E-mail: tgivanova@inbox.ru Tel.: +7 (812) 328-19-01
4, Makarov emb., St. Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation
DSc in Philology, Head Researcher, Institute of Russian Literature (the Pushkin House), Russian Academy of Sciences
This article reviews the history of transcribing epics (byliny) in Simbirsk Province. In this region writing down byliny was first done in the nineteenth century. Alexander Mikhailovich and Peter Mikhailovich Yazykov, who owned the estates of Yazykovo, Stanichnoye and Golovino in the late 1830s — 1840s, made a great contribution to their collection. In the second half of the 1850s, P. V. Shein recorded byliny from Ust-Uren and Aleksandrovka. The history of settlements that preserved the performance of byliny is a subject of special interest. The Simbirsk epic tradition was a late regional development: all of the villages of the Simbirsk region in which byliny were recorded were founded no earlier than the middle of the seventeenth century. The social composition of these villages was much more diverse than the peasant villages of the Russian North, which had not known serfdom. In Simbirsk Province, epics were written down in cities (Simbirsk and Syzran). A number of settlements founded by Cossacks in service suggests that settlers brought song epics with them to their new homes. In all probability, serfs who were transferred by their owners to lands they had been granted also brought the tradition with them. We should note that in Simbirsk province, unlike in the Russian North, byliny were sung in serf villages (Yazykovo, Ust-Uren, Alexandrovka, Stanichnoye and Golovino). As we learn from the history of Simbirsk settlements, many of them were populated by Old Believers (like Yarykla and Golovino).
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Ivanova T. G. On the History of Collecting Byliny in the Simbirsk Province. Traditional Culture. 2024. Vol. 25. No. 2. Pp. 70–80. In Russian.