Specifics of the dastan genre structure in variants of “Tahir and Zukhra” and “Leyla and Majnun”: Creative techniques and their forms in Tatar romanic dastans

Abstract

The relevance of this study is due to insufficient study of the peculiarities of the structure of Tatar romantic dastans. The object of the research is romanic dastans featuring Tahir and Zukhra, and Leyla and Majnun, recorded or rewritten by informants in Tatar communities. The study also analyses other Turkic-language variants as well as medieval literary poems were attracted as background phenomenon. The purpose of the article is to consider the structural features of Tatar romanic dastans. In order to achieve this goal, the following tasks were set: the paths and stylistic tools in the Tatar dastans "Tahir and Zuhra" and "Leyla and Majnun" were identified, different variants were compared in terms of their contents and forms. In this article comparative and structural-descriptive research methods were used. The Tatar romanic dastans often use metaphors, epithets, epiphors, hyperbolas, and rhetorical questions. Despite the frequent use of expressive means, folklore variants are inferior to literary versions of these dastans. This is due to the fact that the monuments were simplified, passing from generation to generation.