SOURCE: “The Concept of the Oral Formula as an Impediment to Our Understanding of Medieval Oral Poetry,” Medievalia et Humanistica, No. 8, 1977, pp. 63-76.

In the following essay, Curschmann contends that dogmatic advocates of the theory of oral-formulaic composition have rendered a disservice to Nibelungenlied studies by, among other things, relying too much on scientific analysis and failing to take proper notice of the nature of literature in the Middle Ages.

Over the past quarter-century or so, the Theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition has exerted the most profound influence in several disciplines that have to do with epic literature and related genres—living, ancient, medieval, European, Asian, African.¹ It has set in motion and continues to inform a truly international and interdisciplinary process of re-evaluation of traditional critical norms. In view of this it may seem odd at first that Germanic—more specifically, German—studies have been rather slow to...