The book entitled Theoretical Foundations of Folklore Studies by Professor Ramazan Gafarlı, Doctor of Philological Sciences and Head of the Dede Gorgud Department at the Institute of Folklore of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS), has been published.

Designed as the alternative textbook for master’s and doctoral students, the work examines the nature of folklore, its genre system, poetics, theoretical schools and research methods within a broad scholarly context. The author approaches folklore as a complex cultural system that preserves and transmits a people’s historical experience, collective memory, worldview and cultural identity.

Alongside the classical theoretical approaches to folklore studies, in the book it is mentioned that also methodological frameworks employed in contemporary humanities. In addition to the mythological school, the historical-geographical and comparative-historical methods, functionalism, structuralism, anthropological approaches, archetypal analysis and psychoanalytic interpretation, the work examines such fields as performance theory, contextual folkloristics, narratology, cultural memory theory, gender folkloristics, decolonial approaches, eco-folkloristics, posthumanism, digital ethnography and corpus folkloristics.

The publication also addresses internet folklore, texts circulated on social media, memes, viral narratives, digital communication, and the changing characteristics of folklore in the age of artificial intelligence, presenting these subjects in the context of contemporary research challenges. This approach demonstrates that folklore is not merely a heritage preserved in traditional settings; it also emerges, evolves, and spreads through new communication channels and technological environments.

The 672-page book was published in 2026 by Mifologiya.az Publishing House. It consists of preliminary sections, an introduction, 37 chapters, a conclusion, appendices, a bibliography and abstracts in Azerbaijani, English and Russian.

The book was scientifically edited by Professor, Doctor of Sciences in Philology Asif Hajili. The reviewers were Associate Professor, PhD Aynura Safarova and Associate Professor, PhD Khalida Mammadova.

The publication is intended for folklorists, philologists, ethnographers, cultural studies scholars, teachers, master’s and doctoral students, as well as researchers interested in the theoretical and methodological issues of contemporary humanities.