Historical folklore of the Tuvans and the peoples of Western Mongolia (plot and thematic commonality, ethnic features)

The ethno-folklore traditions of the Tuvans and the peoples of Western Mongolia (the Oirat peoples, consisting of such nationalities as the Uriankhai, Dorved, Bayad, Olet, Darkhat, Mingat, Sartuul, Zakhchin) developed under similar historical, cultural and natural-geographical conditions of being part of single state entities and are therefore characterized by similarity of economic and cultural type, religious and ideological community, close linguistic ties, which contributed to the emergence of common motifs in the plots of not only various epic tales and fairy tales, but also legends and traditions as well. In this regard, it is extremely relevant to conduct research to identify common features of Tuvan historical folklore, identify commonalities in their main plot-thematic cycles and ethnic originality in comparison with the folklore of the peoples of Western Mongolia, which is one of the interesting and little-studied areas in Tuvan and Mongolian folklore studies. Thus, the main goal of the authors is to identify the main plot-thematic cycles and ethnic originality of samples of historical legends, traditions and oral stories of Tuvans and Western Mongolian peoples with the task of further comparative study of their typology, genre specificity, historicism, the main circle of characters, stylistic and artistic characteristics and features of existence. The introduction of historical legends and traditions into scientific circulation is extremely important for further theoretical generalization of their genre originality, circle of characters, problems of various contaminations, artistic characteristics as original phenomena of folklore. The novelty of the work is that for the first time in Tuvan and Mongolian folklore studies, comparative and contrastive studies of the historical folklore of neighboring peoples are conducted. The material for the study was folklore texts in Tuvan and Mongolian languages and their translations into Russian, published by Tuvan and Mongolian folklorists, as well as field expedition materials of the authors collected in Mongolia and Tuva. In conducting the study, the authors used historical-typological and complex methods, as well as field research methods in collecting and recording materials (included observation, interviews, surveys, textual description), applied the method of review, generalization, the leading one in the work is comparative and contrastive analysis. As a result of our research, the authors came to the conclusion that the historical folklore of Tuvans and the peoples of Western Mongolia developed within non-fairy-tale prose as an independent type with its own themes and genre features, artistic characteristics, system of characters and peculiarities of existence.

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