Typological relationships in the structure of the plot “On the first fight of the glorious Jangar with Sanal”

Abstract

The relevance is dictated by the fact that the issues of plot typology of the national versions of the epic Jangar are still insufficiently studied. The study of the plot structure and typological similarities of the plots of the Xinjiang-Oirat version of Jangar in the context of the Kalmyk version is a novelty. The aim and objectives of the study are to examine the structure and content of the epic story in its narrative presentation, to reveal the typological similarities of the constituent elements of the plot of the Sinjiang-Oirat version of Jangar by the narrator Rampil “On the first fight of the glorious Jangar with Sanal”. The comparative-typological analysis was carried out in the sequential consideration of the structure of the epic plot (exposition, motivation, plot twist, culmination, denouement) at the content level and in analogy with the Kalmyk epic. The research is based on a complex approach including comparative-typological, structural-typological, structural-semantic methods of study. The synthesis of approaches taking into account the concepts of Vladimir Propp, Boris Putilov, Sergey Neklyudov allow us to combine the analysis of the epic story structure and semantics of its constituent elements in a typological correlation. As a result of the work it was established that the exposition is typologically similar to the beginnings of epic tales of Mongolian peoples and Kalmyk bogatyr tale, in which the event time is profane and coincides with the biographical time (the hero's youth), and the epic space is hyperbolized and archaic (eight thousand eight hundred worlds); the motivation and the beginning of the plot are expressed by typical epic situations characteristic of fairy tales and epics, where the heroes behave in accordance with certain epic canons – watching the approaching hero, adopting a fighting attitude, the ritual of greeting at the meeting; the culmination of the plot, which is the central event of the heroic epic – the bogatyr's duel, consisting of different stages, each of which reveals typological parallels with the Kalmyk epic; the denouement, uncharacteristic for stories about military collisions, is due to the specificity of the narrative, which tells about earlier times, when there was a confrontation between the future suzerain and his bogatyrs-vassals; the denouement also reveals direct typological similarities of episodes and motifs with the Kalmyk epic. Thus, significant typological similarities of the plot of the Xinjiang-Oirat version with the Kalmyk epic and the bogatyr tale are noted both at the plot-compositional level and at the content level (narrative plot elements, epic situations, motifs and formulas), which gives grounds to speak about genetic roots going back to Mongolian epic traditions. Acknowledgments: The article was carried out within the framework of the research work of the B. B. Gorodovikov Kalmyk State University.

Acknowledgments: The article was carried out within the framework of the research work of the B. B. Gorodovikov Kalmyk State University

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