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The Singer of Tales
This 40th anniversary edition of Albert Lord's classic work includes a unique a CD containing 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 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.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
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About the author
Albert Bates Lord
18 books5 followersAlbert Bates Lord was a professor of Slavic and comparative literature at Harvard University who, after the death of his mentor Milman Parry, carried on Parry's research on epic poetry.
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July 23, 2018
In my college seminar on Homer, we read about the work of Milman Parry. He was a young classics professor who traveled to the Balkans in the 1930s to record the still-living tradition of sung epic poetry there. The singers recorded by Parry and his assistant, Albert Bates Lord, were generally illiterate and learned their craft by observing older singers who had learned their craft the same way, and so on back into the distant past. Parry and Lord asked multiple singers in the same region to sing the same tales, and asked the same singer to sing the same song on multiple occasions. By observing the patterns and changes, they formulated a theory of how oral poetry works.
Parry died tragically at a very young age, having written numerous articles, but leaving a larger synthesis of his work incomplete at his passing. Years later, Lord picked up where his mentor had left out, the result being "The Singer of Tales." The first part of the book describes the aspects of Parry and Lord's theory of oral poetry. It was very interesting to compare different versions of the same basic tale, sometimes line by line and other times in summary form. Though the singers invariably said that they sang a song the same way every time, there would be minor changes in emphasis or in detail. Sometimes a singer might use a more extended description of, say, the hero's dress and armaments—the same description which he might also use in a completely different tale. Yet all versions of the song would tell the same essential story, which seems to be why the singers believed they sang it the same way every time. This aspect of oral poetry reminded me of listening to a great storyteller (I am thinking of my grandmother) tell the same story on different occasions. Sometimes it might be shorter and to the point, while other times if the audience is really getting into it the tale might be stretched out with further details.
Another key element of traditional oral poetry, which after all is sung to fit a particular meter, is the use of formulas. These make it possible for the poet to sing his tale fluently, even while composing the specific words on the spot. The best analogies I can think of to this skill, which is not exactly memorization, are jazz improvisation using riffs and hip-hop free styling. In jazz one might learn a good way of navigating a particular chord progression by using certain licks, and then apply the same or similar patterns in different keys or different songs where the same progression is used. In hip-hop one might have a mental bank of good rhymes to use while in the flow. In my limited experience, it was helpful to work backwards from these rhymes toward the content of the full lines. Perhaps the oral poets worked in a similar way. A further point on this is that we tend now to exalt originality in art. No modern composer wants to sound like Beethoven, or Bach, or Mozart. Each wants to sound like no one who wrote music before. But the traditional oral poets had no such bias. They wanted to tell the story in the most entertaining and effective way. If that meant using the same formulas that their fathers and grandfathers and more ancient bardic ancestors had used, there was no shame in that.
The second part of "The Singer of Tales" then applies Parry and Lord's theories to ancient poetry that seems to have been written down from oral sources. Principally this means the work of Homer. Even though I was (or so I thought) familiar with the gist of what Parry had found, for instance in the concept of formula in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the other aspects of the theory were a revelation to me. Homer did not, as I believed, recite these massive poems from memory per se. Instead he had a massive trove of stories and characters from which he fashioned his songs. The Iliad is his song about the wrath of Achilles, and the Odyssey about the adventures of wily Odysseus. But the canonical versions which have come down to us were surely just one version of Homer's singing of these tales. If he had only two hours to perform, he would no doubt have sung the same tales with much less detail. Overall, after reading Lord's book, I am even more impressed with Homer as a poet. But I am also less confident that specific details from the poems could be historically accurate. The primary concern is telling a good story, not historical accuracy.
The last chapter in the book looks at several medieval poems which Lord argues show signs of being originally oral. Beowulf, the Song of Roland, and the medieval Greek epic Digenes Akrites all show signs of formulas and other aspects of traditional oral poetry. But all are also mediated by writing. In the case of Beowulf we have only one source for the poem, but for Digenes Akrites there are four main manuscripts, some of which seem closer to an oral source while others seem to be "gussied up" in their written form.
All in all I found "The Singer of Tales" fascinating and enlightening. There are extensive quotations in the original languages, but English translations usually appear alongside. I think this book would be of interest to anyone curious about Homer and the origins of poetry in general.
Parry died tragically at a very young age, having written numerous articles, but leaving a larger synthesis of his work incomplete at his passing. Years later, Lord picked up where his mentor had left out, the result being "The Singer of Tales." The first part of the book describes the aspects of Parry and Lord's theory of oral poetry. It was very interesting to compare different versions of the same basic tale, sometimes line by line and other times in summary form. Though the singers invariably said that they sang a song the same way every time, there would be minor changes in emphasis or in detail. Sometimes a singer might use a more extended description of, say, the hero's dress and armaments—the same description which he might also use in a completely different tale. Yet all versions of the song would tell the same essential story, which seems to be why the singers believed they sang it the same way every time. This aspect of oral poetry reminded me of listening to a great storyteller (I am thinking of my grandmother) tell the same story on different occasions. Sometimes it might be shorter and to the point, while other times if the audience is really getting into it the tale might be stretched out with further details.
