Abstract

The discoveries and work of Parry and Lord have turned the old battleground of the Homeric Question and its many side issues into a scene of fruitful tillage if not of complete harmony. The exploration in Yugoslav epic songs of the nature of oral narrative, with its identification of the moment of reciting and the moment of composing, has met with wide approval in its application to the Homeric poems. Some scholars, however, feel that the difference in literary merit between the Homeric poems and the Yugoslav epic songs, fine as many of these are, is still too great to allow us to apply to Homer without reserve the conclusions which may be valid for the Yugoslav tradition.