Albert Lord

Albert Bates Lord (born September 15, 1912 in Boston , † July 21, 1991 ibid) was an American literary scholar, classical philologist and Slavist. He is known for his studies of orally transmitted literature such as the origins of Homeric epics ( Odyssey , Iliad ).

Life

Albert Lord attended the Boston Latin School with graduation in 1930 and studied at Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in classical philology in 1934 and a master's degree in comparative literature in 1936. From 1937 to 1940 he was a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. He received his PhD in comparative literature from Harvard in 1949. In 1949 he became Lecturer at Harvard, 1950 Associate Professor, 1952 Professor of Slavic Languages ​​and Comparative Literature and from 1972 Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor . There he was in charge of the folklore and mythology department. In 1983 he retired.

From 1934 to 1935 (with Milman Parry ), 1937 and during longer stays in 1950/51, 1961 to 1964 and 1966/67 he collected folk songs in Yugoslavia (also during shorter stays in the summer months), in 1937 in Albania and in the 1950s in Bulgaria.

Lord examined the oral tradition of Serbian and Bulgarian hero stories and epic poetry of the Guslar and transferred this to literary examples such as Homer, Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poetry, the Gilgamesh epic , the Roland song , Kalevala , Digenis Akritas , Avdo Međedović and Child Ballads . He saw the written version of the Homeric epics as a record of an oral lecture, with the oral text itself being variable or improvised using a range of templates and elements (formulas). Lord identified several similarities in such oral poetry . His main work Singer of Tales first appeared in 1950. He built on the work of his teacher Milman Parry and continued it (honorary curator of the Milman Parry Collection of oral literature from 1959 to 1991).

His wife, Mary Louise Lord , née Carlson, was a professor of classical philology at Connecticut College . He had been married to her since 1950 and had two children with her. Mary Lord published abandoned works after Lord's death.

From 1949 to 1950 he was a Guggenheim Fellow. He was a Fellow of the American Folklore Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1956). In 1990 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Novi Sad .

Fonts (selection)

• with Béla Bartók : Serbocroatian Folk Songs , New York 1951
• Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs , volumes 1,2, Cambridge, Belgrad 1953/54, volumes 3 and 4 with David E. Bynum 1975
• Beginning Serbocroatian , The Hague 1958
• The Singer of Tales , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1950, 1981 (= dissertation 1949)
• Umbundu. Folk Tales from Angola , Boston 1962
• with David Bynum: Beginning Bulgarian , The Hague 1962
• Publisher: A Bulgarian Literary Reader , Cambridge 1962
• The Wedding of Smailagic Meho , Cambridge 1974
• Yurgoslav Folk Music (with Bela Bartok, editor Benjamin Suchoff), Albany, New York 1978
• Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs and Instrumental Pieces from the Milman Parry Collection , Albany, NY, 1978
• Perspectives on Recent Work on the Oral Traditional Formula, in: Oral Tradition , Volume 1, No. 3, 1986, pp. 467-503.
• Characteristics of Orality, in: Oral Tradition , Volume 2, No. 1, 1987 (Festschrift for Walter J. Ong, SJ), pp. 54-72.
• Epic singers and oral traditions , Cornell UP 1991
• The Singer resumes the tale , Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard, 1995 (Ed. Mary Louise Lord)
• Oral Composition and 'Oral Residue' in the Middle Ages , in: WFH Nicolaisen (Ed.): Oral Tradition in the Middle Ages . Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 1995, pp. 7-29.

literature

• Festschrift: Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord, Ed. John Miles Foley, Columbus, Ohio, 1981
• Margaret Hiebert Beissinger: In Memoriam: Albert Bates Lord (1912-1991) , The Slavic and East European Journal, Volume 36, 1992, pp. 533-536
• John Miles Foley: Albert Bates Lord (1912-1991): An Obituary, Journal of American Folklore, Volume 105, 1992, pp. 57-65.
• Morgan E. Gray, Mary Louise Lord, John Miles Foley: A Bibliography of Publications by Albert Bates Lord, in: Oral Tradition, Volume 25, No. 2, 2010, pp. 497-504.

Web links

• Obituary in the New York Times , August 3, 1991
• Database of Classical Scholars , Rutgers University (biography of Charles Beye)