Another key element of traditional oral poetry, which after all is sung to fit a particular meter, is the use of formulas. These make it possible for the poet to sing his tale fluently, even while composing the specific words on the spot. The best analogies I can think of to this skill, which is not exactly memorization, are jazz improvisation using riffs and hip-hop free styling. In jazz one might learn a good way of navigating a particular chord progression by using certain licks, and then apply the same or similar patterns in different keys or different songs where the same progression is used. In hip-hop one might have a mental bank of good rhymes to use while in the flow. In my limited experience, it was helpful to work backwards from these rhymes toward the content of the full lines. Perhaps the oral poets worked in a similar way. A further point on this is that we tend now to exalt originality in art. No modern composer wants to sound like Beethoven, or Bach, or Mozart. Each wants to sound like no one who wrote music before. But the traditional oral poets had no such bias. They wanted to tell the story in the most entertaining and effective way. If that meant using the same formulas that their fathers and grandfathers and more ancient bardic ancestors had used, there was no shame in that.
The second part of "The Singer of Tales" then applies Parry and Lord's theories to ancient poetry that seems to have been written down from oral sources. Principally this means the work of Homer. Even though I was (or so I thought) familiar with the gist of what Parry had found, for instance in the concept of formula in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the other aspects of the theory were a revelation to me. Homer did not, as I believed, recite these massive poems from memory per se. Instead he had a massive trove of stories and characters from which he fashioned his songs. The Iliad is his song about the wrath of Achilles, and the Odyssey about the adventures of wily Odysseus. But the canonical versions which have come down to us were surely just one version of Homer's singing of these tales. If he had only two hours to perform, he would no doubt have sung the same tales with much less detail. Overall, after reading Lord's book, I am even more impressed with Homer as a poet. But I am also less confident that specific details from the poems could be historically accurate. The primary concern is telling a good story, not historical accuracy.
The last chapter in the book looks at several medieval poems which Lord argues show signs of being originally oral. Beowulf, the Song of Roland, and the medieval Greek epic Digenes Akrites all show signs of formulas and other aspects of traditional oral poetry. But all are also mediated by writing. In the case of Beowulf we have only one source for the poem, but for Digenes Akrites there are four main manuscripts, some of which seem closer to an oral source while others seem to be "gussied up" in their written form.
All in all I found "The Singer of Tales" fascinating and enlightening. There are extensive quotations in the original languages, but English translations usually appear alongside. I think this book would be of interest to anyone curious about Homer and the origins of poetry in general.
January 6, 2017
Albert Lord published The Singer of Tales in 1960 to explain and continue the work of his mentor, Milman Parry, who died in 1935. Working primarily in Serbia and Bosnia over decades, the two recorded hundreds of epic song performances, applied extensive linguistic and rhetorical analyses to these songs and recordings, and developed a thesis regarding oral-formulaic composition, which has come to be known as the Parry/Lord thesis.
Parry and Lord were actually classicists interested in the Homeric epics. They focused on then-Yugoslavia because, during the early-mid 20th century, it still possessed a tradition of sung epic storytelling, which was largely composed orally at the moment of performance by non-literate bards. This is to be differentiated from singers who memorize a song by rote and sing it in precisely the same words each time. Oral composition is the act of composing a song each time it is sung, based on a well-known story, varying the length and elaboration of the story with each singing in response to audience interest, available time, etc. The song is never sung in precisely the same words twice, but does tell the same story (i.e., basic plot).
Parry and Lord’s work helped determine, unequivocally, that The Iliad and The Odyssey were composed orally, and provided compelling evidence that they were composed by an individual bard (as opposed to representing some form of composite text). Their work also had further application to other texts supposed to have been composed orally by establishing the hallmarks of oral composition in the prominent use of formulas, where a “formula” is, according to Parry, “an expression that is regularly used under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea.” The theory has been applied to Old English poetry and even parts of the Quran to help explain their structures. The utility of the Parry/Lord thesis for considering communication of traditional material over millennia is exciting and really unprecedented.
Actually reading Lord’s line-by-line analyses of Slavic folk songs and Homer is a little interminable, especially for a non-linguist. However, it not only provides a clarity to thinking about Homeric and other potentially oral compositions, it prompts one to reconsider the ramifications of literacy, its limits and uses. According to Lord, oral composition as a practice requires that the composer/singer is non-literate. Once literacy is learned, a fundamental shift occurs with regard to how the singer/composer views a text and its mutability. Not only is a story’s content to be preserved, but the precise words of a text become sacrosanct and the idea of an “original” is born; an original against which all iterations must be compared.
In literate societies we customarily view literacy and the written word as not only useful, but practically a given in terms of its necessity. Parry and Lord’s work provides a reminder that becoming literate is not merely acquiring a useful skill. It means changing the way one thinks about and values words, story, communication, composition, and information itself. Literacy has given us much, but it has also limited us in certain key ways that our ancestors took for granted for tens of thousands of years. When we lost oral traditions, they did not simply morph into literate, written traditions. They disappeared, only to be preserved in disparate recordings of individual performances, like The Iliad, never to occupy again the position they held with respect to the long march of oral tradition and human history.
Final thoughts? To propose that a literate person could not possible compose orally is to ignore creative practices like freestyle rap, which naturally post-dates Parry and Lord’s work by decades, so they can be forgiven for omitting it. But the dimensions of freestyle in terms of length, may point towards both the limits to oral composition by a literate person, as well as the limits of modern audiences’ attention spans. Nevertheless, I wish one of them could be around to consider their theory in light of freestyle, or that some other scholar would tackle this.
