Bakhtin, Milman Parry and the Problem of Homeric Originality

[59] Milman Parry’s work attempted to demonstrate the traditional character of Homeric poetry. Despite a later shift in focus from the concept of “traditional” to “oral” (Finnegan 1991: 120), with at least the implication of a relatively open system as opposed to a relatively closed one, Parry’s early emphasis on tradition was so strong that his theory tended to be read as one discounting, if not actually denying, the possibility of innovation, creativity, individual “genius” on the part of any particular singer. Parry’s own most explicit statement about this appears in his 1930 piece in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, where he concludes that “the question of a remnant of individuality in Homeric style disappears altogether” (M. Parry 1930: 138). That conclusion and the article in which it appeared are his detractors mainly fastened on. In his son Adam’s assessment (A. Parry 1971: xxxi-xxxii),