To put it most simply, the oral traditional idiom persisted because—even in a written incarnation—it offered the only avenue to the immanent poetic tradition, the invisible but ever-present aesthetic context for all of the poems.


"Texts That Speak to Readers Who Hear: Old English Poetry and the Languages of Oral Tradition", in Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies, ed. Allen J. Frantzen (1991), p. 155

John Miles Foley Quotes

To put it most simply, the oral traditional idiom persisted because—even in a written incarnation—it offered the only avenue to the immanent...

To put it most simply, the oral traditional idiom persisted because—even in a written incarnation—it offered the only avenue to the immanent...

To put it most simply, the oral traditional idiom persisted because—even in a written incarnation—it offered the only avenue to the immanent...

To put it most simply, the oral traditional idiom persisted because—even in a written incarnation—it offered the only avenue to the immanent...