Oral Tradition Volume 2, Number 1January 1987
About the Authors
Frans Jozef van Beeck
Frans Jozef van Beeck’s biography is not available.
Paolo Valesio
Paolo Valesio’s biography is not available.
Thomas J. Steele
Thomas J. Steele’s biography is not available.
Harold M. Stahmer
Harold M. Stahmer’s biography is not available.
Peter Sharratt
Peter Sharratt’s biography is not available.
Dennis P. Seniff
Dennis P. Seniff’s biography is not available.
Bruce A. Rosenberg
Professor of American Civilization at Brown University, Bruce Rosenberg has long been a significant force at the intersection of folklore and literature, particularly in medieval studies. His article on Leon Forrest stems from a deep interest in African American oral traditions and folk-preaching, as attested for example by his book Can These Bones Live? (1987).
Elias L. Rivers
Elias L. Rivers’ biography is not available.
John G. Rechtien
John G. Rechtien’s biography is not available.
Walter J. Ong
One of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of study that Oral Tradition serves, Walter J. Ong, now University Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Saint Louis University, has published a brilliant succession of books and articles, among them The Presence of the Word (1967), Interfaces of the Word (1977), Fighting for Life (1981), and Orality and Literacy (1982).
Randolph F. Lumpp
Randolph Lumpp’s biography is not available.
Albert B. Lord
Albert B. Lord (Harvard University, Emeritus) truly needs no introduction for anyone working in the field of oral tradition. His comparative research, especially The Singer of Tales (1960), in effect established the Oral Theory as a method subsequently applied to dozens of different traditions. He is near completion of a sequel to that landmark volume.
William J. Kennedy
William J. Kennedy’s biography is not available.
Robert Kellogg
Robert Kellogg’s biography is not available.
Werner H. Kelber
Werner H. Kelber is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Rice University. His work has focused on oral tradition, gospel narrativity, biblical hermeneutics, the historical Jesus, orality-scribality studies, memory, rhetoric, text criticism, and the media history of the Bible. His major work, The Oral and the Written Gospel (1997), examines points and processes of oral-scribal transition in the early Jewish-Christian tradition.
Eric A. Havelock
In 1963 Eric Havelock’s landmark book Preface to Plato revolutionized the way we read both Homer and other ancient Greek literature by making the case for the “oral encyclopedia” of cultural attitudes, values, and beliefs that was “published” in oral performance. A collection of his seminal writings, The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences (1982), has since appeared, as has a fascinating study of the Presocratics (1983). He is Sterling Professor of Classics (Emeritus) at Yale University.
John Miles Foley
The late John Miles Foley was a specialist in the study of the world’s oral traditions. He wrote with particular emphasis on ancient Greek, medieval English, and South Slavic. In 1986 he founded the journal Oral Tradition, and as architect-navigator of the Pathways Project, his last book Oral Tradition and the Internet: Pathways of the Mind was published in 2012 (University of Illinois Press). The body of his work is widely recognized as one of the most influential contributions to the study of the world’s oral traditions. Further information is available at his portal (http://johnmilesfoley.org/portal/Welcome.html).
Thomas J. Farrell
Thomas J. Farrell’s biography is not available.
Ruth El Saffar
Ruth El Saffar’s biography is not available.
James M. Curtis
James M. Curtis’s biography is not available.
