Митологичната основа на баладата и нейната жанрова характеристика
The Mythological Roots of the Ballad and its Genre Characteristics

Summary/Abstract: The main task of the article is to determine the genre parameters of the ballad. At the beginning the author makes a survey of the Bulgarian literary studies in which the single characteristics strictly refer to the folklore or literary samples under investigation. The historical approach underlying the pursuit of the roots of the ballad takes one back to the lyric works from the romantic period, which drew on subject-matter from folklore. The author considers the song of the dead brother as similar to the motif of the dead fiancé taking his fiancée with him into the grave. He draws attention here to the mythological roots and speculates over the contents and the type of the myth anteceding the folklore version. Conclusion is also drawn about the derivation of the fantastic element from mythological ideas. The author outlines the peculiarities in the aesthetic perception of the song on the part of the popular consciousness and rejects the idea that the ballad could be conceived as an isolated, or autonomous domain within the frames of the song repertoire in a society with preserved pagan beliefs and demonology. The transition from folklore to literature in terms of the flow of motifs and the awareness of the genre, could be found in the contemplation on the natural course of demoniacal events resulting from the merger of the myth’s epics and fantasy with the lyrical and everyday-life elements of folklore. The author also presents the structural characteristics of the genre as they are indicated in literary theory and updated in the light of myth, folklore and literature. Finally, he defines the types of ballads according to either the various reference to, and interpretation of, the folk ballad motif on the part of the literary consciousness, or the creation of an authorized version sticking to the structural peculiarities of the ballad genre.

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