The Singer of Tales
This 40th anniversary edition of Albert Lord’s classic work includes a unique enhancement: the original audio recordings of all the passages of heroic songs quoted in the book; a video publication of the kinescopic filming of the most valued of the singers; and selected photographs taken during Milman Parry’s collecting trips in the Balkans.
Parry began recording and studying a…
This 40th anniversary edition of Albert Lord’s classic work includes a unique enhancement: the original audio recordings of all the passages of heroic songs quoted in the book; a video publication of the kinescopic filming of the most valued of the singers; and selected photographs taken during Milman Parry’s collecting trips in the Balkans.
Parry began recording and studying a live tradition of oral narrative poetry in order to find an answer to the age-old Homeric Question: How had the author of the Iliad and Odyssey composed these two monumental epic poems at the very start of Europe’s literary tradition? Parry’s, and with him Lord’s, enduring contribution–set forth in Lord’s The Singer of Tales—was to demonstrate the process by which oral poets compose.
Now reissued with a new Introduction and an invaluable audio and visual record, this widely influential book is newly enriched to better serve everyone interested in the art and craft of oral literature.
Note: The content of the CD originally distributed with this book has been embedded into the epub for the online version.
Online version of the 2nd ed., edited with an introduction by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy. Originally published in 2000 by Harvard University Press.
Use the following persistent identifier: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_LordA.The_Singer_of_Tales.2000.
Copyright, Harvard University Press. Published here with permission.