The image of a romantic hero in the Kazakh epic

Abstract

Folklore is a historical phenomenon: it undergoes transformations, changes in terms of the spiritual needs of society. In the course of the historical development of folklore, some genres may disappear, and others may appear. In the process of progressive development of society, new ideals emerge, new spiritual and cultural values are formed, new heroes are created and glorified, who personify these ideals and values and put them into practice. In the epic works, two dominant ideas can be distinguished and, accordingly, two types of characters that implement them. The first is the idea of protecting the Homeland, the second is the idea of happiness, freedom and harmony, the aspiration for which is eternal features of the human beings. These are original, eternal, and global ideas. The first idea in the epics is personified and implemented by the batyr. The second - by the faithful lover, i.e. romantic character. The image of the batyr is developed in the archaic, heroic and historical epic, and the image of the faithful lover - in the romance epic. In the Kazakh epic, the classic image of a lover was first created in the romantic epic “Kozy Korpesh - Bayan Sulu”. Based on the real events, love stories of Kozy and Bayan in the process of oral existence were added by new episodes, motifs, systematized and made a whole plot, which later in the era of the Kypchak Khanate (X-XI c.) began developing in the spirit of the romantic epic about love. Talented akyns, representatives of the clans and tribes who originally lived within Desht-Kypchak, and had related by origin, language, faith, worldview, culture, shared history, felt themselves as one community and later formed the Kazakh ethnic group. It is noteworthy that during the same period, written love poems were written in Persian written literature, and later in European literature. In other words, in communities belonging to different types of cultures (sedentary and sedentary-nomadic), with different socio-economic and political systems, similar cultural and spiritual processes took place in the same historical period. Representatives of the settled-nomadic culture - akyns Desht-i Kipchak created their oral creations, and the the representatives of the written culture - in writing. The appearance of works glorifying the romantic character, love and universal humanistic ideals and principles, testifies the positive, progressive changes in the society.