator above tradition. It is a common mistake to attribute the creator of an epic to a cultural hero. Modern people's concept of the author is a word with personal color and emphasis on individuality.
The author and text, as far as oral poetics is concerned, are determined by the authority of singing and text, and by the stability among countless performances. The concept of text comes from the proposition of creation in performance. The main aspect of oral poetics is performance. In the trinity hermeneutic model of creation, performance and communication, the key element is performance. Without performance, oral tradition is not oral, without performance, tradition is not traditional, without performance, Homer's concept will lose its integrity, and not only that, our understanding of ancient classics will not be complete.
Parry-Lord theory is a theory linking the past with the future in the study of oral inheritance in the 20th century. Parry-Lord theory itself has interdisciplinary significance. Parry and Lord are from Harvard, the cradle of American folklore. The two of them represent the third and fourth generation folklorists of Harvard respectively. Folklore provided a historical atmosphere for the research of Parry and Lord, and supported Lord to put forward and form his doctoral thesis, the Story Singer, which later became the basis of oral literature. At Harvard, there are four disciplines that constitute the organic whole of Lord's academic career: classical literature, Slavic literature, comparative literature and folklore. [1 1] Parry-Lord theory was well expressed in popular American folklore textbooks in 1960s, 1960s, 1960s and 1980s. Parry-Lord theory is closely related to American folk tradition. Since 1888, American folklore has formed two schools: folklore of humanities and folklore of anthropology. The former controls the university, while the latter occupies the American Folklore Society. Folklorists in the humanities divide oral traditions into various styles and specialize in them. Their scope is the folklore of civilized society, mainly the language tradition of Indo-European nations. Representative figures are julia child, kittredge, Thompson, Hart and Taylor. Folklorists in humanities try to explain the origin of folklore with evolution theory. They inherited the purport of European folklore, attached importance to the study of story texts, and divided the texts into types, further dividing motifs or other elements. They attach great importance to the collection, annotation and dissemination of texts, and are deeply influenced by Finnish historical geography methods. Parry and Lord studied the creative process of oral inheritance. They respect the important value of folklore and ethnology and attach importance to field work. Of course, some people still think they are just experts in folklore in literature.
The historical position of Parry-Lord theory in oral inheritance research is very important. 18, 19 th century "Great Theory": European romantic nationalism, cultural evolution theory, Sun myth. Research on the origin of "mechanism" in the 20th century: Finnish historical geography method, regional chronology hypothesis, etc. Research on text pattern: epic principle, oral procedure theory and morphological method. Structuralism and hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, ethnographic poetics, performance theory, etc. Parry-Lord theory is a folklore theory developed in the 20th century, and its greater background is the academic paradigm of Russian formalism and structuralism. Research purposes: As far as a folk custom is concerned, the question of what it is and how it works has replaced the previous question of detecting its origin. [12] from the academic background of oral inheritance research, the representative figures of oral poetics study the text pattern as a means of memory and a traditional reference; They, the morphological method of plop and the epic method of Orlick, all belong to the study of text mode. [13] Oral poetics inherited Arnay's and Thompson's methods of Finnish historical geography, and initiated ethnographic poetics and performance theory.
Modern scholars in China, such as Wen Yiduo, Zhu Ziqing, Gu Jiegang, Chen, etc. Since the 1960s, scholars have studied Fu Bi Xing in The Book of Songs from the perspective of folk songs, involving the impromptu oral creation of oral poetry and the stylistic form of oral speech. However, none of them have formed methodology, nor have they been seriously summarized by future generations. In recent years, the relationship between ancient classics such as The Book of Songs and Songs of the South and oral traditions has attracted academic attention. Of course, commentators have no traditional field work experience. 1974, Wang Jingxian, an American Chinese scholar, published a doctoral thesis on the study of The Book of Songs, and applied Parry's theory to the study of China literature for the first time. 1980s, Yang Chengzhi introduced Lord's story-telling singers to China folklore circles. 1965-1In the late 1980s, European scholars used this method to study China rap literature such as Yangzhou Pinghua; From 65438 to 0997, the translation of oral poetics began: Frye's Parry-Lord Theory: Theory and Method of Oral Creation and Lord's Story Singer will be translated into Chinese soon, and this theory has been concerned and cited by researchers. 1998 the poetic study of oral literature entered the youth project of the national social science fund. In 2000, China Academy of Social Sciences supported the construction of "China Minority Oral Literature Database" based on the model of millman Parry oral literature database in Harvard University Library.