Епическият вариант на фолклорната концепция за историята на етноса
The Epic Version of the Folklore Conception of the History of the Ethnos

Summary/Abstract: At a certain stage in the development of a given ethnic community a specific mechanism of inheriting historical memory forms within the frames of the folklore culture, a diffused information net evolves, which is capable of accumulating and conveying in the course of time the cultural and historical characteristic features of the ethnos. The folk epic tradition is considered here as a memory of the ethnos, a peculiar variety of the historical memory. By means of this approach the author analyses some “milestones” in the history of the ethnos, which are embedded in the system of epic imagery. He reveals the function of the legends about traces left by Marko as a system of signs of ethnic differentiation. In this respect the heroic epic tradition is studied as an information process which includes, besides the key concept of “memory”, selection as well, the latter in its function of restricting the variety of information. On the basis of data from folk rituals, folk plastic arts, folktales and the heroic epos an attempt is made to trace the process of incorporation of one mythological symbol into the various folklore genres and to show its gradual filling with contents bearing ethnic differentiation.

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