The Singer of the Story

Author: Albert B. Lord (USA)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: This book is one of the works translated from the "Foreign Folklore and Culture Studies Classics Translation Series" edited by Mr. Zhong Jingwen, a renowned folk literature expert in China. It is a foundational work of the "Parry-Lord Theory" and is hailed by academia as the "Bible" of orality theory. The main purpose of this book is to reveal and prove that oral poetry is a process that combines creation and performance, embodying Professor Lord's 25 years of exploration and numerous significant discoveries in ancient Greek literature and South Slavic oral epic traditions. The comparative methodology developed by Lord and his teacher Parry, based on their fieldwork in former Yugoslavia, has been widely adopted by academia. His theories on the creation, transmission, and deepening of oral epic poetry have had a profound influence. The theory of oral poetry established by Parry and Lord is one of the most promising theoretical and methodological developments of the 20th century, representing the third major theoretical school in the field of folklore studies after the anthropological school and the Finnish historical-geographical school. The Parry-Lord theory has influenced the study of oral literature and classical literature, bringing new vitality to related fields.