Parry and Lord were actually classicists interested in the Homeric epics. They focused on then-Yugoslavia because, during the early-mid 20th century, it still possessed a tradition of sung epic storytelling, which was largely composed orally at the moment of performance by non-literate bards. This is to be differentiated from singers who memorize a song by rote and sing it in precisely the same words each time. Oral composition is the act of composing a song each time it is sung, based on a well-known story, varying the length and elaboration of the story with each singing in response to audience interest, available time, etc. The song is never sung in precisely the same words twice, but does tell the same story (i.e., basic plot).
Parry and Lord’s work helped determine, unequivocally, that The Iliad and The Odyssey were composed orally, and provided compelling evidence that they were composed by an individual bard (as opposed to representing some form of composite text). Their work also had further application to other texts supposed to have been composed orally by establishing the hallmarks of oral composition in the prominent use of formulas, where a “formula” is, according to Parry, “an expression that is regularly used under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea.” The theory has been applied to Old English poetry and even parts of the Quran to help explain their structures. The utility of the Parry/Lord thesis for considering communication of traditional material over millennia is exciting and really unprecedented.
Actually reading Lord’s line-by-line analyses of Slavic folk songs and Homer is a little interminable, especially for a non-linguist. However, it not only provides a clarity to thinking about Homeric and other potentially oral compositions, it prompts one to reconsider the ramifications of literacy, its limits and uses. According to Lord, oral composition as a practice requires that the composer/singer is non-literate. Once literacy is learned, a fundamental shift occurs with regard to how the singer/composer views a text and its mutability. Not only is a story’s content to be preserved, but the precise words of a text become sacrosanct and the idea of an “original” is born; an original against which all iterations must be compared.
In literate societies we customarily view literacy and the written word as not only useful, but practically a given in terms of its necessity. Parry and Lord’s work provides a reminder that becoming literate is not merely acquiring a useful skill. It means changing the way one thinks about and values words, story, communication, composition, and information itself. Literacy has given us much, but it has also limited us in certain key ways that our ancestors took for granted for tens of thousands of years. When we lost oral traditions, they did not simply morph into literate, written traditions. They disappeared, only to be preserved in disparate recordings of individual performances, like The Iliad, never to occupy again the position they held with respect to the long march of oral tradition and human history.
Final thoughts? To propose that a literate person could not possible compose orally is to ignore creative practices like freestyle rap, which naturally post-dates Parry and Lord’s work by decades, so they can be forgiven for omitting it. But the dimensions of freestyle in terms of length, may point towards both the limits to oral composition by a literate person, as well as the limits of modern audiences’ attention spans. Nevertheless, I wish one of them could be around to consider their theory in light of freestyle, or that some other scholar would tackle this.
March 6, 2009
Albert Lord's work is a good follow-up to Milman Parry's work on oral traditions (The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry), but unfortunately Lord falls short of his mentor's insights and skills. The book is divided into two portions: Part 1, the theory, and Part 2, the application. I really enjoyed Part 1, and Lord's writing is very accessible and easy to read (which wasn't necessarily a good thing. Parry's work on the same subject required a lot more close, careful reading, but Parry gave much greater insights -- a trade-off I was willing to make). In Part 2, I was disappointed. Lord's applications of the oral-formulaic theory were far too generalized for my taste. I felt his conclusions could be easily challenged, and he didn't provide the kind of highly detailed analysis that Parry gives to support his views. I was anticipating a lot of compelling, specific evidence that would demonstrate the differences between a text that originated from an oral tradition (usually via dictation) and a text that originated from a literary tradition, but Lord's analysis fell well short of my expectations. Overall, it's still a good introduction (which is why I think most literary programs exploring folklore and oral traditions use this as an entry-level text), but it has failings. I loved Part 1, but I was banging my head against the wall in Part 2.
August 31, 2012
a little dense (especially if you haven't any folkloric or classical background at all - sometimes i felt mine thoroughly insufficient). but an excellent read with solid writing.
and, further proving my theory that everything can be useful if you look at it from the right angle, i found the descriptions of oral epic composition to be *extremely* useful in terms of thinking about how to teach yoga. weird, but true.
and, further proving my theory that everything can be useful if you look at it from the right angle, i found the descriptions of oral epic composition to be *extremely* useful in terms of thinking about how to teach yoga. weird, but true.
August 23, 2011
Extremely enjoyable if out-of-date. Any scholar of oral poetry will find this book enlightening in view of the modern discussions as many of them stem from or argue against this type of approach. Lord's system of formulas (phrases of set length with interchangeable parts to allow for varied sense) is fascinating, particularly when broadened to theme and construction of tales, but what has developed from 1960s has been, in my opinion, able to fill in many of the holes or details of Lord's theory. Not to say that it is simplified but that it thrived on development, like a poem worked at over a long period of time by a good artist. Still, reading this book allowed me to more fully understand the foundation that more modern scholars have been building upon and, thus, comprehend their arguments much better (historical perspective usually does this). The section on Beowulf (my particular area of study) is unfortunately not as interesting as it may be, but the poem was certainly brought into the discussion by Lord's later commentators.
