The plot of the Yuolen Nyuryuye olonkho in the light of the spatial organization of the epic universe

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of the plot: a fundamental and general category of folklore and literary studies. The relevance of addressing the topic of the epic plot, as well as the motifs that construct it, is caused by the insufficient study of the historical transformation of the Yakut epic olonkho, on the one hand, and on the other – the need for an in-depth study of the spatial organization of the olonkho world, which can lead to the explication of the patterns (invariants) of plot composition, to the definition of the principles of plot composition of olonkho. The novelty of the study is the focus of the study through the prism of the relationships of motifs along the syntagmatic horizontal in the course of the “plot development” of the olonkho text of Yuyolen Nyuryue. The aim of the work is to conduct a structural and semantic analysis of the plot-significant motifs of the olonkho text of Yuyolen Nyuryue in the light of the dynamics of the epic space. The work uses structural and semantic, semiotic, functional analysis, methods of review, description and generalization. The roles of spatial loci in the plot structure of the olonkho text are designated. The functions of plot motifs in the syntagmatics of the epic text are highlighted. The order of the coupling of plot motifs in a holistic event sequence is shown. The presence of a condensed, unexpressed spatial element in the name of the hero's bride is noted. The author's innovation of the epicteller Mikhail Sorov is emphasized in the form of introducing repetitive digressions and narratives in the plot composition of the olonkho. The author comes to the conclusion that although the traditional plot-compositional structure is not violated, in the olonkho of Yuyolen Nyuryue there is a simplification of the plot line through the loss of some plot elements, truncations of the course of implementation of the vertical deployment of the coordinates of the epic space, contaminations (connections) of motifs, narrowing of epithetics in poetics and symbolism in the sign system of olonkho. This circumstance indicates the prospects for further research of olonkho texts of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods with the actualization of the formulation of problems of the historical dynamics of the motifs of the Yakut olonkho in the perspective of structure, semantics, function, poetics, semiotics.

Acknowledgements: The study was carried out within the framework of the research project of the North-Eastern Federal University “Universal codes in epic tradition: typological and comparative aspects”.

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