John Miles Foley

John Miles Foley (1947 – 2012) was a scholar of comparative oral tradition, particularly medieval and Old English literature, Homer and Serbian epic. He was the founder of the academic journal Oral Tradition and the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri, where he was Curators' Professor of Classical Studies and English and W. H. Byler Endowed Chair in the Humanities. Foley was generally regarded as the world’s foremost authority on the subject of comparative oral traditions.