Even further, Lord is simply good to read. It's always enjoyable to read someone so in love with his area of study.
Even further, Lord is simply good to read. It's always enjoyable to read someone so in love with his area of study.
September 15, 2021
A great introductory read into the study of folkloric tales and the homeric question (not that I plan on reading further any soon). Truly a groundbreaking research, both by the methods it used and the huge push forward it gave to homeric studies. Albert Lord’s writing is of a very pleasing clarity. I think one would need some insight into Homer and indo-european epics in order to grasp this fully, but it was overall very accessible. I thoroughly enjoyed the first part on yugoslav folkloric singers, their training, the epic verse and formulas, and the epic themes. It was great to learn more about slavic epic, especially as I’ve always been interested in comparing early Slavic literature and Greek literature. The passages of « songs » cited are quite well-explained, and Lord guides us step by step towards having a good grasp of the birth of an oral folkloric tale. The second part was a bit more disappointing ; as a Classics major, I felt guilty for enjoying the Balkanic landscape of the first part a little too much - truly, the whole time, I had felt like I myself had been sitting in front of a bard and listening to a song about some hero in serbocroatian - and expected a lot from the part on Homer. I found that the « application » of the theory elaborated by Parry and Lord through their studies of yugoslav epic was not very thorough or detailed, I would’ve enjoyed taking deeper dives into the text and some specific passages. But a considerable amount of research on the formulaic aspects of Homer’s epic had already been done at the time and I understand Lord’s unwillingness to be redundant or to add 500 pages of homeric analysis to a book whose purpose it was not.
I only skimmed through the Appendix, but was very pleased to find the transcription of a poem composed in honor of Milman Parry by the bard Milovan Vojicic.
I only skimmed through the Appendix, but was very pleased to find the transcription of a poem composed in honor of Milman Parry by the bard Milovan Vojicic.
March 5, 2022
I got acquainted with this work in the course of my académic travels in the USA in the last twelve years This book got two editions, one in 1960 by A. B. Lord himself and another in 2000 edited by Stephen Mitchell and the and George Nagy, the former specialist in oral literature with Scandinavian literature emphasis and the other ,on Ancient Greek literature Studies, both of the followers of Oral Theory
This work is one of the cornerstones of XX th century scholarly thought and marked all the evolution of the early scholarly achievement from Meillet and historical linguistics, Saussure, Murko Milman Parry and his disciple Albert Bates Lord and Lord's followers and student.
The idea originated in late twenties of the XX century in Paris in the course of the the thesis' defence of Milman Parry as a piece of advice to this doctoral student from the mouth of his supervisor Antoine Meillet in the form of regret that he had not attended the classes in Paris by a Slovenian professor and ethnologist Mathias Murko Mr Meillet expressed this regret while hoping that this this oversight would be overcome in the future research of the young doctorate holder and he was right. İn the course of his studies Murko's theory was one to introduce him to the living laboratory of the South Eastern Europe with a rich epic Tradition that made possible creation of poems such as Iliad and Odyssey by one man when an occasion arose for this event'They even provided Balkan Homer singer able to sing song and narrate songs as long as homeric songs in the course of hours days and weeks. Lord and his followers started to sound The theory in Ancient Europe literature Beowulf ,Chanson de Roland, Nibelungen, Diogenios Akritas but without proving much in providing much firm evidence or convincing specialists of Middle Ages literature arising from one special postulat, the one of orality of a work namely to what extent are Iliad and Onyssey oral and to what extent is any work oral, or collective and what is the subjective part of the singer and a poet in . On the contrary this oral theory instigated a wider thought in studies in oral vs artistic link and a closely- knit interelation among these two poles which advances cultural studies on oral and literary impact A very stimulating work with consequences still open and subject to response from different schools Refreshing and full of potential which has instigated much research in Europe, England and America and posed new links of specialists of different kinds The first volume is the theory which is very good but the second volume needs redoing with new specialist's fields elaborated So;e od followers and researchers have been doing their work in ;ajor universities in Eurpoe and A;erica but asso in other too where epics and oral wlorish but also in Western Europe which has a firm tradition established namely that is in the research on Homer's epics qnd their link to orqlity thus reopening the Homeric question which hqs never been satisfactorily answered and our century is stll to have this qustion sorted out.
This work is one of the cornerstones of XX th century scholarly thought and marked all the evolution of the early scholarly achievement from Meillet and historical linguistics, Saussure, Murko Milman Parry and his disciple Albert Bates Lord and Lord's followers and student.
