Tel.: +7 (388 22) 253 04;
6 Sotsialisticheskaya St., 649000 Gorno-Altaisk, The Altai Republic, Russian Federation;
E-mail: konun1974@mail.ru
PhD (Philology), Senior Researcher, Budget-funded Scholarly Institution of the Altai
Republic "Research Institute of Altaian Studies" named after S. S. Surazakov.
Variants of the epic "Altai-Buuchai" recorded from oral authenthic performances are unheralded to wide readership. In this regard it is important to study the problems of this epic and to analyse artistic descriptive devices systematically. These issues have never been under special consideration. This paper is the first study of poetics and stylistic of the "Altai-Buucha" — epics variants. The main goal of the work is the comparative analysis of the stylistic techniques appearing in different variants (primarily two non-contemporaneous records of performances by the same singer) of the heroic epic "Altai-Buuchai" along with using several variants published only in Russian translation. The varying figures are limited to basically stable shapes and include a set of bearing key words into their structure. The anadiplosis is a characteristic stylistic technique for folk-tales composition in singing among the Altaians. The particularity of memory processing during the oral transmission of a significant amount of information was the basic factor of its development as a stylistic category. The main function of the complicated epithet set is strengthening of the feature that is being described or specification of one or another facets.A brief analysis of some of the stylistic categories of the variants of the heroic tale "Altai-Buuchai" allows to characterize them as typical examples of the artistic texture of Altai oral epic poetry which have retained their significance up to the present day. Althouhg having the "canonized" content and despite the fact that variants of the tale "Altai-Buuchai" have a common root, each variant still presents a purely individual verbal and artistic monument, that is carrying the fullness of the content, that has been inherited from the generations of predecessors, in which canons of the style and poetics of the epic are manifested. Each singer has his own performing style,essentially his own lexical vocabulary and in general his own epic language, reflecting the features of the traditional culture of a particular ethnic environment.
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