“Whole Formulaic Verses in Greek and Southslavic Heroic Song”, 1933 ():
In this essay on the method to be used in the comparative study of early poetries, the view is set forth that the essential feature of such poetry is its oral form, and not such cultural likenesses as have been called “popular”, “primitive”, “natural”, or “heroic.”
As an example of method, those numerous cases are considered where we find both in Homer and in Southslavic heroic song a verse which expresses the same idea. The explanation is as follows. Oral poetry is largely composed out of fixed verses.
Especially will ideas which recur with any frequency be expressed by a fixed verse. Thus where the two poetries express the same frequent idea they both tend to do it in just the length of a verse.
Knowing this common feature in the oral form of the two poetries, we can conclude that the extraordinary hold which heroic poetry has on the thought and conduct of the Southern Slavs provides us with an example of what heroic poetry must have been for the early Greeks.