Scholars in a diverse array of fields have engaged vigorously with Albert Lord’s The Singer of Tales since its original publication in 1960, and the reviews have been in for a long time. We still read this book, we still re-read it, we still cite it, we still applaud when it supports our own arguments, we still argue pointedly with it when it does not. A traditional review of this third edition will accomplish little. Rather, the re-issuing of a classic volume prompts state-of-the-field type reflections, and I want to use this space to offer some brief comments in that vein that the appearance of the new edition of The Singer of Tales inspires.
Harvard University’s Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature houses the recordings and transcriptions that Milman Parry and Albert Lord made of and collected from performers of oral epic song in the former Yugoslavia. At present the monumental task of digitizing these materials and making them freely available online engages the Collection’s curators. Here resides the main difference between the second edition of The Singer of Tales (published in 2000 and edited by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy) and the third edition. A compact disc accompanied the second edition and included audio recordings of passages Lord quoted in the book, some photographs from the researchers’ fieldwork in 1934–35, and a film showing the guslar (singer) Avdo Mededovic performing. The reader will not find a CD in the third edition because the Collection’s website now provides access to the items on the CD.
If this third edition merely drives more traffic to the Collection’s website, that will be gain enough. For a distinguishing feature of the Collection’s archive is as follows: it provides access to multiple performances of multiple performers from the same time and place, from the same time and different places, from the same place and different times, etc. In the first paragraph of his book, Lord proposed to investigate “the way in which oral epic poets learn and compose their songs” (2019: 3). Working with a thick corpus of the sort to which he had access enabled him to do that: one can better answer questions about learning and composition when one has access to multiple performances by multiple performers as opposed to when one has only one performance or even the work of only one performer to hand. With a thick corpus one can also move beyond questions of compositional technique to consider more abstract questions about not just how oral performers do what they do but why they do it. There are other readily accessible corpora that fit the description. Wilhelm Radloff’s transcriptions and translations of nineteenth-century Kyrgyz epic poets, dusty as they may be, remain useful. (One probably reads with greater ease and profit Arthur T. Hatto’s re-presentations of Radloff’s texts.) But recent material shows the way forward, such as P. Marcel Kurpershoek’s magisterial volumes of Bedouin lyric poetry and Nicole Revel’s collection and digitization of performances of epics and ballads from the Philippines. No doubt, the several exemplary editions of single poems, textualized in keeping with modern scholarly standards, help too. John D. Smith’s presentation of the epic of Pabuji, J. P. Clark-Bekederemo’s book on the Ozidi saga, William Collins’s edition of the guritan of Radin Suane, Lauri Honko’s two volumes on the Siri epic, Karl Reichl’s edition of the epic of Edige—these (and the several I left out) are required reading. Yet it is not a knock on these contributions to note that a thick corpus comprising performances by different performers enables researchers to gain a greater diachronic and synchronic appreciation of the work of a tradition’s practitioners, greater than that which an edition of a single poem can provide.
The Singer of Tales galvanized the study of the compositional structures that oral performers deploy. Lord’s main targets were the formula, the theme (“the repeated incidents and descriptive passages in the poem” [4]), and the story pattern. Work still progresses on the formula. In my field of Homeric studies, every year brings renewed interrogations of the device: one may consult, for instance, the work of Chiara Bozzone or Ahuvia Kahane. Those in other disciplines can look forward to Frog and William Lamb’s edited collection of studies on formulas in a number of traditions. Likewise, in keeping with Lord’s interest in theme and story pattern, researchers think about larger structures beyond the formula that enable composition. Lauri Honko favored the multiform, while Arthur Hatto pushed his notion of epic moments. William Hansen directs our attention to “middle-range structures,” and John D. Smith and Daniel Prior use what they call “contract analysis” to investigate how stories unfold. At the same time, as I hinted at earlier, researchers have moved on from The Singer of Tales’s interest in how the poet composes. John Miles Foley, for instance, gave us new tools, especially his model of traditional referentiality, with which to investigate the distinct ways in which oral performers generate meaning. These days we are also after the impacts, from the cognitive to the kinesthetic, that oral texts and oral performers have on their audiences.
Parry and Lord used the material they collected to illuminate the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homerists had found other literatures useful before, but we link the comparative turn in Homeric studies with Parry and Lord. Explorations both of Homeric themes and structures and of Homeric performance from comparative perspectives became ever more popular and have continued apace. Some look to, for instance, ancient Near Eastern literatures and others to Chinese literature, from the ancient to the early modern. Still others consider modern oral traditional works, from epics to folktales, and their performers and audiences. Comparative study frequently offers analogies rather than proofs, but it can suggest new perspectives on our Homeric poets and their poems. Lord reminds the Homerist, “Actually we have two songs” (2019: 195). Interrogating the Iliad and the Odyssey from comparative perspectives can help us fill in gaps. Because research into modern oral traditions elucidates the texts we have, denigrating the enterprise is foolish. More productive are the debates about which oral traditions the Homerist should explore. Thérèse de Vet, for instance, critiqued the Parry archive’s influence on Homeric scholarship. Hatto had questioned the relevance of the “Serbo-Croatian” tradition, which he characterized as comprising lays, to the analysis of epic, a stance challenged by Honko.
Should a fourth edition of The Singer of Tales emerge twenty years hence, it will again be edifying to assess the book’s stunning legacy.
--------
[Review length: 1083 words • Review posted on February 27, 2020]