Usmena tradicija – Zanemareni oblik književnoumjetničkog stvaralaštva
Oral Tradition – Neglected Form of Literary Creation

Summary/Abstract: Oral literature is the oldest and the most long-lasting form of the artistic language expression. In the tens of thousands of years long history, when so-called primitive human communities had been completely agraphic, the forms of creativity passed down by word of mouth were the only possible expression of artistic creation in language. Oral literature preceded written one and it was tradition and source where the written literature drained life blood from. In South Slavic region, oral literature tradition has had irreplaceable socio-historic role, especially in affirmation of domestic national literatures in a wider cultural context. Therefore, it is surprising that oral literature creativity was subordinated to the written form literature throughout history, which often led to underestimation and negligence of the oral literature. This paper aims to present some causes and forms of previously mentioned attitude towards oral literature. We will try to identify interference between oral and written literary tradition using particular examples from Bosniak literature, which illustrates importance of oral tradition for both, history and contemporaneity of so-called written literature.

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