epic formulae

Simple data store to house instances of the poetic device originating in oral poetry known as a 'formula'. The purpose of this library is store a large number of formulae, in order to devise metres that can accommodate them, in an artifiical version of the historical process by which poetry came into being¹. This is a personal project to assist in my creative research².

Three elements are stored:

• the text of the formula
• a brief metrical notation using u per light and - per heavy syllable
• a simple description of the person or phenomenon to which the formula refers

Prerequisites

• NodeJS
• MongoDB

Installation

$ npm install -g epic-formulae

Usage

Add a formula to the data store:

$ formula add -m '--uu' -r 'Zeus' 'loud-thundering'

Get a list of all formulae in markdown, grouped by metrical value

$ formula list

Get a list of all formulae in markdown, grouped by metrical value, restricted to a maximum of the last four syllables (i.e. ignore prior syllables)

$ formula list -n 4

Get a list of all formulae in markdown, grouped by referent

$ formula list -g referent

Get a list of all formulae in CSV format

$ formula list -f csv

Load formula from a CSV file

$ formula load /path/to/my/file.csv

Try formula add --help, formula list --help and formula load --help for more options.

Running in development

To run the local version just use ./bin/dev instead of formula, e.g.:

$ ./bin/dev list -n 4

Limitations

It is up to the user to ensure that the metrical notation is correct. Automating phonemic / prosodic analysis is out of scope of this project.

There is no ability to edit or remove formulae once they are added. Currently I'm just doing that using the MongoDB shell, e.g.:

db.formulae.updateOne(
  { text: 'loud-thundering' },
  { $set: { referent: 'Thor' }}
)

Footnotes

1. According to Gregory Nagy: 'traditional phraseology generated meter rather than vice versa.' From 'Formula and Meter: A Summary' in Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter (Harvard University Press, 1974). Online version at the Center for Hellenic Studies. ↩

2. I am a doctoral candidate at the Writing and Society Research Centre in western Sydney. I describe my research project on my personal website. ↩