Лик Славуја Разбојника у руским биљинама

Abstract

The Character of Nightingale the Robber in Russian Bylinas. The paper analyses the character of Nightingale the Robber in Russian epic poems (bylinas) by the following points: 1) character’s name and epithets, 2) his look, 3) his family, 4) the ways the character appears in the poems, 5) his physical abilities and weapons, 6) character’s gender (grammatical and natural), 7) character’s staying place, 8) the damage the character is making, 9) his fights, 10) personal characteristics, 11) similar characters in other poems. The analysis indicates a folk tendency to replace mythological stories in bylinas with historical ones. The example of this tendency is the part where the former mythological guardian of the border between the two worlds becomes a state enemy who blocks the road to Kiev. Despite the need to incorporate historical and realistic elements into bylinas, that process is not finished and thanks to this we can now see some parts of the original story.

Keywords

• nightingale the robber
• solovei
• bylinas
• russian language
• mythology
• epic poems