This article discusses oral literature, as an old and well established term in ethnolinguistics and anthropology, but a controversial one in the field of literature. Recently, the issue has also become an ethical matter related to the cultural rights of native people in the American continent and by the same token, a major aesthetical subject for academic research. With that in mind, I consider the relevance of Bakhtinian literary theory, especially those concepts based on the aesthetics of verbal creation, as a way to approach the study of native oral literatures, the Maya poetics in particular, whose intellectual and artistic achievements stand out for their archaic backgrounds and their resonance in contemporary times. This discussion leads us to the issue of world literature as an artistic sphere whose canon is undergoing important critiques, in part coming from those indigenous voices the canon has left outside, but also from academic voices that aim for an inclusion of native oral poetics as literature. DOI: https://doi.org/10.47295/mren.v9i3.238
