The Singer of Tales in Performance

by John Miles Foley

"A great book... " -- Choice"... a groundbreaking work of scholarship... "Â -- Asian Folklore Studies"This extremely fascinating study opens an important chapter in the ethnography of speech, briliantly confirming the views advanced by Dell Hymes, Albert Lord and Richard Baumann." -- The Journal of Indo-European StudiesBuilding on his work in Traditional Oral Epic and Immanent Art, John Foley dissolves the perceived barrier between "oral" and "written," creating a composite theory from oral-formulaic theory and the ethnography of speaking and ethnopoetics." a groundbreaking work of scholarship that clears the path for solving the perennial problem of the interpretation of oral-derived texts. The book will be of immense value to students of folklore and literature, and to those seriously interested in the interface of the two traditionally divided disciplines." -- Asian Folklore Studies

235 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1995

About the author

John Miles Foley (1947 – 2012) was a scholar of comparative oral tradition, particularly medieval and Old English literature, Homer and Serbian epic. He was the founder of the academic journal Oral Tradition and the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri, where he was Curators' Professor of Classical Studies and English and W. H. Byler Endowed Chair in the Humanities.