The idea originated in late twenties of the XX century in Paris in the course of the the thesis' defence of Milman Parry as a piece of advice to this doctoral student from the mouth of his supervisor Antoine Meillet in the form of regret that he had not attended the classes in Paris by a Slovenian professor and ethnologist Mathias Murko Mr Meillet expressed this regret while hoping that this this oversight would be overcome in the future research of the young doctorate holder and he was right. İn the course of his studies Murko's theory was one to introduce him to the living laboratory of the South Eastern Europe with a rich epic Tradition that made possible creation of poems such as Iliad and Odyssey by one man when an occasion arose for this event'They even provided Balkan Homer singer able to sing song and narrate songs as long as homeric songs in the course of hours days and weeks. Lord and his followers started to sound The theory in Ancient Europe literature Beowulf ,Chanson de Roland, Nibelungen, Diogenios Akritas but without proving much in providing much firm evidence or convincing specialists of Middle Ages literature arising from one special postulat, the one of orality of a work namely to what extent are Iliad and Onyssey oral and to what extent is any work oral, or collective and what is the subjective part of the singer and a poet in . On the contrary this oral theory instigated a wider thought in studies in oral vs artistic link and a closely- knit interelation among these two poles which advances cultural studies on oral and literary impact A very stimulating work with consequences still open and subject to response from different schools Refreshing and full of potential which has instigated much research in Europe, England and America and posed new links of specialists of different kinds The first volume is the theory which is very good but the second volume needs redoing with new specialist's fields elaborated So;e od followers and researchers have been doing their work in ;ajor universities in Eurpoe and A;erica but asso in other too where epics and oral wlorish but also in Western Europe which has a firm tradition established namely that is in the research on Homer's epics qnd their link to orqlity thus reopening the Homeric question which hqs never been satisfactorily answered and our century is stll to have this qustion sorted out.
February 19, 2024
"Perhaps they were wiser than we, because one cannot write song. One cannot lead Proteus captive; to bind him is to destroy him."
Fascinating analysis of oral traditional composition and how they relate to Homer's epics. Reading this and Carson's Eros the Bittersweet really emphasizes just how different the oral world is from the literary, in ways we scarcely realize. Would heavily reading this on the Center for Hellenic Studies' website, which embeds the songs.
EDIT: After thinking about it a bit more, I think I find something disquieting about part of the application of Parry and Lord's oral traditional hypothesis to Homer. Specifically, the categorization of things that don't make sense into the type of error characteristic of oral traditional epic as opposed to interrogating the supposed errors to see if there's something else interesting that comes out of them. I should find more current scholarship on that aspect of the application.
Fascinating analysis of oral traditional composition and how they relate to Homer's epics. Reading this and Carson's Eros the Bittersweet really emphasizes just how different the oral world is from the literary, in ways we scarcely realize. Would heavily reading this on the Center for Hellenic Studies' website, which embeds the songs.
EDIT: After thinking about it a bit more, I think I find something disquieting about part of the application of Parry and Lord's oral traditional hypothesis to Homer. Specifically, the categorization of things that don't make sense into the type of error characteristic of oral traditional epic as opposed to interrogating the supposed errors to see if there's something else interesting that comes out of them. I should find more current scholarship on that aspect of the application.
March 6, 2022
I haven't looked at this book since a graduate seminar in Homer several decades ago. Parry made an important observation about Homer's use of formulae (amazing nobody saw it before him); Lord elaborated it with devotion and tunnel vision. There is much that is good in Singer of Tales; the chapters on formula and themes are strong. Lord builds a solid case for oral composition both in Serbian traditional poetry and Homer. But then he goes a bit overboard with the dogma. In discussing the transition from oral to written poetry, he really has nothing conclusive to say about Homer and mostly presents his personal opinions with some overconfidence. The chapters on the Odyssey and Iliad try to shoehorn everything into preconceived patterns based on Lord's theories. Not everything is a fertility myth or dying god! This is the problem of looking at things through a single lens: you can make some really great observations, but your larger conclusions are likely to be way off.
Lord has a very readable style for a relatively technical book. What might be called an academic conversational style. I have never seen so many exclamation points in an academic book! I don't know any Serbian, but with the translations it is not that difficult to pick out words and formulae (a lot of recognizable IE formations).
Lord has a very readable style for a relatively technical book. What might be called an academic conversational style. I have never seen so many exclamation points in an academic book! I don't know any Serbian, but with the translations it is not that difficult to pick out words and formulae (a lot of recognizable IE formations).
November 9, 2009
Essential for the student of early lit., Beowulf, Homer,Bible, OE poetry, etc.
June 18, 2017
A book that is more interesting in its conception than in its execution. The idea is to decide whether the Iliad and Odyssey are part of an oral tradition or have become part of a written tradition. It would seem to be tough to tell with virtually no other samples to compare them to from that era. The author (and his teacher) have the idea to study epic storytelling by illiterate bards that still existed in Yugoslavia in the 1930s-50s. So the beginning of the book is a survey of that oral tradition and its characteristics, with insights then brought to bear on the ancient stories.
But I didn't find the project to be too convincing. Part of the problem might be the methodology of folklore study. It's not really a science, and there seems to be too much latitude in what conclusions might be drawn from fairly limited evidence. But this doesn't seem to stop the author from being pretty confident in his conclusions. The survey did give me a sense of the things that characterize orality. But the case that the Iliad and the Odyssey were still part of the oral tradition did not strike me as convincing or even as carefully made.
An interesting issue the author raised was how we can have texts for oral epics when tape recorders were not available. A scribe could not keep up with a bard's telling in real time; if a bard dictates an epic to a scribe, then the telling is likely to be artificial; and a bard who is able to write down his text is not illiterate. So it is hard to tell what we are reading when we read the Iliad and the Odyssey. The author seems to think they were dictated. These problems lead me to think that the epics had become written literature.
A topic that interests me is whether there is a single person, Homer, who is the source of both epics, or whether "Homer" is just a fiction. It would seem that experience of difference between story-tellers and variations by a single story-teller (as evidenced in Yugoslavia) would give criteria for testing whether the two epics have differences indicative of different story-tellers, or similarities indicative of a single story-teller. But the author never even considers this question.
