Milman Parry was a classical scholar who between 1933 and 1935 was in Yugoslavia studying the oral traditions among the South Slavs. In the course of his work, he could not help but notice the similarities between the oral poetry he was hearing and the formulaic verse of the Iliad. The epic poets has a repertoire of formulae or tags, adapted for various places in the metre of the poems. Parry died in 1935, and the dissemination of the idea of Homer as an oral poet was continued by Albert Lord.
