Oral poetry is a form of poetry that is transmitted orally and memorized rather than written down. It exists primarily within oral cultures, though some forms of it can survive after a culture has made the transition to literacy. Poetry (from Ancient Greek: (poiéo/poió) = I create) is traditionally a written art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Oral culture is a tradition all over the world. ... World literacy rates by country The traditional definition of Literacy is the ability to read,write, listen, and speak. ...

Oral poetry differs from oral literature in general, which can include shorter and more variable pieces and can coexist much more with written literature, by certain consistencies within its form, which were brought to the attention of scholars by Albert B. Lord. Foremost among these consistencies is the use of formulaic language: repeated phrases that help a poet structure and remember her poem. Drawing on the work of his teacher Milman Parry, who first theorized that such repetitions in Homer's epics indicated that he was an oral poet, Lord extended the theory to other forms of oral poetry, in particular several poetic traditions in what was then called Yugoslavia. Lord and other scholars also connected this theory to various medieval epics, including Beowulf. Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken (oral) word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. ... Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ... Albert Bates Lord (1912-1991) was a Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University who, after the untimely death of Milman Parry, carried on that scholars research into epic literature. ... Milman Parry (1902 -December 3, 1935) was a scholar of epic poetry. ... The Homère Caetani bust at the Louvre, a 2nd century Roman copy of a 2nd century BC Greek original. ... The epic is a broadly defined genre of poetry, and one of the major forms of narrative literature. ... Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija in all south Slavic languages, in Serbian and Macedonian Cyrillic Југославија) is a term used for three separate but successive political entities that existed during most of the 20th century on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe. ... This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ...

Parry's and Lord's work transformed the field of Homeric studies, introducing a new vocabulary for discussing elements of Homer's work that had previously been studied only in vague terms. Work on the precise nature of the two epics and on the process by which they came to be written down has advanced enormously since then, but the basic structure of oral poetry Parry and Lord argued for remains a current subject for research and debate.

References

• Lord, Albert B. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.
• Parry, Milman. "Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making. I: Homer and Homeric Style." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Vol. 41 (1930), 73–143.
• Parry, Milman. "Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making. II: The Homeric Language as the Language of an Oral Poetry." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Vol. 43 (1932), 1–50.