This second edition from 2000 includes a CD that has field recordings from the original research done by the author and his teacher. In the recordings the story-tellers accompany themselves on a gusle, which is a single-stringed instrument. I have to say that I could hardly stand to listen to the clips. I suppose it is an acquired taste. I feel I am pretty open to world music--and I get a kick out of listening to, say, Tuvan throat-singing. But this was just unpleasant.
But I didn't find the project to be too convincing. Part of the problem might be the methodology of folklore study. It's not really a science, and there seems to be too much latitude in what conclusions might be drawn from fairly limited evidence. But this doesn't seem to stop the author from being pretty confident in his conclusions. The survey did give me a sense of the things that characterize orality. But the case that the Iliad and the Odyssey were still part of the oral tradition did not strike me as convincing or even as carefully made.
An interesting issue the author raised was how we can have texts for oral epics when tape recorders were not available. A scribe could not keep up with a bard's telling in real time; if a bard dictates an epic to a scribe, then the telling is likely to be artificial; and a bard who is able to write down his text is not illiterate. So it is hard to tell what we are reading when we read the Iliad and the Odyssey. The author seems to think they were dictated. These problems lead me to think that the epics had become written literature.
A topic that interests me is whether there is a single person, Homer, who is the source of both epics, or whether "Homer" is just a fiction. It would seem that experience of difference between story-tellers and variations by a single story-teller (as evidenced in Yugoslavia) would give criteria for testing whether the two epics have differences indicative of different story-tellers, or similarities indicative of a single story-teller. But the author never even considers this question.
This second edition from 2000 includes a CD that has field recordings from the original research done by the author and his teacher. In the recordings the story-tellers accompany themselves on a gusle, which is a single-stringed instrument. I have to say that I could hardly stand to listen to the clips. I suppose it is an acquired taste. I feel I am pretty open to world music--and I get a kick out of listening to, say, Tuvan throat-singing. But this was just unpleasant.
August 17, 2021
This book compiles the research done by Milman Perry in the 1930s that definitively proved that the Iliad and the Odyssey were oral poems performed and improvised/composed on the spot using a variety of metrical, grammatical, thematical and traditional techniques.
In the 1930s, Milman Perry went to Croatia/Serbia to record the local storytellers who performed poems using a gusle, a bowed string instrument. These poets were capable of singing long poems extemporaneously. Perry documented that these songs were not memorized, but orally composed on the spot, at times lengthened and shortened to meet the requirements and response of the audience. Each performance was unique.
Lord was a protégé of Perry. I’m not sure if he was in what was then Yugoslavia when the recordings were made. He goes through the various techniques – many of the unconscious to the poets themselves – that they used to orally compose these poems.
Related to the Iliad and the Odyssey are the famous epithets – swift-footed Achilles, rose-fingered dawn, lord of men Agamemnon, etc. – which appear throughout the long poem. The stock phrases help the poet fill metrical gaps and give him (the Serbian/Croatian poets were all men) time to think of the next passage. Perry found that that the singers he spoke to used these unwittingly, based on tradition, and it wasn’t a conscious effort to memorize stock phrases.
Lord cites many other techniques like repeated themes/plots that form the tradition upon which each generation of singer creates his work. He also explores Homer’s songs, as well as Beowulf and The Song of Roland, discussing how they are also oral poems and oral compositions.
Lord never makes the case, but it occurred to me that the technique is much like jazz improvisation. There are a few rules and traditions, and the artists create essentially a new version of the song each time.
This is a very thorough work which, I think, for most people might be a little dry. The key points could probably have been distilled to a long article. But for those who admire the Homer epics it does provide great insight to the composition of these masterpieces.
In the 1930s, Milman Perry went to Croatia/Serbia to record the local storytellers who performed poems using a gusle, a bowed string instrument. These poets were capable of singing long poems extemporaneously. Perry documented that these songs were not memorized, but orally composed on the spot, at times lengthened and shortened to meet the requirements and response of the audience. Each performance was unique.
Lord was a protégé of Perry. I’m not sure if he was in what was then Yugoslavia when the recordings were made. He goes through the various techniques – many of the unconscious to the poets themselves – that they used to orally compose these poems.
Related to the Iliad and the Odyssey are the famous epithets – swift-footed Achilles, rose-fingered dawn, lord of men Agamemnon, etc. – which appear throughout the long poem. The stock phrases help the poet fill metrical gaps and give him (the Serbian/Croatian poets were all men) time to think of the next passage. Perry found that that the singers he spoke to used these unwittingly, based on tradition, and it wasn’t a conscious effort to memorize stock phrases.
Lord cites many other techniques like repeated themes/plots that form the tradition upon which each generation of singer creates his work. He also explores Homer’s songs, as well as Beowulf and The Song of Roland, discussing how they are also oral poems and oral compositions.
Lord never makes the case, but it occurred to me that the technique is much like jazz improvisation. There are a few rules and traditions, and the artists create essentially a new version of the song each time.
This is a very thorough work which, I think, for most people might be a little dry. The key points could probably have been distilled to a long article. But for those who admire the Homer epics it does provide great insight to the composition of these masterpieces.
