Studying oral poetry can help us to better understand our minds, including the interaction between habits and improvisation, the basis of creativity and the keys to acquiring and using language. Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas, a researcher at the Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Navarra and Mihailo Antovic, professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of Niš (Serbia), developed this theory in their new book entitled Oral Poetics and Cognitive Science.

The volume is a pioneer in the contribution of oral poetics to linguistic and cognitive studies and was published by De Gruyter, one of the top ten best academic publishers according to Scholarly Publishers Indicators.

Both researchers started with a study of Serbo-Croatian minstrels. According to the experts, these singers maintained an oral tradition, and the study of their poems and the way they learned them "brings us closer to the origins of verbal art and, in addition, to language itself," Pagan explained.

Pagán and Antovic developed their research in Serbia thanks to a Tandem grant from the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Freiburg (FRIAS) during the 2012-2013 academic year. In addition, they organized an international conference in which folklorists, Homeric scholars, linguists and cognitive scientists participated. As Pagan noted, "There, we discussed ideas for this interdisciplinary research, which have now been published in this volume.”

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