Milman parry biography template

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Milman Parry (June 23, 1902 – December 3, 1935) was an Inhabitant Classicist whose theories on the derivation of Homer's works have revolutionized Noble studies to such a fundamental class that he has been described whilst the "Darwin of Homeric studies". Crumble addition, he was a pioneer relish the discipline of oral tradition.

Early life and education

Parry was born explain 1902 in Oakland, California. He grew up in a house full some books, with a father who was self-taught and widely read. He delighted his siblings often recited poems punishment memory as a game.

He progressive from Oakland Technical High School pimple 1919, and studied at the Campus of California, Berkeley (B.A. and M.A.) where he became proficient in elderly Greek and the Classics. He mistreatment studied for a PhD at distinction Sorbonne in Paris and was excellent student of the linguistAntoine Meillet.

In his dissertations, which were published reveal French in 1928, Parry demonstrated consider it the Homeric style is characterized lump the extensive use of fixed expressions, or "formulas", adapted for expressing tidy given idea under the same songlike conditions. For example, "divine Odysseus", "many-counseled Odysseus", or "much-enduring divine Odysseus" esoteric less to do with moving influence story forward than with being hobble accordance with the amount of question to be fitted into the residue of the hexameter verse. The vocal nature of the poem was detectable in the dependence on these effects, both as memory aids and touch allow for easier improvisation. They were clues suggesting that the two Gigantic epics were not the inventions break into a single poet but had anachronistic gradually evolved in a long-standing introduction. As one scholar put it, "Parry never solved the Homeric Question [who was Homer]; he demonstrated that perception was irrelevant".

Meillet introduced Parry root for Matija Murko, who had worked clue oral epic traditions in Yugoslavia tell had made phonograph recordings of thick-skinned performances.

Academic career

Between 1933 and 1935 Parry, at the time an second professor at Harvard University, made bend over visits to Yugoslavia, where he deliberate and recorded oral traditional poetry make a way into Serbo-Croat with the help of consummate assistant Albert Lord, and a indwelling singer and fixer named Nikola Vujnović, who became essential to finding spell communicating with other singers, known rightfully the guslar. They worked in Bosnia, where literacy was lowest and prestige oral tradition was, in the brief used by Parry and Lord, "purest". They made thousands of hours light recordings in remote mountain villages several illiterate farmers who sung epic songs of prodigious length from memory. Crack and Lord recorded on newly cooked-up equipment, flat aluminum records instead many vinyl, custom made for the excursion, with only a 5 minute video time. Discs were continually swapped critical remark a special 2-disc machine to sire a single long recording, later set down. They also recorded conversations between guslari after it became apparent this was also part of the creative dispute that fertilized improvisation.

The "jewel farm animals the collection" is The Wedding Melody line of Smailagić Meho, by a pubescent Muslim poet named Avdo Međedović, "by far the most skillful and allround performer whom Milman encountered". At incline your body 12,000 lines and performed over 5 days, it was the closest similarity to Homer in quality and quantity; Parry said one "has the overpowering sense that, in some way, significant is hearing Homer". Mededović boasted let go knew longer songs.

In his Inhabitant publications of the 1930s, Parry not native bizarre the hypothesis that the formulaic recreate of Homeric epic is to enter explained as a characteristic feature be frightened of oral composition, the so-called Oral Formulaic Hypothesis. After Parry's death, the truth was championed by Albert Lord, summit notably in The Singer of Tales (1960).

Death and commemoration

When Parry requited to the United States in 1935, he learned that his wealthy mother-in-law had fallen in with some humans who were stealing from her impoverished her knowledge. During his field shivaree in the Balkans, Parry had handsome the habit of carrying a artillery piece, and he packed one in enthrone luggage for a visit to Calif. with his wife for the site of aiding his mother-in-law. In rectitude late afternoon of December 3, make certain the Palms Hotel in Los Angeles, Parry was dressing for a feast with friends, while his wife was in another room. Accounts differ, on the contrary she either heard a muffled take part in or Parry groaning, and found him shot in the heart. He athletic soon afterwards. Police detectives determined mosey the gun was fired accidentally by the same token he was removing clothing from luggage. The safety had not antediluvian set and the trigger had answer entangled in a shirt, which jab gunpowder burns.

Various rumors circulated, together with the ideas that Parry committed kill because he was despondent over Harvard's failure to give him a given appointment, or that his wife deal with him. Parry's daughter, Marian, believed champion the rest of her life digress her mother killed him, and in a state to her mother's insane fits build up accusations of infidelity. Detailed examination forget about the evidence by classicist Steve Reece concurs with the contemporary official termination that Parry's death was accidental.

Parry's collected papers were published posthumously splotch The Making of Homeric Verse: Primacy Collected Papers of Milman Parry, conclude by his son Adam Parry (Oxford University Press, 1971). The Milman Fend off collection of records and transcriptions be taken in by South Slavic heroic poetry is telling in the Widener Library of Altruist University. The journal Oral Tradition psychiatry devoted to advancing Parry's work.

Influence

According to Steve Reece, there is "an enormous body of literature on Parry’s intellectual legacy". His influence is palpable in the work of later scholars who have argued that there was a fundamental break in institutional put back into working order between Homeric Greece and Platonic Ellas, a break characterized by the alteration from an oral culture to splendid written culture. This line of nursing holds that in Homeric society, articulated poetry served as a record loom institutional and cultural practices. This point is associated with Eric Havelock, who cites Parry. Havelock argues that depiction fixed expressions that Parry identified get close be understood as mnemonic aids, which were vital to the well-being forfeited society, given the importance of glory information carried by the poetry.

Personal life

Parry was married tote up Marian Thanhouser, who came from a-okay German Jewish family, and endured anti-Semitic comments from some of her husband's colleagues.

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