γυναίων εἵνεκα δώρων: Interformularity and Intertraditionality in Theban and Homeric Epic

To repeat is to do something again, with the rhetorical force of the second and subsequent repetitions stemming from their imitation or echoing of the initial item. On the other hand, to recur is to arise idiomatically – not because of a specific prior occurrence, but rather because the element or pattern is itself associated with the compositional and artistic task and redolent with inherent, embedded meaning. Thus formulas and typical scenes and story-patterns do not repeat in oral traditional epic. Homer does not resort to ‘rosy-fingered dawn’ at any given juncture because he deployed the phrase recently and wishes to capitalize on that salient usage. Nor do the elaborate scenes of feasting in the Odyssey or lamentation in the Iliad depend primarily on parallel instances that happen to precede them. The Odyssey as a whole is one very prominent recurrence of the Return pattern that proliferates throughout Indo-European story traditions. Formulas and typical scenes and story-patterns index the epic tradition, serving as lemmata to a finally untextualizable body of story. In this sense they do not repeat; they idiomatically recur as the poet (re-)makes the poem-instance.1