Article

Name: Artistic structure of the Buryat heroic epic (a case study of the heroic tale “Osodor Mergen” recorded in 1941)

Authors: Evgeniya N. Kuzmina

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of folklore

Abstract:

The heroic tale “Osodor Mergen” was recorded by Sergey Petrovich Baldaev, the famous folklore and ethnographic collector, in 1941, from Nikolai Gunkhanovich Gunkhanov (1873–1945), a Buryat storyteller. This tale was actively performed by the storyteller and retained a complete narrative and poetic structure corresponding to the living epic tradition. Unfortunately, the tale has reached us only in a textual form due to the lack of sound recording devices at the time of recording. Unlike many tales centered on one hero, “Osodor Mergen” tells about two generations of heroes: a father and his three sons. The plot develops linearly, with the narratives of the main characters’ exploits coming one after another, following the traditional plot structure of the Buryat heroic tales. The tale’s composition includes several songs to give the narrator a break (sag daralga) and intensify the listeners’ participation in the tale (ugtalgyn duun). The episodes borrowed from fairy tales make the heroic tale entertaining. For example, the first storyline about Osodor Mergen has a contamination from an international fairy tale story about a “handless” wife and her son locked in an iron barrel and thrown into the sea. The waves nail the barrel to an island where the mother and the son are to live. Also fascinating is the narrative of the difficult tasks given to a particular hero that is told as a fairy tale.

Keywords: heroic epos of the Buryats, plot, fabulous style, stereotypes, preservation of tradition

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