caa a22 4500 388064110 CHVBK 20180307125129.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199906 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0041977X00016712 doi S0041977X00016712 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0041977X00016712 Smith John D. University of Cambridge Winged words revisited: diction and meaning in Indian epic [Elektronische Daten] [John D. Smith] Scholars working in the field of oral epic all have a particular form of words committed to memory—Milman Parry's celebrated definition of the formula. The definition in fact appears in two slightly differing forms in Parry's writing. In 1928 he wrote, ‘In the diction of bardic poetry, the formula can be defined as an expression regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express an essential idea' (Parry, 1971: 13). Two years later came the more familiar version: ‘The formula in the Homeric poems may be defined as a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea' (Parry, 1971: 272). The differences between the two forms of the definition are negligible, and Parry made no further attempt to refine or modify it during the five years of life that remained to him. For Albert Lord, too, the definition was clearly adequate as it stood: in ch. iii of The singer of tales he simply quotes it verbatim (Lord, 1960: 30), and proceeds directly to a consideration of the function of formulaic diction. Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1999 Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Cambridge University Press 62/2(1999-06), 267-305 0041-977X 62:2<267 1999 62 BSO https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00016712 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00016712 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Smith John D. University of Cambridge NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Cambridge University Press 62/2(1999-06), 267-305 0041-977X 62:2<267 1999 62 BSO CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge