Tatar romantic dastans: reasons for the spread and features characteristic of written and oral variants

Abstract

Each nation had its own path and history to achieving literacy. The Tatars of the Volga  region achieved this success quite early. The ability to read and write opened up new opportunities for them. One of them was to get acquainted with the literature of other peoples, as well as to distribute certain  works in this area. It is interesting to note that these poems gradually became folklore works, passing  from mouth to mouth or in writing. The people enriched them with national colors, thus, folklore  versions of dastan, these literary works, appeared.  

The relevance of this study is due to the insufficient study of the features of Tatar love dastans.  The material for research was the texts of dastans of a love nature that are common among the Tatars,  such as "Leila and Majnun", "Takhir and Zukhra", "Sayfulmuluk", "Kuzy-Kurpyach and Bayan-sylu",  "The Legend of Yusuf".  

The purpose of the article is to identify the reasons for the spread and popularity of love dastans  on the territory of the Volga region, to determine the features that have not yet been discovered.  To achieve this goal, the following tasks were solved: the history of the education of the Tatar people  was considered; the qualities of the heroes and their spiritual values in the Tatar romantic epic were  revealed; were analyzed the works of Medieval poets, which were literary versions of love dastans.  

This article uses comparative and historical-typological methods.