Selkup folklore from the perspectives of different methodological approaches to folklore historicism

The article analyzes approaches to folklore as a historical source from the perspectives of different research areas such as "concrete historicism", ethnic folklore and comparative folklore studies, as well as the modern "areal" folklore studies developed by Yu.E. Be-rezkin. Research in the field of "concrete historicism" was carried out on the folklore material of a number of Siberian ethnic groups -Nganasan, Evenki, Khakas, Ket, Altai etc. It was the researchers working with the folklore material of this field who found out that the reliance on the texts of historical legends is the most effective, as this folklore genre is most saturated with specific historical information. Ethnic folklore studies as a special research direction allow to reconstruct, first of all, the social stratification of the ethnos, elements of its political structure, traditions and family customs, features of everyday culture, religious beliefs, as well as economic activities of the bearers of the studied folklore tradition. There are many examples of successful ethnic folklore studies, inter alia, in national and foreign Finno-Ugric studies. In the course of the research of the Selkup folklore material, the author revealed that the Selkup folklore during the whole period of its study was considered only from the standpoint of "concrete historicism" and from the point of view of ethnic folklore studies. Within the framework of the first direction, it was established that in the folklore heritage of the Selkups there was a genre of historical legends, but it was not popular and widespread (in comparison with the fairy tale or the heroic song (in the past)). Ethnic folklore studies involving Selkup folklore materials were made by G.N. and E.D. Prokofiev and G.I. Pelikh, an ethnologist from Tomsk. It was found that the experiments of E.D. Prokofieva on using folklore information for the reconstruction of the mythological view of the world of the Northern Selkups were particularly successful. G.I. Pelikh made an attempt to identify the component composition of Selkup ethnogenesis based on folklore and hydronymical material, but due to the lack of representative and verified sources (attributed folklore texts in the Selkup language) at the time of the study, the author's conclusions were controversial. G.I. Pelikh also carried out comparative studies of the folklore material of the Selkups and the socio-historical processes.

Keywords

Authors

References