July 30, 2019
Masterpiece.
March 6, 2020
Groundbreaking work on how oral performances are delivered, improvised, received, transmitted and perceived in cultures without the use of written lyrics or recordings.
August 1, 2016
"If we cease to expect verbal identity between different performances of the same song, whether they be by different singers or by the same one, whether they be over a shorter or a longer period of time, we are bound to notice that there are a few simple types of differences between them; (1) elaboration or simplification; the same thing told with more or less detail; (2) different order in a series; usually the reverse order, but sometimes merely a different order. In respect to the first of these types, the elaboration is usually significant, whereas the simplification indicates either a limited scope on the part of the singer, a restriction of time, or lack of practice in the song. In any case, the elaboration, in spite of what the singer himself may think or say about it, is not 'pure' ornamentation; it has meaning in terms of the tradition from which it stems. In regard to the second type, one might conjecture as to why the change of order is often to the reverse. It would seem to be a sort of 'chiasmus.' Singers often use a series of questions followed by the answers in reverse order. Such a shift of order is regular practice. We should not be too surprised, therefore, to find it in transmission from one singer to another, since it is common in the singing of a given individual. Neither of these two types is a change in the 'essence' of a song. If the tradition moved from singing to singing, from singer to singer, only in these two ways, one would not arrive at the diversity of 'versions' and 'variants' of a single song which is so characteristic of oral traditional material. They account for some of the differences but not for all of them, and certainly not for the most radical.
But there are other types of change. The substitution of one multiform of a theme for another, one kind of recognition scene for another kind, for example, one kind of disguise for another, is not uncommon, we have seen, as songs pass from one singer to another. The endings of songs are less stable, more open to variation, than their beginnings. Here the tension between themes that arises from habitual association comes into operation. It may help to provide an ending when either there was none in the singer's experience or a given song or what there was seemed vague and hazy in his mind. The process may involve more than a mere ending to a song and actually lead the singer to mix songs, passing from one song pattern to another at a point at which the two patterns coincide. Singers recognize the fact that this kind of thing happens, because they criticize other singers for 'mixing' songs. It is well for us to understand how this comes about. It is not haphazard, but the result of perfectly understandable and knowable forces. To the superficial observer, changes in oral tradition may seem chaotic and arbitrary. In reality this is not so. It cannot be said that 'anything goes.' Nor are these changes due in the ordinary sense to failure of memory of a fixed text, first, of course, because there is no fixed text, second, because there is no concept among singers of memorization as we know it, and third, because at a number of points in any song there are forces leading in several directions, any one of which the singer may take. If his experience of the particular song is weak, either as a whole or at any part, the force in a direction divergent from the one he has heard may be the strongest.
It is worth pointing out again that the changes of which we have been speaking have been brought about, not by forces seeking change for its own sake, nor by pure chance, but by an insistent, conservative urge for preservation of an essential idea as expressed either in a single theme or in a group of themes. Multiformity is essentially conservative in traditional lore, all outward appearances to the contrary."
But there are other types of change. The substitution of one multiform of a theme for another, one kind of recognition scene for another kind, for example, one kind of disguise for another, is not uncommon, we have seen, as songs pass from one singer to another. The endings of songs are less stable, more open to variation, than their beginnings. Here the tension between themes that arises from habitual association comes into operation. It may help to provide an ending when either there was none in the singer's experience or a given song or what there was seemed vague and hazy in his mind. The process may involve more than a mere ending to a song and actually lead the singer to mix songs, passing from one song pattern to another at a point at which the two patterns coincide. Singers recognize the fact that this kind of thing happens, because they criticize other singers for 'mixing' songs. It is well for us to understand how this comes about. It is not haphazard, but the result of perfectly understandable and knowable forces. To the superficial observer, changes in oral tradition may seem chaotic and arbitrary. In reality this is not so. It cannot be said that 'anything goes.' Nor are these changes due in the ordinary sense to failure of memory of a fixed text, first, of course, because there is no fixed text, second, because there is no concept among singers of memorization as we know it, and third, because at a number of points in any song there are forces leading in several directions, any one of which the singer may take. If his experience of the particular song is weak, either as a whole or at any part, the force in a direction divergent from the one he has heard may be the strongest.
It is worth pointing out again that the changes of which we have been speaking have been brought about, not by forces seeking change for its own sake, nor by pure chance, but by an insistent, conservative urge for preservation of an essential idea as expressed either in a single theme or in a group of themes. Multiformity is essentially conservative in traditional lore, all outward appearances to the contrary."
December 19, 2024
I first read Homer as a freshman in college in a large lecture class taught by legendary professor John Finley. It was only a couple of years before his retirement, but he was still in top form. Part of his lectures on Homer dealt with the theory of Milman Parry and his protege, Albert Lord, as to why The Iliad and Odyssey were oral literature. It was based on their study of South Slavic epic singers whose method of composition and performance matched the style of Homer in striking ways. These singers were a dying breed in the 1930s and have now been wiped out by the spread of literacy and media, so that Parry and Lord's studies can never be repeated except by listening to the recordings that they made. But because, as in physics, recording alters the observed system and all observations are imperfect, there can be no substitute for their never to be repeated experience of the live performances of these men.
