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Приказ
Formula: A Story of a Journey
Michael Fox. Following the Formula in Beowulf, Örvar-Odds saga, and 
Tolkien. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 250 pages
The book Following the Formula in Beowulf, 
Örvar-Odds saga, and Tolkien by Prof. Michael Fox 
is a comparative study which attempts at offering 
a new glance at the old question of oral-formulaity 
of the Old English epic in conjunction with Örvar-
Odds saga and Tolkien’s works Sellic Spell and The 
Hobbit. This journey is divided into six chapters, 
each one of them addressing a very specific aspect 
of this question. Namely, Fox’s main idea is that 
formula understood in a more encompassing way 
than the initial Parry-Lord definition can be seen 
as the matrix based on which this traditional epic 
was formed, but that it also served quite well as the 
blueprint to J. R. R. Tolkien in his creation of the fairy tale and the book which 
seem to be perhaps the closest resemblances of Beowulf in literary fiction. 
Having given an overview of the oral-formulaic thought in folkloristic schol-
arship, Fox continues his first chapter entitled “Beowulf and Formula” by ad-
dressing the specific instances of oral-formulaic theory which can be detect-
ed in Beowulf: action-pattern, type-scenes, themes, motifs (with an overview 
of the problem of their overlapping and resistance to strict classification), 
structural repetition (the instances of “envelope pattern” and ring pattern 
proposed by John D. Niles and Ward Parks which could be found in the epic), 
and finally, the story-pattern as defined by Lord who discovered two basic 
patterns of story with the roots in the Indo-European tradition, one of them 
being “The Bear’s Son Tale” which is precisely the fairy-tale foundation of 
Beowulf (as confirmed by Andy Orchard and Christine Rauer). Fox goes on to 
conclude it is the patchwork that is Beowulf that rests on the original which 
shines through the pieces laid on top of it.
Referring to a very rich critical thought in the field of half-line formulas 
in Beowulf, Fox continues his journey by analyzing the weox under wolcnum 
(8a) formula (below the heavens/clouds). This formula, or system as some 
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scholars refer to it, features not just in Beowulf but also in Andreas, Guth-
lac B, and in the Christian poem The Dream of the Rood. The meaning that 
it conveys is that of doom and terror that is to come, a change for the worse 
which is about to take place. It is assumed that this formula was lent to the 
mentioned Christian poems directly or indirectly from Beowulf and other Old 
English poems. However, this formula has its roots in an older tradition and 
they can be found in the Old Saxon uuânum under uuolcnum formula, which 
shares a very similar lexical make-up with the aforementioned formula, but 
the meaning is quite different. Unlike the negative meaning of terror or dark-
ness that descends upon everything after a significant event, the meaning 
of the older counterpart is positive ‒ it is the light that is emphasized and it 
connotes good, leaving the author of this book under the impression that the 
change took place at some point during the transmission of the formula from 
the old to the newer tradition, although it happened within the boundaries 
of the same tradition. 
Along the same lines, even though extended to the level of a fitt, Fitt 
1 of Beowulf in which Hrothgar is described as the ruler of the Danes and is 
to fall victim to Grendel who is a serpent/devil figure marauding the halls 
of Heorot can be interpreted as the formula whose parallels can be found 
in Genesis. In the chapter entitled “The Fitt Formula: Genesis and Fitt 1,” Fox 
investigates and establishes the connections between these two works of art, 
interpreting Hrothgar as a God-like figure, Heorot as similar to the Tower of 
Babel, and Grendel as the anticipated serpent monster. All of this speaks in 
favor of the theory that accepting Christian God was one of the momentous 
tasks of the Anglo-Saxons ‒ the converted audience knew something that the 
Danes had not known, and that was the reason why they had disappeared in 
that form. 
After the fitt formula, the next stop on the journey of discovering and 
confirming the oral-formulaic nature of Beowulf is “The Digressive Formula: 
The Sigemund-Heremod Digression.” A possible reason why these two char-
acters were introduced from Icelandic sagas in the form of a digression into 
this poem is to elevate Beowulf to the level of Germanic heroes whose deeds 
were worth relating, but they were slightly modified. Sigemund, as Beowulf’s 
predecessor, is represented as the hero who slays the dragon while in the 
Icelandic saga, he is not a dragon-slayer, thus offering a better ground for 
