Introduction to the Second Edition by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy This new edition of The Singer of Tales marks the fortieth anniversary of the original publication of Albert B. Lord’s book (1960). The words of Lord, as well as the original pagination, have been preserved unchanged. Important new features, however, have been added. The first of these features involves the principal evidence that Lord… Read more
Preface by Harry Levin The term “literature,” presupposing the use of letters, assumes that verbal works of imagination are transmitted by means of writing and reading. The expression “oral literature” is obviously a contradiction in terms. Yet we live at a time when literacy itself has become so diluted that it can scarcely be invoked as an esthetic criterion. The Word as spoken… Read more
Foreword This book is about Homer. He is our Singer of Tales. Yet, in a larger sense, he represents all singers of tales from time immemorial and unrecorded to the present. Our book is about these other singers as well. Each of them, even the most mediocre, is as much a part of the tradition of oral epic singing as is Homer, its most talented representative. Among… Read more
Abbreviations Frequently Used in the Notes AJA: American Journal of Archaeology HSCP: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology AJP: American Journal of Philology Parry: The Milman Parry Collection in the Harvard College Library TAPhA: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association Parry and Lord: Serbocroation Heroic Songs Pauly-Wissowa: Real-Encyclopädie der Classichen Altertumswissenschaft Lord: Serbocroation and Bulgarian texts collected by the… Read more
Chapter 1. Introduction [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] In the early thirties of this century, when… Read more
Chapter 2. Singers: Performance and Training Were we to seek to understand why a literary poet wrote what he did in a particular poem in a particular manner and form, we should not focus our attention on the moment when he or someone else read or recited his poem to a particular audience or even on any moment when we ourselves read the poem in quiet solitude. Read more
Chapter 3. The Formula There came a time in Homeric scholarship when it was not sufficient to speak of the “repetitions” in Homer, of the “stock epithets,” of the “epic clichés” and “stereotyped phrases.” Such terms were either too vague or too restricted. Precision was needed, and the work of Milman Parry was the culmination of that need. The result was a definition of the “formula” as… Read more
Hour 17. Looking beyond the cult hero in the Libation Bearers and the Eumenides of Aeschylus The meaning of tīmē 17§1. The key word for this hour is tīmē, plural tīmai, ‘honor; honor paid to a superhuman force by way of cult’. So far, we have seen situations where cult heroes as well as gods can receive tīmē. But now, as we will see in this hour, tīmē is also… Read more
Hour 18. Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and the power of the cult hero in death The meaning of kolōnos 18§1. The key word for this hour is kolōnos, which means a ‘tumulus’ or ‘elevation’ in a local landscape. As we will see, kolōnos means also the whole landscape itself, which is a garden or grove that is entered by Oedipus. Further, Colonus / Kolōnos is the name of a district… Read more
Hour 19. Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and heroic pollution The meaning of miasma 19§1. The key word for this hour is miasma, meaning ‘pollution, miasma’, a noun derived from the verb miainein, meaning ‘pollute’. In the last hour, we saw that Oedipus in the Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles needed to perform libations to the Eumenides in order to free himself of pollution, which was preventing him from becoming the cult… Read more
