Milman Parry | |
|---|---|
 Parry in his 1919 high school yearbook | |
| Born | (1902-06-23)June 23, 1902 Oakland, California, United States |
| Died | December 3, 1935(1935-12-03) (aged 33) Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Spouse | Marian Thanhouser (Parry) |
| Children | Marian andAdam Parry |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Oakland Technical High School |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley University of Paris |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Classical studies Linguistics |
| Sub-discipline | Epic poetry Homeric scholarship Oral-formulaic composition |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Influenced | Albert Lord |
Milman Parry (June 23, 1902 – December 3, 1935) was an AmericanClassicist whose theories on the origin ofHomer's works have revolutionizedHomeric studies to such a fundamental degree that he has been described as the "Darwin of Homeric studies".[1] In addition, he was a pioneer in the discipline oforal tradition.
Parry was born in 1902 inOakland, California. He grew up in a house full of books, with a father who was self-taught and widely read. He and his siblings often recited poems from memory as a game.[2]
He graduated fromOakland Technical High School in 1919,[3] and studied at theUniversity of California, Berkeley (B.A. and M.A.) where he became proficient in ancient Greek and the Classics.[2] He then studied for a PhD at theSorbonne in Paris and was a student of thelinguistAntoine Meillet.
In his dissertations, which were published in French in 1928, Parry demonstrated that the Homeric style is characterized by the extensive use of fixed expressions, or "formulas", adapted for expressing a given idea under the same metrical conditions. For example, "divine Odysseus", "many-counseled Odysseus", or "much-enduring divine Odysseus" had less to do with moving the story forward than with being in accordance with the amount of material to be fitted into the remainder of thehexameter verse. The oral nature of the poem was evident in the dependence on these devices, both as memory aids and to allow for easier improvisation. They were clues suggesting that the two Homeric epics were not the inventions of a single poet but had been gradually evolved in a long-standing tradition.[2][4] As one scholar put it, "Parry never solved theHomeric Question [who was Homer]; he demonstrated that it was irrelevant".[2]
Meillet introduced Parry toMatija Murko, who had worked on oral epic traditions in Yugoslavia[5] and had madephonograph recordings of some performances.
In 1928–1929, Parry began his academic career as a Professor of Latin and Greek atDrake University. Between 1933 and 1935 Parry, at the time an assistant professor atHarvard University, made two visits toYugoslavia, where he studied and recorded oral traditional poetry inSerbo-Croat with the help on his second visit of his assistantAlbert Lord, and a native singer and fixer named Nikola Vujnović, who became essential to finding and communicating with other singers, known as theguslar. They worked inBosnia, whereliteracy was lowest and the oral tradition was, in the term used by Parry and Lord, "purest". They made thousands[6] of hours of recordings in remote mountain villages of illiterate farmers who sang epic songs of prodigious length from memory. Parry and Lord recorded on newly invented equipment, flataluminum records instead of vinyl, custom made for the expedition, with only a five minute recording time. Discs were continually swapped with a special two-disc machine to create a single long recording, later transcribed. They also recorded conversations betweenguslari after it became apparent this was also part of the creative process that fertilized improvisation.[2]
The "jewel of the collection" isThe Wedding Song of Smailagić Meho, by a poet namedAvdo Međedović, "by far the most skillful and versatile performer whom Milman encountered".[6] One of the songs, running to some 13,000 lines and performed over five days, was the closest analogue to Homer in quality and quantity; Parry said one "has the overwhelming sense that, in some way, he is hearing Homer". Međedović boasted he knew longer songs.[6]
In his American publications of the 1930s, Parry introduced thehypothesis that the formulaic structure of Homeric epic is to be explained as a characteristic feature oforal composition, the so-calledOral Formulaic Hypothesis. After Parry's death, the idea was championed by Albert Lord, most notably inThe Singer of Tales (1960).[7]
The musical part of his recordings made in Yugoslavia was later notated and published postumum in the fifties byBéla Bartók, commissioned by the Columbia University in 1942. This publication is provided with a long Introduction by Bartók.
When Parry returned to the United States in 1935, he learned that his wealthy mother-in-law had fallen in with some people who were exploiting her without her knowledge. During his field excursions in the Balkans, Parry carried a gun with him, and he packed one in his luggage for a visit to California with his wife for the purpose of aiding his mother-in-law. In the late afternoon of December 3, at the Palms Hotel in Los Angeles, Parry was dressing for a dinner with friends, while his wife was in another room. Accounts differ, but she either heard a muffled shot or Parry groaning, and found him shot in the heart. He died soon afterwards. Police detectives determined that the gun was fired accidentally as he was removing clothing from his luggage. The safety had not been set and the trigger had become entangled in a shirt, which bore gunpowder burns.[2]
Various rumors circulated, including the ideas that Parry committed suicide because he was despondent over Harvard's failure to give him a permanent appointment, or that his wife killed him.[2] Parry's daughter, Marian, believed for the rest of her life that her mother killed him, and pointed to her mother's insane fits and accusations of infidelity.[2] Detailed examination of the evidence by classicist Steve Reece concurs with the contemporary official conclusion that Parry's death was accidental.[8]
Parry's collected papers were published posthumously inThe Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry, edited by his sonAdam Parry (Oxford University Press, 1971). The Milman Parry collection of records and transcriptions of South Slavic heroic poetry is now in theWidener Library ofHarvard University. The journalOral Tradition is devoted to advancing Parry's work.
According to Steve Reece, there is "an enormous body of literature on Parry’s intellectual legacy".[8] His influence is evident in the work of later scholars who have argued that there was a fundamental break in institutional structure between Homeric Greece and Platonic Greece, a break characterized by the transition from an oral culture to a written culture. This line of thought holds that in Homeric society, oral poetry served as a record of institutional andcultural practices. This thesis is associated withEric Havelock, who cites Parry. Havelock argues that the fixed expressions that Parry identified can be understood asmnemonic aids, which were vital to the well-being of society, given the importance of the information carried by the poetry.
Parry was married to Marian Thanhouser, who came from a German Jewish family, and enduredantisemitic comments from some of her husband's colleagues.[2][8] They had two children, Marian andAdam Parry (1928–1971). The latter was the chairman of Yale University's Classics Department, until his untimely death, together with his wife Anne Amory, in a motorbike accident.[9][10]
