Common use of Final remarks Clause in Contracts

Final remarks. This overview of some of the folk songs’ hallmark features confirms what we have said in the first section: the binary oppositions of ‘oral/written’, ‘simple/complex’, ‘anonymous/authorial’ and ‘traditional/modern’ do not provide an adequate analytical tool for interpreting folksong of any period. This is also valid in the field of ancient Greek culture, where our understanding of the carmina popularia is less enhanced and more hampered by the aforementioned binary oppositions. These binary oppositions do not prove effective in revealing what the collection of the carmina popularia and the texts included in them really represented in ancient Greece. On the contrary, they merely reflect and perpetuate a number of simplistic and elusive distinctions between folk traditions and literary forms. Notwithstanding its many drawbacks, this idea of folksong as something distinct in its very essence and form from literate poetry still pervades modern scholarship.195 More work remains to be done in identifying methodological approaches that may account successfully and usefully for the varieties and complexities of texts such as the carmina popularia. To this effect, criteria such as functionality, orality, texture, traditionality, and anonymity are not to be dismissed, but analysed from different theoretical perspectives. The analysis of these criteria should not lead to a prejudicial categorisation of folksong, to be distinguished in form and content, as well as in origin and composition, from literate poetry. Rather, any analysis, such as my own that will follow this Introduction, will be undertaken from the perspective of the contexts of reception and perception of the various songs themselves.