The Far-Eastern East Slavs' Concepts of Outlanders (Based on the Materials of the Prose Genres of Oral Lore)

The article covers the concepts of the East Slavic ethnic groups concerning their outlanders. The aim of the article is to determine the body of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian concepts of outlanders in the prose folk literature of the Russian Far East. The study is based on the data from the works of fairy-tale prose (fairy tales and slice-of-life tales) as well as the compositions of non-fairy-tale prose (legends, epic tales, anecdotes) of the East Slavs that were recorded in the period from the final third of the 19th till the final third of the 20th centuries. The originality of the article lies in the fact that the abovementioned materials have been first used for describing the complex of concepts of outlanders and for determining its major and minor aspects. The formation of outlanders as a group of characters in prose genres occurred to different extents under the influence of some mythological ideas, an objective reality forcefully intruded into the folk poetry, other folk genres and works of authors' oral art that externalized themselves, among other trends, in a cheap popular (lubok) literature. The influence of this kind of literature seems to have resulted in the appearance of the character of a Portuguese king. This amazingly handsome and rich man disappears with the hero's young wife. A range of epic tales harmoniously integrated into fairy tales, it was adopted and transformed according to the requirements of the genre. In particular, this process resulted in the appearance of the character of a Tatar warrior in fairy tales. This character was defeated by Ilya Muromets, even though he was described as an incredibly tall and amusingly strong man. The Romani people were common characters of many fairy and slice-of-life tales, and stereotypical traits imputed to this ethnic group tended to be used as characters' characteristics. Some characters represented by persons of foreign ethnicity were also found in the East Slavic non-fairy-tale prose (legends, epic tales, anecdotes). Legends had Ukrainian characters while epic tales covered Lithuanians and Golds as well as Chinese and Japanese people and even the Hognhuzi. Ukrainians, Tartars, the Kirghiz, the Chukchi (including the group of so-called “wild Chukchi”), Yakuts, Yukaghirs were represented in a realistic or humorous manner in anecdotes. Outlanders could act as heroes or villains (more frequently) in the nonfairy-tale prose. This prose genre was more indicative of the real relationships between the East Slavs and the local dwellers including the natives of the Far East than the fairy-tale prose. The article concludes with the East Slavs' complex of concepts of outlanders on the basis of the major (ethnonyms, behavior patterns) and minor (naming by ethnonyms, age categories, appearances, special skills) aspects of fairy-tale and non-fairy-tale prose.

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