Hasonló motívumok a Dede Korkut könyvében és a régi magyar jogi, történelmi és népköltészeti hagyományokban
Similar Motifs in the Azeri-Turkish Book of Dede Korkut and the Old Hungarian Legal, Historical, and Folkloric Traditions

Author(s): Szilárd Szilágyi
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: Dede Korkut; the Szekler; common elements; legal customs; fairy tale motifs;
Summary/Abstract: In this article, we present some common motifs found in the medieval Azeri-Turkish Book of Dede Korkut and the archaic Hungarian (Szekler) legal customs, medieval gestae and chronicles, folk legends, ballads, and Hungarian folk tales. At the beginning of the paper, I briefly introduced Dede Korkut’s Azero-Turkish Oguznâme, its origins, the period it was written down, the two surviving manuscripts, issues related to its literary genre, mentioning that in this work we can find a large number of motifs in common with Homeric epics, Shahname and the Germanic-Scandinavian epics. Moreover, some of the stories of the Book of Dede Korkut are almost entirely identical with episodes from some of the known epics in world literature (for example, the last part of the 8th story of the Book of Dede Korkut is almost identical with Ulysses’ adventure in Polyphemus’ cave in the Odyssey). Next, I briefly listed the parallels between different episodes of the Book of Dede Korkut and medieval Szekler customary law, Hungarian medieval gestae and chronicles, folk legends, folk ballads, and folk tale motifs, which had not been noted in previous research. I tried to compare the verdict according to which the community would ransack the house of the one who rebelled, committing also a homicide in story 12 of the Book of Dede Korkut, with the medieval Szekler custom of punishing the one who jeopardized the liberties of the community by destroying his house and possessions as a group. I also compared the motif of destroying the enemy’s gate with a mace in Dede Korkut’s 11th story with the similar scene of the Hungarian Botond legend from Hungarian gestae, chronicles and folk legends. Furthermore, the hero’s deep shamanic sleep that gives him extraordinary power in the 10th and 11th stories of the Book of Dede Korkut were compared with the similar motif from the Hungarian ballad about Jóska Veres. However, I have not analysed the similarities and common motifs discussed above, nor have I explained their causes in detail, but I would like to treat them separately in an upcoming paper.

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