Beowulf’s deeds to come. Heremod is the example of a champion who “lost 
his fame when his prowess and courage somehow died” (104). Having pre-
sented the digression in its entirety, Fox analyzes the connections on the 
lexical level which exist within the digression itself, with other digressions, 
and with other Old English texts confirming the existence of the envelope 
pattern of the whole digression. Interestingly, the same verb (þurhwadan) is 
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used for all the three of them to express “the piercing of Sigemund’s dragon 
(890b), Beowulf’s slash at the neck of Grendel’s mother (1567b), and […] the 
invasion of sin into Heremod” (119), while the bright treasure of Sigemund, 
Beowulf, and Wiglaf establishes the thematic unity of these three heroes. 
In the words of the author of the book, all of these little steps that the poet 
takes provoke the constant rethinking of the past in the audience through 
the links of associations. Another striking phrase is under harne stan (under 
hoar stone) which appears four times in Beowulf and all of the instances are 
related to the abodes of monsters. However, Fox notices that it is this phrase 
in particular that connects Beowulf to Blickling Homily XVI, and consequently 
to Visio Pauli in which is the story about St. Michael: the draco ingenus can be 
connected to the dragons (but also Grendel and his mother) that Sigemund 
and Beowulf have to fight, thus establishing a link between the two of them 
and St. Michael. Based on the further analysis of Anglo-Saxon charters and 
the occurrences of har stan in them, Michael Fox purports that the dating of 
Beowulf, which has traditionally been the 10th century, in the time of the rule 
of King Æthelstan when these charters were made, could be confirmed by its 
appearance in the charters depicting a very local setting.
On the level of a folk tale belonging to the same tradition, Michael Fox 
discovers the shared formula in Örvar-Odds saga and he elaborates on it in 
detail in the chapter “The Folktale Formula: Beowulf and Örvar-Odds saga.” 
The testaments of the popularity of Örvar-Odds are the numerous remaining 
versions of the story of this hero, but the AB version is the longest one and 
the one in which all the five fights feature. Fox sheds light on the resemblanc-
es which the two heroes share, some of them being their similar childhoods 
(they are not connected to their families), the fact that they are both “noble 
heathens,” (169) their bear origins (Beowulf can be interpreted as “bee-wolf” 
standing for bear), and they are both asked the same question for the sake 
of establishing their respective identities (“Are you that Oddr who went to 
Bjarmaland?”; “Are you the Beowulf who contested with Breca, competed at 
swimming on the broad sea?”). Their opponents share the same not-quite-
human quality: Grendel and his mother on the one hand, and Ögmundr on 
the other. Although the story in Örvar-Odds saga is much more complex and 
features two more fights which are non-existent in Beowulf, there are some 
quite conspicuous similarities between Grendel and Ögmundr. They are both 
non-human, indescribable monsters, shape-shifters; they both have unusual 
mothers (Ögmundr’s mother is some kind of ogress or witch), who have to 
be fought against very hard in order to be vanquished. Oddr kills Ögmundr’s 
son in the final battle, but Ögmundr himself flees and even rewards Oddr who 
never gets home because a snake crawls out from the skull of his horse and 
kills him, thus fulfilling a prophecy. However different they seem to be, these 
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two narratives have “The Bear’s Son Tale” at their core, with the variations 
which were probably influenced by the setting, the community, the mindset 
of the people, but Beowulf and Örvar-Odds saga stand as the two examples of 
this “folktale formula” of the same tradition.
So far, the author of the book has not moved much from the supposed 
oral tradition of the Germanic peoples and has quite successfully showed 
that one can claim that they belong to an oral tradition in which formulas 
of different kinds proliferated, enabling the singers to make new and new 
songs based on the original blueprint. In the final chapter entitled “The For-
mula Reformulated: Sellic Spell and The Hobbit,” Michael Fox proposes that as 
an ardent reader of Old English epic poetry, Tolkien himself recognized the 
pattern (which was not called formula at that time) and employed it in his 
making of Sellic Spell, and in particular The Hobbit. Tolkien wrote Sellic Spell 
as a retelling of Beowulf with the episodes and digressions neatly tucked into 
a linear narrative which strives to explain the not-so-clear parts of Beowulf, 
offering Tolkien’s interpretation of the epic and showing in a way that all 
