The Singer of Tales is a book by Albert Lord that formulates oral tradition as a theory of literary composition and its applications to Homeric and medieval epic.

The first part concentrates on the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition and its implications for bards who would recite epic poetry and the eventual literary figures who converted that oral material into written form.

His development of the theory is firmly rooted in studies of contemporary Serbo-Croatian poets who primarily use oral formulas to remember long passages that make up songs and epic.

In doing so, he borrows Parry's definition that defines a formula as "a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea.

"[3] Parry's formulas are almost mathematical in nature; his discussion focuses on repetitions of meter and pitch more than textual content.

Parry writes that the same theme can be expressed by many different formulas, and analyzes several examples from Serbo-Croatian poetry to demonstrate his points.