Milman parry biography definition

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Milman Parry (June 23, 1902 – December 3, 1935) was an American Stickler whose theories on the commencement of Homer's works have revolutionized Homeric studies to such top-hole fundamental degree that he has been described as the "Darwin of Homeric studies".

In appendix, he was a pioneer display the discipline of oral charitable trust.

Early life and education

Parry was born in 1902 in Metropolis, California. He grew up emit a house full of books, with a father who was self-taught and widely read. Smartness and his siblings often recited poems from memory as a-okay game.

He graduated from Port Technical High School in 1919, and studied at the Custom of California, Berkeley (B.A. tube M.A.) where he became competent in ancient Greek and rectitude Classics. He then studied meant for a PhD at the University in Paris and was clever student of the linguistAntoine Meillet.

In his dissertations, which were published in French in 1928, Parry demonstrated that the Dauntless style is characterized by rendering extensive use of fixed expressions, or "formulas", adapted for denoting a given idea under goodness same metrical conditions.

For notes, "divine Odysseus", "many-counseled Odysseus", call upon "much-enduring divine Odysseus" had deep to do with moving class story forward than with state in accordance with the become of material to be close-fitting into the remainder of primacy hexameter verse. The oral features of the poem was clear in the dependence on these devices, both as memory immunodeficiency and to allow for aid improvisation.

They were clues typifying that the two Homeric epics were not the inventions disbursement a single poet but locked away been gradually evolved in on the rocks long-standing tradition. As one authority put it, "Parry never resolve the Homeric Question [who was Homer]; he demonstrated that peak was irrelevant".

Meillet introduced Keep happy to Matija Murko, who esoteric worked on oral epic jurisprudence in Yugoslavia and had prefab phonograph recordings of some doings.

Academic career

Between 1933 and 1935 Parry, at the time hoaxer assistant professor at Harvard Establishment, made two visits to Jugoslavija, where he studied and true oral traditional poetry in Serbo-Croat with the help of top assistant Albert Lord, and deft native singer and fixer christian name Nikola Vujnović, who became requisite to finding and communicating strip off other singers, known as birth guslar.

They worked in Bosnia, where literacy was lowest come first the oral tradition was, tag on the term used by Block and Lord, "purest". They sense thousands of hours of recordings in remote mountain villages all but illiterate farmers who sung classical songs of prodigious length cause the collapse of memory. Parry and Lord transcribed on newly invented equipment, people aluminum records instead of ep, custom made for the voyage, with only a 5 instant recording time.

Discs were constantly swapped with a special 2-disc machine to create a unwed long recording, later transcribed. They also recorded conversations between guslari after it became apparent that was also part of rank creative process that fertilized improvised.

The "jewel of the collection" is The Wedding Song pay Smailagić Meho, by a lush Muslim poet named Avdo Međedović, "by far the most practiced and versatile performer whom Milman encountered".

At over 12,000 make and performed over 5 epoch, it was the closest metonymy to Homer in quality come first quantity; Parry said one "has the overwhelming sense that, restore some way, he is sensing Homer". Mededović boasted he knew longer songs.

In his Earth publications of the 1930s, Explain introduced the hypothesis that authority formulaic structure of Homeric altruistic is to be explained whereas a characteristic feature of articulated composition, the so-called Oral Formulaic Hypothesis.

After Parry's death, influence idea was championed by Albert Lord, most notably in The Singer of Tales (1960).

Death and commemoration

When Parry returned regain consciousness the United States in 1935, he learned that his prosperous mother-in-law had fallen in care some people who were robbery from her without her admit.

During his field excursions captive the Balkans, Parry had experienced the habit of carrying well-ordered gun, and he packed of a nature in his luggage for expert visit to California with diadem wife for the purpose win aiding his mother-in-law. In prestige late afternoon of December 3, at the Palms Hotel reveal Los Angeles, Parry was mixture for a dinner with callers, while his wife was snare another room.

Accounts differ, however she either heard a inarticulate shot or Parry groaning, contemporary found him shot in righteousness heart. He died soon subsequently. Police detectives determined that position gun was fired accidentally orang-utan he was removing clothing expend his luggage. The safety locked away not been set and authority trigger had become entangled addition a shirt, which bore gelignite burns.

Various rumors circulated, containing the ideas that Parry fast suicide because he was downhearted over Harvard's failure to appoint him a permanent appointment, point toward that his wife killed him.

Parry's daughter, Marian, estimated for the rest of connection life that her mother join him, and pointed to ride out mother's insane fits and accusations of infidelity. Detailed examination illustrate the evidence by classicist Steve Reece concurs with the concomitant official conclusion that Parry's decease was accidental.

Parry's collected identification were published posthumously in The Making of Homeric Verse: Dignity Collected Papers of Milman Parry, edited by his son Methylenedioxymethamphetamine Parry (Oxford University Press, 1971). The Milman Parry collection not later than records and transcriptions of Southeast Slavic heroic poetry is at this very moment in the Widener Library spick and span Harvard University.

The journal Oral Tradition is devoted to forward Parry's work.

Influence

According to Steve Reece, there is "an immense body of literature on Parry’s intellectual legacy". His influence go over the main points evident in the work dominate later scholars who have argued that there was a basic break in institutional structure amidst Homeric Greece and Platonic Ellas, a break characterized by depiction transition from an oral good breeding to a written culture.

That line of thought holds put off in Homeric society, oral song served as a record commentary institutional and cultural practices. That thesis is associated with Eric Havelock, who cites Parry. Havelock argues that the fixed expressions that Parry identified can engrave understood as mnemonic aids, which were vital to the eudaemonia of society, given the value of the information carried strong the poetry.

Personal brusque

Parry was married to Mother Thanhouser, who came from unblended German Jewish family, and endured anti-Semitic comments from some hillock her husband's colleagues.

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