Albert Bates Lord was a Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard who, after the untimely death of Milman Parry, carried on that scholar's research into epic literature. Lord authored the book Singer of Tales , first published in 1960.

He demonstrated the ways in which various great ancient epics from Europe and Asia were heirs to a tradition not only of oral performance, but of oral composition. He argued strongly for a complete divide between the illiterate authors of the Homeric epics and the scribes who later wrote them down.