Formal Diction, Intertextuality, Narrative and the Complexity of Greek Epic Diction

Abstract

This article attempts to reconcile, at root, longstanding tensions between intertextuality, narrative function, context-sensitive semantics and formal, repetitive structure in oral and orally derived archaic epic hexameter diction. Calling upon a revised methodological model, drawn from the natural and exact sciences and the study of stochastic, non-deterministic and non-reversible process and, more directly, from the study of complex adaptive systems in contemporary cognitive functional linguistics, the article argues for the inherent evolutionary interdependence – rather than conflict – between context and pattern and between exception and rule, in essence between dynamic, intertextual continuity and change. The article considers selected examples with an emphasis on early Greek epic and in the Epic Cycle.