THE STRATIFICATION OF EPIC IN THE WORKS OF ACADEMICIAN ALEKSANDR VESELOVSKY

Abstract

Although A. N. Afanasyev, O. F. Miller, F. I. Buslaev and others wrote about the multi-layered composition of the epic, Aleksandr Nikolaevich Veselovsky was the only one to take an attempt to consider this phenomenon from the point of view of contact-genetic relations and typological mergers in the epic motion and plotting. Refusing abstract reflections on the aesthetic advantages of the epic, A. N. Veselovsky was one of the first to decide on a sign system with an organized poetic and plot-composite structure. Guided by the idea of the evolution of consciousness, processes of perception and reproduction of epic texts, the scholar searched for the causes and consequences of the species division of the epic tradition in the cognitive abilities of the “collective mind” to receive and reproduce; in the social norms and institutions that were established in the present ethnos; in the presence or absence of military-political conflicts and attitudes towards them; in people’s experiencing or not experiencing oppression in their state; in an interethnic dialogue; in pragmatics of value judgments; in confrontation between old ideals and new living conditions, etc. In other words, the species stratification was explained by A. N. Veselovsky from a methodological point of view. Identifying the conditions for the formation of the “internal legality of the people's poetic organism”, he revealed different types of epic formations; moreover, he discovered reliable criteria for the classification of epic conglomerates. Taking advantage of the complex analysis of the works by A. N. Veselovsky on the epic, we managed to identify the properties described by him in various epic layers, while preserving his original wording. The scholar did not establish the mandatory evolutionary relationship between them; neither did he deny possible transitions from one type of epic to another, if objective prerequisites were created. The most important thing for him was the methodology itself making it possible to identify the type of a text with the use of the properties that determine its phenomenology, semantic structure, functioning of verbal-artistic universal, and its places in the multi-layered composition of the epic heritage.

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