Poetics of Things in the Heroic Epic “Dzhangar”

Introduction. The article is devoted to the consideration of the poetics of things in the epic tradition of “Dzhangar” of the Kalmyks of Russia and the Oirats of Xinjiang. The image of the world of things that surround the heroes of the epic serves not only as a material background, they (objects, things) are necessary for the actions of the character and the expression of his individuality. The research material is the texts of the epic songs of the Xinjiang-Oirat and Kalmyk versions of “Dzhangar”. The purpose of the article is to consider the objective-material world in the heroic epic “Dzhangar”. Results. Consideration of the objective-material world in the Kalmyk and Xinjiang-Oirat versions of “Dzhangar” showed that in the lyrics a thing is one of the elements characterizing the image of a hero; in the depiction of an epic picture of the world, its heroes, characters, a thing acquires a symbolic meaning. The name of the epic country Bumba is associatively connected with a functioning object — a “treasure vessel”, the semantic field of which is its connecting link. The palace preserves the experience of the nomadic life of the Oirats and Kalmyks, their material way of life, as an objective reality of the epic space. The epic palace of Dzhangar, being a kind of field of attraction, gathers the heroic family at the banquet table, where the ruler of Bumba chooses the hero to go on a military campaign. The items of horse equipment and weapons of the hero in the epic “Dzhangar” are correlated with the objective realities with the help of which the hero moves in the epic space, undergoes difficult trials and achieves the goal of the military campaign. Things that are correlated with objects of material culture perform their main functions and are associated with the peculiarities of the worldview of the traditional culture of the Mongolian peoples.