Les recherches sur la poésie orale autour d’Antoine Meillet : Jean Paulhan, Marcel Jousse, Milman Parry

Abstract

This paper deals with research on oral poetry in the early 20th century and more specifically on Jean Paulhan (1884-1968) and his work on traditional popular poetry in Madagascar; the linguistic anthropology developed by Marcel Jousse (1886-1961); and Milman Parry (1902-1935) who carried out research on the formulaic composition of Homeric poems. These three analyses were directed or partly inspired by Antoine Meillet (1866-1936). They are one of the tangible manifestations of Meillet’s ambition to foster dialogue between linguistics and ethnography. Examining these three studies sheds light on their own specificities, as well as on what brings them together in the common objective of describing or theorizing poetic orality. Meillet, in particular, contributed to these three projects through his teachings and his reviews published in the Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris. Moreover, the assessment of Meillet’s contribution to the emergence of the “formula” concept which takes shape along these works is all the more important that it is to become the cornerstone of oralist theories.

Keywords

• formula
• Homer
• Meillet (Antoine)
• orality
• oral poetry