The ballade plot about the soldier coming back: textualization and transformation of the motive pool

Authors

  • Nastassia A. Hulak Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts, 17 Rabkaraŭskaja Street, Minsk 220007, Belarus

Keywords:

folklore studies, narrative tradition, textualization of a motive, soldier’s song, motive pool, ballade

Abstract

In a broad folkloristic context, the article analyzes a late traditional ballade plot The husband comes unrecognized from war. Based on the ХІХ–ХХ centuries publications, the work demonstrates the plot’s main relevant forms. The original plot variant used by the Belarus partisans of the Great Patriotic War are introduced into scientific discourse for the first time. The article proves the plot’s connection to the ballade tradition and explores its productive realization in the genre of a soldier’s song. It is proved that the plot employs five motives that embody semantic universals of the traditional culture and form a sustainable problem-thematic field. The article states that the plot tradition in its development aims at reducing
its lyrico-epic component and increasing its narrative expression.

Author Biography

  • Nastassia A. Hulak, Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts, 17 Rabkaraŭskaja Street, Minsk 220007, Belarus

    PhD (philology); associate professor at the department of directing, faculty of traditional Belarusian culture and contemporary art

References

  1. Putilov B. [Comments]. In: Putilov B, editor. Russkaya narodnaya poeziya. Epicheskaya poeziya [Russian folklore poetry. Epic poetry]. Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaya literatura; 1984. p. 387–428. Russian.
  2. Balashov DM. [Notes]. In: Astakhova AM, editor. Narodnye ballady [Folk ballads]. Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’; 1963. p. 377–423. Russian.
  3. Smirnov UI. Vostochnoslavyanskie ballady i blizkie im formy: opyt ukazatelya syuzhetov i versii [Eastern Slavic ballads and related forms: the practice of classification of plots and versions]. Мoscow: Nauka; 1988. Russian.
  4. Federowski M. Pieśni miłosne, weselne, rodzinne, doroczne i inne z okolic Wołkowyska, Lidy, Grodna, Słonima, Białegostoku, Sokółki, Prużany, Nowogródka i Słucka. Tom 5 [Love, wedding, birth, road songs and other from Volkovysk, Lida, Grodna, Slonim, Bialostok, Sokolka, Pruzany, Novogrudok i Sluck]. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe; 1958. Polish.
  5. Petrovskaya GА. Belorusskie sotsial’no-bytovye pesni [The Belarus social and domestic songs]. Minsk: Nauka i Tekhnika; 1982. Russian.
  6. Putilov BN. Slavyanskaya istoricheskaya ballada [Slavic historical ballade]. Moscow: Nauka; 1965. Russian.
  7. Kabashnikau KP, Jalatau VI, editors. Balady. Kniga 2 [Ballads. Volume 2]. Мinsk: Navuka i Tehnika; 1978. (Belarusian folk art). Belarusian.
  8. Cishchanka IK, Skidan VI, Tawlaj GV, compilers. Sacyjal’na-bytavyja pesni [Social and domestic songs]. Мinsk: Navuka i tjehnika; 1987. (Belarusian folk art). Belarusian.
  9. Istomin FM, Dyutsh GO. Pesni russkogo naroda. Sobrany v guberniyakh Arkhangel’skoi i Olonetskoi v 1886 godu [The songs of Russian people: collected in the Arkhangelsk and Olonets governorates in 1886]. Saint Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo IRGO; 1894. Russian.
  10. Sobolevsky A. Velikorusskie narodnye pesni. Tom 1 [The great Russian folk songs. Volume 1]. Saint Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaya tipografiya; 1895. Russian.
  11. Biryukov VP, editor. Dorevolyutsionnyi fol’klor na Urale [Filklore of the pre-revolutionary Urals]. Sverdlovsk: Poligrafkniga; 1936. Russian.
  12. Krupyanskaya VJu, Minz SI. Materialy po istorii pesni Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny [Materials on the history of the song of the Great Patriotic War]. Moscow: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of USSR; 1953. Russian.
  13. Putilov BN. [A Motive in plot-construction]. In: Meletinskii EM, Neklyudov SYu, compilers. Tipologicheskie issledovaniya pofol’kloru [Folklore typology studies]. Мoscow: Nauka; 1975. p. 141–155. Russian.

Published

2019-03-01

How to Cite

[1]
Hulak, N.A. 2019. The ballade plot about the soldier coming back: textualization and transformation of the motive pool. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Philology. 1 (Mar. 2019), 83–91.