Research by Milman Parry and Albert Lord
- 1935 – Parry records Avdo in Bijelo Polje (9 songs on a phonograph, 4 dictated)
- Over 80,000 verses in just five days
- 1950–1951 – Lord returns and records an additional ~18,000 verses
- In total, nearly 100,000 verses — forming the core of the Parry Collection at Harvard
Experiments That Changed Science
Avdo demonstrated that an illiterate singer can:
- hear a poem once and immediately reproduce it
- expand it several times
- maintain epic structure across thousands of verses
“Avdo demonstrated that oral poets can ‘originally create’ vast epics many times longer than their source versions.”
— Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales
Comparison with Homer
Avdo’s works became a key piece of evidence for the oral-formulaic theory and helped explain how Homeric epics may have been composed.
Conclusion
Avdo Međedović is today regarded as one of the most important figures in the study of oral literature. His genius did not lie in written text, but in the living word and inexhaustible creativity.