This book aims to provide an analytical study of the sources, the art and the presentation of oral, or spoken, poetry. Paul Zumthor, a literary theorist, discusses the development of oral poetry from antiquity to the present in all its aspects: the forms of oral poetry; the epic in the West, Africa and other parts of the globe; styles of performance across the world; roles played in oral poetry (the poet as interpreter, the listeners, the variable duration of oral poetry in time and space, etc.); and oral ritual actions from archaic times to the present.