The Iliad reveals a traditional oral poetic style, but many researchers believe that the poem cannot be treated as solely a product of oral tradition. In The Iliad and the Oral Epic Tradition, Karol Zieliński argues that neither Homer’s unique artistry nor references to events known from other songs necessarily indicate the use of writing… Read more
[Originally published in The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception: A Companion, ed. Marco Fantuzzi and Christos Tsagalis, 59-77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. In this online version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within curly brackets (“{“ and “}”). For example, {69|70} indicates where p. 69… Read more
This work explores the role of orality in shaping and evaluating medieval Icelandic literature. Applying field studies of oral cultures in modern times to this distinguished medieval literature, Gísli Sigurðsson asks how it would alter our reading of medieval Icelandic sagas if it were assumed they had grown out of a tradition… Read more
Bosnian traditional ballads have intrigued many by their beauty and eloquence, from Goethe’s poetic interest in them in the eighteenth century to the work of twentieth-century scholars such as Milman Parry and Albert Lord. These songs are now available to the English reader in a bilingual edition offering a selection… Read more
This 2016 “born digital” work is an expanded edition of a publication that originally appeared May 11, 2010 on FirstDrafts@Classics@. Read more
Edited by Mary Louise Lord after the author’s death, The Singer Resumes the Tale focuses on the performance of stories and poems within settings that range from ancient Greek palaces to Latvian villages. Lord expounds and develops his approach to oral literature in this book, responds systematically for the first… Read more
Albert Bates Lord here offers an unparalleled overview of the nature of oral-traditional epic songs and the practices of the singers who composed them. Shaped by the conviction that theory should be based on what singers actually do, and have done in times past, the essays collected here span half… Read more
[This article was originally published in 1930 in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 41:73–148. The original page-numbers of the printed version will be indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{73|74}” indicates where p. 73 of the printed version ends and p. 74 begins.] 1. The plan of the… Read more
[This article was originally published in 1932 in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 43:1-50. The original pagination of the printed version is embedded within brackets in this electronic version: for example, {1|2} marks where p. 1 stops and p. 2 begins.] i. The Homeric Language and the Homeric Diction: Older… Read more
The “Homeric Question” has vexed Classicists for generations. Was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey a single individual who created the poems at a particular moment in history? Or does the name “Homer” hide the shaping influence of the epic tradition during a long period of oral composition and transmission? In this… Read more
