Устойчивост и вариантност в българския героичен епос
Stability and Variativeness in Bulgarian Heroic Epos

Summary/Abstract: The fundamental causes of variativeness lie in the very nature of the creation of epos and in the specific rules regulating its mechanism. By applying V. Ya. Propp’s theory about the epic conception (‘zamysel’), the author goes on to underline that the variants and versions of an epic work should in the first place be considered in their relation to this conception, as their inner interrelations are also projected by it. The semantic variations in the subject-matters, the differences in the basic meanings, the semantic alterations, all these reveal the collisions of single meanings within the framework of the main subject-matter. The description and the interpretation of this multiformity provide a key to the reading of the epic work in its entirety. Some general theoretical conclusions might be drawn from the analysis of an epic song considered in the aggregate of all its variants and versions. To this purpose the author uses here the song “Momchilitsa, neyniyat sedemgodishen sin i Korun gidiya” (“Momchil’s Widow, Her Son of Seven and Daredevil Korun”). All variants and versions, in all their diversity, preserve and transmit the most stable and most significant elements of the epic conception. At the same time they transmit different component parts of the latter, they complement its wholeness by way of their concrete forms of implementation of it. Besides, they reflect the evolution, the dynamic processes in the epic conception and fix the tendencies and the modifications in it. The approach here suggested enables the scholar to consider the epic folksong in terms of semantic variety and collision of single meanings, as a semantic compound. The conception of a complete epic can only be discovered through the total of its variants and versions and within the context of the whole epic tradition. In order to read the song with the entire variety of its meanings, the researcher will have to reveal the concrete realization of the epic conception, as well as the general trend in the latter.

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