the potentially obscure parts of the poem might be a pure consequence of 
the condensation of the original fairy tale (namely, ATU 301 “The Bear’s Son 
Tale”). The Hobbit is a perfect example of Tolkien’s recognition of the formula 
‒ he managed to extract the essence of the Beowulf epic-making and to build 
a new story with the existing analogues. The parallels are numerous: the be-
witching nature of Arkenstone and the eorclanstan which Hygelac has in his 
necklace during the “ill-fated Frisian raid” (206); har stan turning into the 
“grey stone” which guards the entrance to the mountain is mentioned pre-
cisely four times as in Beowulf; the envelope pattern dispersed throughout 
the novel; trebling as the characteristic of both Beowulf and The Hobbit; The 
Hobbit features three main fights, but it actually has a bipartite structure; on 
the level of themes and motifs, Fox singles out the beast of battle to which 
Tolkien assigns new roles, the ubi sunt motif which is quite frequent in Old 
English poetry in general, and in Beowulf in particular; the digressions and 
episodes are missing from The Hobbit, but it is the constant hinting at the 
other tales which are not told that gives the story the aura of belonging to a 
much wider history percolating in the background. It is with this particular 
point, to Fox’s mind, that Tolkien comes closest to the oral poetry-making 
practice: he manages to suggest the diachrony of the tale being told, just like 
the best oral poets of the past, and that is, according to John Miles Foley, one 
of the greatest characteristics of tradition.
At the level of the traditional story-pattern (ATU 301), the similarity of 
these two works of art shines almost the brightest. Bilbo is an unpromising 
hero, just like Beowulf in his youth, he is of fairy/human origins, he possess-
es some unusual abilities, although not the prowess of the aforementioned 
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hero; Thorin is similar to Beowulf who dies in the final battle. Most interest-
ingly, the words which Gandalf utters with respect to Bilbo’s achieving such a 
magnificent success are similar to the words uttered before the first attack of 
Grendel: just like God governs the race of men and has the knowledge of eve-
rything that should happen in a certain way, so Bilbo’s lucky adventures and 
escapes belong to the wider plan, to some greater pattern of which Bilbo is 
just an infinitesimal part. Like a magnificent teller of tales, Tolkien manages 
to tell a new story based on the pattern which he has scrutinized so studi-
ously that it has provided him with the sketch of his own story. He found the 
inspiration for The Hobbit in Beowulf and other relevant sagas, but he created 
a new work of art which belongs to a written tradition. 
Prof. Michael Fox’s reading of Beowulf, Örvar-Odds saga, and The Hob-
bit gives the readers and scholars a fresh insight into oral-formulaic theory, 
and formula itself. Once the potential of formula is extended from the lexical 
level to the levels of half-lines, themes, motifs, digressions, episodes, and sto-
ry-patterns, it becomes clearer that Parry’s and Lord’s initial idea is not so far 
from being true ‒ it is not just the structure of individual lines, but the works 
of art in general that are affected by formula. Everything that is uttered in a 
poem, even the most mundane of repetitions, bears the stamp of some higher 
structure to which it belongs and which it makes complete. Just like Bilbo 
Baggins enables the whole great adventure by his small or not so small con-
tributions, every word of an epic makes the entire epic function as a whole. 
Fox purports that it is not the verbatim repetition, but the process of making 
an epic that shows how a formula functions inside that epic, thus offering a 
much wider meaning of what formula is. After almost one hundred years of 
the establishing of oral-formulaic theory, Fox shows that the new direction 
of investigating the oral nature of a work of art will not be the enumeration 
of the exactly repeated lines and phrases in order to show the crude nature 
of oral song-making, but the discovering of the much more subtle nuances of 
the whole structure of an oral poem breathing in the environment of an all-
encompassing tradition.
Danijela S. Mitrović
Institute for Literature and Arts, Belgrade
E-mail: danijelamitrovic.16@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3277-0435
Примљено/Received: 20. 10. 2021.
При�ваћено/Accepted: 02. 06. 2023.


Formula: A Story of a Journey

Pešikan-Ljuštanović, Ljiljana

Delić, Lidija

Predanje o čudesnom izlečenju: trideset godina kasnije

Ćuković, Milica

Prikaz: Narativni mozaik Dragoslava Mihailovića (Milica Kecojević, Poetika pripovedanja Dragoslava Mihailovića)

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