Hero in Bashkir Magic Tale: Means of Artistic Manifestation Revisited

Introduction. The language of the folk magic tale is characterized by a wide use of artistic means, including epithets; this may be explained by the worldview, aesthetic ideas, certain concepts that developed in the course of the people’s history, as well as with folk philosophy and the specific features of the language. So far there has been no special study devoted to imaginative-expressive means of Bashkir magic tales; hence, to fill in the gap, the present article undertakes the study of epithets of the stock of artistic means characteristic of the Bashkir folk magic tale that add to the expressiveness of the language in magic tales. Thus, the study aims at identifying and analyzing epithets that characterize the main character of the magic tale from different sides; A. I. Aliyeva’s method has proved useful for this part of the research, while the examination of their structural types draws on the method elaborated by the Altai researcher M. A. Demchinova. Data and research methods. The sources for the research data were the texts of magic tales published in the Bashkir language in the two books of the scholarly collection Bashkir Folk Art; the analysis of the data was carried out with the help of textual and analytical methods. Results. The texts of the tales were examined first to identify epithets; then, the analysis focused on the epithets that characterize the main character: their appearance, marital status, social status, clothing, housing, etc. It appears that the epithets that characterize the protagonists in Bashkir magic tales have a systemic character. There is a certain sequence in the complex portrayals of personages that help to create the image of an ideal hero who may be poor but, also, kind, generous, and always ready to help those in need. The second part of the article focuses on the structural types of the items, including simple and complex epithets. Each of the type is illustrated with examples.

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