The Singer of Tales (Masterplots II: Nonfiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Albert B. Lord
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Literary criticism
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction
- Subjects: Language or languages, Tradition, Literature, Poetry or poets, Writing, Storytelling, Creative process, Oral history, Songs or songwriters, Greek or Roman times
Form and Content
The Singer of Tales has its origin in work begun by Albert B. Lord’s teacher Milman Parry. It was Parry’s theory that the language of the Homeric poems is to a large extent a language of traditional formulas, created over a long period of time by poets who composed their songs without the aid of writing. Homer, according to Parry, was an oral poet who composed as he performed, using ready-made and largely inherited phrases varying in length from one or two words to several lines. In the approximately twenty-eight thousand verses that make up...
[The entire page is 2673 words long]
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