By the decision of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Folklore of ANAS, a new monograph by academician Mukhtar Kazımoglu (Imanov) entitled “Oral Art and Written Literature” has been published.

The research work analyzes the multifaceted nature of the relationship between folklore and written literature, the internal regularities of oral creativity and its interactions with written literature on scientific grounds. The author focuses on the connection between oral art and ritual, the traces of mythological thought in contemporary literature and the interaction between folklore and written narrative.

The book consists of nine chapters such as “Oral Art and Its Connection to Ritual”, “Mythological Thought and Contemporary Literature”, “Narrative in Folklore and Written Literature”, “Time and Space”, “Style”, “The Magical and Artistic-Aesthetic Essence of Laughter”, “Different Aspects of Presenting the Hero”, “Orality in Ashiq Poetry and the Individuality of the Master Artist” and “Epic Poetry and the Harmony of the Epic”.

Academician Mukhtar Kazımoglu mentions that folklore is not only the initial stage for written literature, but also exists as an independent art form with a unique aesthetic system. In the monograph it is also mentioned about the issues such as the poetic principles of orality, the manifestation of individuality in ashiq art and the transformation of ritual into an artistic form from a scientific and theoretical perspective.

In the chapters of the book “Narrative in Folklore and Written Literature”, “Time and Space” and “Style” the author analyzes the mechanisms of narrative in oral and written texts comparatively. In these sections the differences and similarities among the cyclical concept of time, sacred and mythological spatial models and the linear concepts of time and individual space formed in written literature are studied. The issue of style is interpreted in the context of how fixed formulas, repetitions and collective forms of expression arising from orality are transformed into individual artistic style in written literature.

In the study the topics such as the magical and social functions of laughter, the place of the space-time model in folklore thinking and the correspondences between epic poetry and epos against the background of the general picture of folklore poetics are also analyzed.

The author’s approach shows that the boundaries between oral art and written literature are sometimes blurred and that these two cultural layers enrich each other. The scientific editor of the book is academician Kamal Abdulla and the reviewer is Professor Afzaladdin Asgar.

Link to the electronic version of the book.