The Image of a Bear in the Chuvash Culture

Abstract

The work is devoted to the study of the image of the bear in the Chuvash linguistic culture and aims to study its properties in the perception of the Chuvash people in a broad ethnographic aspect, including linguistic (etymological, onomastic), as well as folklore approaches. The material of the study was the texts of oral folk art and ethnographic developments containing information about bears. The author also refers to thematic developments in the field of Finno-Ugric studies, since the Finno-Ugric peoples are representatives of the forest culture, which invariably implies a significant participation of bears in their lives. The study is based on traditional methods: scientific understanding of oral folk art and analysis of ethnographic literature. The bear is a popular character in Chuvash folklore. At the same time, it does not have an unambiguous assessment in the Chuvash culture: the bear is an ingenuous creature, as a result of which it loses to a cunning person. At the same time, the Chuvash recognize the bear as a symbol of strength. Analogues in the perception of the bear are more likely to be traced in Russian linguistic culture than in the cultures of the Volga-Kama peoples, many of whom, primarily the Finno-Ugric peoples, recognize the bear as a totem animal. A number of Chuvash texts about bears are nomadic plots.

Keywords

• Chuvash language
• bear
• ethnography
• folklore
• медведь
• фольклор