Two years after Finley I took a class in Slavic Folklore from Lord himself. We read and studied some of the South Slavic epics on which his studies with Parry were based. I remember the one about the Battle of Kosovo and being surprised at how many there were. I also remember reading the Russian epic known as The Lay of Igor's Campaign and numerous folk tales from around the Slavic world that we read through the lens of Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folk Tale. Lord was a grand old man and an excellent teacher of this small class.
So when I came across this book in a Brooklyn used book store, I had to buy it and renew my acquaintance with Parry and Lord's famous theory. It's as fascinating as I had hoped. The first part of the book is a discussion of the culture of the South Slavic epic singers, the way that they learn and practice their craft and the structures of their songs. A key feature is that each performance is different. The songs are improvised, not memorized. The main characters and plot elements are stable from performance to performance, but the actual song is created on the fly from formulas, themes and methods of ornamentation that have continuity but vary in their specific application with each performance. And then Lord identifies the markings of formulas and themes used in the same way in Homer to conclude that The Iliad and The Odyssey must have been oral works. The Parry/Lord theory has been attacked by subsequent scholars, but still I think that the basic premise that Homer's works must at their core be from the oral tradition is persuasive. There are also markings that point to a literary origin for Homer's works particularly the length (though Lord has an explanation for that one), but also the complexity of narrative structure, character development and multiple concurrent themes, which go far beyond the formulaic and seem to be beyond anything in the South Slavic epics (and for that matter beyond most other fiction from the Greco Roman world). Isn't this evidence of a strong authorial hand and a product that would be hard to produce by the method of the South Slavic epic singers? Or am I just making the literary analog of the creationist argument that the eye is too complex to be the product of gradual step by step evolution? I don't know. And I'm not familiar enough with the post-Lord scholarship to have an informed opinion, but my instinct is that Parry and Lord made a major correct discovery and were on the right track but that their explanations are incomplete when applied to Homer.
Two years after Finley I took a class in Slavic Folklore from Lord himself. We read and studied some of the South Slavic epics on which his studies with Parry were based. I remember the one about the Battle of Kosovo and being surprised at how many there were. I also remember reading the Russian epic known as The Lay of Igor's Campaign and numerous folk tales from around the Slavic world that we read through the lens of Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folk Tale. Lord was a grand old man and an excellent teacher of this small class.
So when I came across this book in a Brooklyn used book store, I had to buy it and renew my acquaintance with Parry and Lord's famous theory. It's as fascinating as I had hoped. The first part of the book is a discussion of the culture of the South Slavic epic singers, the way that they learn and practice their craft and the structures of their songs. A key feature is that each performance is different. The songs are improvised, not memorized. The main characters and plot elements are stable from performance to performance, but the actual song is created on the fly from formulas, themes and methods of ornamentation that have continuity but vary in their specific application with each performance. And then Lord identifies the markings of formulas and themes used in the same way in Homer to conclude that The Iliad and The Odyssey must have been oral works. The Parry/Lord theory has been attacked by subsequent scholars, but still I think that the basic premise that Homer's works must at their core be from the oral tradition is persuasive. There are also markings that point to a literary origin for Homer's works particularly the length (though Lord has an explanation for that one), but also the complexity of narrative structure, character development and multiple concurrent themes, which go far beyond the formulaic and seem to be beyond anything in the South Slavic epics (and for that matter beyond most other fiction from the Greco Roman world). Isn't this evidence of a strong authorial hand and a product that would be hard to produce by the method of the South Slavic epic singers? Or am I just making the literary analog of the creationist argument that the eye is too complex to be the product of gradual step by step evolution? I don't know. And I'm not familiar enough with the post-Lord scholarship to have an informed opinion, but my instinct is that Parry and Lord made a major correct discovery and were on the right track but that their explanations are incomplete when applied to Homer.
June 15, 2024
The Singer of Tales sets out to understand how ancient epic poems were composed through a phenomenological examination of the recorded songs of Yugoslavian tales. In the book Lord presents a strong argument for how academics and lay readers can distinguish between ballads and epics composed through oral traditions and ballads and epics whose origin is in the written word. At the same time, he mounts a defense of the oral traditions, their complexity and adaptability. At times, particularly in the early sections of the book devoted to the explanation of oral composition, I was reminded of essays and books describing the regression of listening in the age of recorded music. Indeed, Lord's description of the aesthetic of oral composition centered on the skill of the singer's composition of theme, story, and ornamentation during the performance vs. written poetry that establishes an aesthetic of complexity and adherence to an original text very much reminded me of the way Adorno, Elijah Wald and Attali describe the impact of technology on music. Lord's book is much less ideological, simply attempting to give the aesthetic structures of the oral tradition, but for those of us who love reading the ancient epics he not only signals something lost, but his examination helps us gain a greater appreciation of the genius of these singers and the traditions from which their works arise.
September 5, 2014
This is an interesting account of Lord and Parry's discovery that the Iliad and Odyssey were oral compositions, which is one of the greatest achievements of humanities scholarship in the past century, and laid the foundation for the media studies of Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong. However, Lord sometimes gets bogged down in boring technical details.
August 30, 2015
fascinating study of Oral Epic Poetry such as Homer's, using living oral poets in Yugoslavia to learn from. How oral poetry is composed, learned, studied, taught, performed; how different it is from poetry or songs of a literate society.
September 11, 2022
Seminal.
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