Keens from the Absent Chorus: Troy to Ulster

Abstract

Abstract What experimentation is to science, comparison should be to philology—a way to test hypotheses and produce new ones that account for more of the data, more economically. What one chooses to compare, of course, will affect the results. On one end of the spectrum lies the tracing of curious resemblances among otherwise isolated words, motifs, or customs and the urge to weave around these an intriguing narrative, either of primitive origins, long-distance cultural contact, or deep genetic relationship.1 The nineteenth century’s fascination with atomistic and often obscure comparanda gave way in the twentieth century to a more dependable tendency to compare total structures, linguistics leading the way to the other end of the spectrum, with anthropology trailing some decades later. Neither method was specifically designed for the study of verbal art, although Frazer’s great work was prompted by a scene in Vergil’s Aeneid and Leévi Strauss’s best-known article starts with the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles.

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