A new book titled “The Journey of Words: From Prefaces to Scholarship, from Poetry to the Novel” by Doctor of Sciences in Philology, Professor Fuzuli Bayat, Head of the Department of Folklore Theory at the Institute of Folklore ANAS, has been published.

The book, published by the publication “Zardabi Publishing” in 2026, consists of 208 pages. This collection brings together the author’s scholarly, literary-critical and analytical writings penned over the years, as well as forewords written for various publications.

As noted in the section of the book “A brief explanation” is characterized not merely as an anthology of various texts brought together, but as a coherent presentation of a system of thought shaped within diverse literary, scholarly and aesthetic contexts. Presented in chronological order, the writings allow the reader to trace the developmental trajectory of the author’s intellectual inquiries, aesthetic approaches and poetic analysis methodology over the course of many years.

In the book a range of interconnected topics from the aesthetic and semiotic possibilities of poetry to the structural-semantic characteristics of folklore and from collective memory to layers of mythological and religious-mystical thought are analyzed. The author examines poetic texts not merely as literary examples, but also within the context of the semiotic, hermeneutic, aesthetic, and socio-cultural principles that underpin them.

The title “The Journey of Words” also encapsulates the book’s central conceptual theme. According to the author’s approach, the word traverses an intellectual path, extending from prefaces to scholarly analyses and from poetry to the theory of the short story and the novel, thereby forging connections between diverse discourses.

The book is intended for specialists, researchers, university faculty and students conducting research in literary studies, folklore studies and other fields of the humanities, as well as for a broad readership interested in Azerbaijani literature and folklore.