M ILMAN PARRY began his first study of Homeric style' with a quotation from Ernest Renan which epitomized the method which he was later to follow so scrupulously. Renan's words have become familiar to all of Parry's students. "Comment saisir la physionomie et l'originalit6 des litteratures primitives, si on ne penitre la vie morale et intime de la nation, si on ne se place au point mgme de l'humanite qu'elle occupa, afin de voir et de sentir comme elle, si on ne la regarde vivre, ou plut6t si on ne vit un instant avec elle?"2 "La litterature de chaque pays et de chaque 6poque," Parry continued, "n'est comprise comme elle doit l' tre de faqon naturelle que par l'auteur et son public contemporain. 11 existe entre eux un fonds commun d'experience qui permet a l'auteur de mentionner tel objet, ou d'exprimer telle idle, tout en 6tant siir que son public se represente bien le meme objet et saisit les nuances de l'ide done la tAche de celui qui, vivant a une autre 6poque, veut apprecier cette oeuvre avec justesse, consiste precisement a retrouver le savoir varie et les groupes d'idees que l'auteur supposait appartenir naturellement a son public... si le principe n'est que trop apparent, son application rigoureuse est des plus rares, 6tant complexe au point d'etre impossible a realiser de maniere tout a fait satisfaisante: la critique se propose l1 un but qui est la perfection meme."3 This was the goal which Parry set for himself from the very beginning and it was this which led him by logical steps from the painstaking analysis of Homeric style to the investigation of the oral nature of the South Slavic epic, from Homer to Huso. In L'Epitkhte traditionelle he showed that the noun-epithet combinations in the Homeric poems were part of a vastly intricate pattern of formulas which the poet (or poets) had available to enable him (or them) to express a given idea within the limits of the verse. Because of the lack of extant Greek material it was impossible to prove that all of the nounepithet combinations were formulas, but the proportion which were demonstrably so was great enough that it was obvious that such a style could not be the work of a single poet. It must have been years in the making and it must have required the efforts of many poets. Hence this style was traditional and was thus set apart from the style of other epic poets such as Apollonius or Virgil. They were imitating Homer, but they were composing in a different way. With them the epithet was a literary device used to impart an "epic" flavor to their verses, but in the Homeric poems the traditional, or ornamental, epithet was forced on the poet by the exigencies of the verse and was an integral and necessary part of the style. The requirements of the verse-making created the formulaic, traditional, style. When approached from this angle many of the difficulties in the poems were solved, or at least were readily understood, without any departure from the critical method which Parry ever had before him. In his supplementary thesis4 he considered two types of metrical irregularities from this point of view: the hiatus and the short vowels which had to be given the value of longs because of their position in the verse. In putting the formulas together to form verses the poet sometimes found that a metrical irregularity occurred at the point of