Typological Comparisons of Folk Poetry of the Ukrainians and Southern Slavs at the Figurative-Lexical Level

Abstract

The focus of the study proposed below is on important issues related to the identification of the common features of folk poetry of separate southern Slavs, in particular, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, and Ukrainian folk poetry, as well as individual works of art with a folklore component (for instance, Vila-Posestra by Lesya Ukrainka). It is, in particular, about the characteristic features of folk-poetic works at the level of imagery, poetics, and indicative lexical patterns. Common to folk poetry of the Southern Slavs and Ukrainians, especially when it comes to works of love or social nature, is the use of not only permanent epithets, but also indicative metaphors, comparisons and characteristic figurative expressions. In stages and separately considered are poetic tropes, separately their content and formal load, as well as functions when used in folk poetry of Ukrainians and South Slavs. Considerable attention is paid to lexical characteristics when creating the image of a beautiful girl in Ukrainian folk poetry and in folk-poetic South Slavonic samples, as well as to additional attributes of clothes and outfits of a young man and a girl in the folklore of the mentioned peoples. Figurative characteristics of animals, plants and natural phenomena (flowers, herbs, trees), as well as their functional purpose and place in the palette of folk-poetic works, characteristic lexical features of their reproduction in texts of epic and lyric songs, and folk ballads, do not remain without attention as well. The article compares dumas and songs and ballads about the escape from captivity, where there is also a distinct similarity in vocabulary when characterizing heroes and their actions. By collating folk poetry of Southern Slavs and Ukrainian folk songs, extraordinary factual material is revealed at the figurative-lexical level, eloquently testifying to the similarity of the texts. It is about certain clear general regularities of the overall plan, which can be traced both at the level of plot imagery in the thematic-genre dimension, and in the aspect of metaphors (constant epithets).