TO THE TYPOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTIC OF EARLY FORMS: THE CASE OF NORTH TUNGUS PEOPLE

Abstract

The article describes the features of poetic form and content of epic products of the ethnicities representing the Northern branch of Tungus group – Evenki and Evens. The main purpose is to reveal the characteristics that allow building the historical typology of the epic, which should be based neither on the social characteristics of performers of the epic nor on the world represented in the epic, but on the objective formal characteristics of epic narrations. The tasks of the work are to identify the common features peculiar to the archaic forms of epic narrations, and not typical of more developed and chronologically latest forms of the heroic epic. The author recognizes the interrelations and interdependences of the epic and fairy tale, yet prefers to recognize that the myth and not-fantasy prose, epic and fairy tales form the triad built on the line between truth and fiction. Studying the repertoire of epic motives and drawing up the arch of epic motives allows separating epic motifs from fantasy motifs of fairy tales (despite the presence of motifs, common for these two genres), and using the structure of epic motifs for the historical and typological characteristic of specific texts. The author believes that the gradual evolution of epiclies in the increased quantity of the epic motifs, from some minimum to the maximum, which can be seenin its latest examples. Other features of the early epic are as follows: uncertainty of the ethnic characteristic of heroes; absence of concreteness of the image of an ethnographic reality; minimal poetic means, inducing to classify texts only by their content; such peculiarity of introducing a new characters to the text as when they first are heard as a voice, and only then appear in a narration in the visible space so that heroes can see the new character.The revealed features of the earliest epic works allow classifying as early epic narrations many samples of folklore of Paleosiberian peoples (Chukchi, Eskimos, Koryaks), in which folklore epic forms have not been found before or they have not been distinguished from historical legends with military plots.

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