Epic Singers and Oral Tradition, by Albert B. Lord, is a particularly distinguished entry in the Myth and Poetics series. My goal, as series editor, has been to encourage work that helps to integrate literary crit- icism with the approaches ofanthropology and pays special attention to problems concerning the nexus of ritual and myth. A model of such integration and emphasis is Lord's 1960 classic study of the mechanics and aesthetics of oral-traditional poetry, The Singer of Tales. With the appearance, some thirty years later, of Epic Singers and Oral Tradition in the present series, we now have a new model. Representing as it does the wide chronological span of Albert Lord's scholarly activity and an even wider geographical span ofhis diverse cultural interests, this book constitutes a definitive introduction to the man and his work.
"Although much talked about in negative criticism," Lord writes in his introduction, "living oral-traditional literature is still not very well known, and I try over and over again in the course of this book to acquaint the reader with some of the best of what I have had the priv- ilege to experience and to demonstrate the details of its excellence." Lord speaks from experience, the experience offieldwork in living oral traditions, and this background confers on him a profound authority, despite his modesty about his work. Epic Singers and Oral Tradition makes plain, once and for all, the legitimacy and importance of explor- ing the oral-traditional heritage of Western literature.