The technique of repetition in Altai heroic tales

Altai heroic tales are unique monuments of the people’s epic heritage. They act as a cultural code that preserved the originality of the ethnic worldview, traditions of the people, as well as the peculiarities of their poetic language. At the same time, the Altai epic has much in common and peculiar in comparison with the epics of other Turkic-speaking peoples. The study of the epic style originality is special interest for folkloristics. The relevance of this study is determined by the insufficient study of style features of the Altai people’s heroic tales. The scholarly novelty of the work consists in the fact that it is the first to study the types of repetition as one of the stylistic phenomena of the Altai epic. The purpose of this research is to study repetition as a stylistic phenomenon of folk poetics. The sources for the study were the heroic tales published in the series “Altai Bogatyrs”. An important criterion for selecting sources for the study was the observation of this phenomenon in authentic texts, where the features of the narrator’s living language are preserved to a greater extent. The study is based on the analysis of Altai heroic tales from different narrators and other folklore sources. The descriptive method, methods of comparison and generalization were also used in the work. As a result of the study, the types of repetitions found in the Altai epic were identified and described; their main functions were defined. It is established that repetition in folklore text is an important and multidimensional phenomenon. In heroic tales it is manifested at different levels. Repetitions of individual words and word combinations, phrases and whole episodes are distinguished. According to the frequency of use, there are twofold, threefold and more repetitions. Repetitions occur within a line, at the beginning, end or at the junction of poetic lines, forming such stylistic figures as anaphora, epiphora and epanaphora. Each type of repetition fulfills a certain function in the text. The study has shown that the functioning of repetitions in heroic tales differs in the activity of their use by narrators.