Od primerjalnega jezikoslovja k primerjalni književnosti : Meillet, Murko, Jakobson

slovenian

2025

volume 48, issue 2

comparative literature   comparative metrics   epic decasyllable   oral poetry   Serbo-Croatian heroic epic   Slovenian literary historians

Slovensko društvo za primerjalno književnost
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

This article discusses the scholarly and personal relationships that have been established between key figures in modern comparative linguistics, literary theory and comparative literature, and outlines some of the commonalities that unite Meillet’s, Murko’s and Jakobson’s engagement with oral poetry and contribute to their far­reaching theorizations, especially in the field of com­parative metrics, but also in the field of oral poetry theory. Antoine Meillet’s seminal book on the origins of Greek metrics established the thesis of com­mon Indo­European verse and was the first to posit the formulaic nature of Homeric epic as a compositional principle, influencing his doctoral student Milman Parry. Matija Murko, who was invited by Meillet to lecture on South Slavic folk epics at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1928, also wrote about formulae as commonplaces linked to the metrical principle in his field reports. The follow­ing year, Jakobson, who, like Murko, was living and working in Prague at the time and developing the foundations of phonology in the Prague Linguistic Circle, which he also introduced into metrics, used the comparative method to link Meillet’s pioneering study of comparative metrics with Murko’s com­parative literary­historical findings on South Slavic oral poetry, thus laying the foundations of comparative Slavic metrics. The discussion shows, among other things, that Murko’s scholarly corpus devoted to oral poetry is impor­tantly embedded in the various currents of modern comparative literature as international discipline since not only does it make a crucial contribution to the emerging theory of orality, but also its extensive inventories and systemati­zation of metrical and rhythmic character in the performance of South Slavic folk epics are a valuable contribution to metrics as a discipline at the cross­roads of literary theory, comparative linguistics, and comparative literature.

02.12.2025