Certain results of an axiological analysis of the Russian heroic epic

The research aims to form an idea of the value content of the Russian heroic folk epic based on the consequences of the actions folk heroes undertake. The research method is an axiological analysis, which examines the values motivating the hero, the deed he commits, and the consequences (positive or negative) of this deed. Russian folk epics - despite their variability and no well-established scholarly opinion on their content and conception - reveal characteristic integrity and coherence when given an axiological interpretation. The latter implies that the following elements should be analysed: the values that motivate the hero, his deed, and its consequences (positive or negative). In Russian bylinas, one can easily discern such value categories as fame (slava), honour (chest), fortune-fate (talan-uchast’), strength (sila), knightly heart (serdtse bogatyrskoe), and anger (gnev). Each category implies two plot-accentuated invariants: positive and negative. For example, the word ‘fame’ (or the phrase ‘great fame’ (slavushka velikaya)) may indicate both personal fame (almost inevitably pernicious for the hero) and the so-called common fame of all Russian knights (bogatyrs), service to which enables the character to save his life and freedom. Analogically, the word ‘honour’ may imply both personal material-symbolic ‘honor’ (i.e., valuable property, signs of public recognition, etc.) and ‘honor’ as related to some ‘external’ - from the hero’s perspective - realities: sacred objects, religious institutions and principles. Based on the positive or negative consequences provoked by the hero’s deed - the deed motivated by a certain variational value - this value is either strengthened or rejected. This regularity allows formulating an ‘axiomotif’ (a semantic or plot element, in which, via a cause-and-effect relationship of spiritual-psychological nature, the hero’s motivation, his deed, and the natural - from the perspective of an epic consciousness - consequences of this very deed merge into an inseparable unity), classifying different bylina plots (the author suggests distinguishing four plot types), and generally describing the semantics of Russian folk epics. Given the fact that, in Russian bylinas, the rejected values are conditionally non-Christian (particularly, personal fame and personal honour - as compared with the categories of Kievan knights’ common fame and the ‘honour’ of Orthodox sacred objects and principles, which are strengthened as bylina plots progress), it is only natural to assert that Russian epic poetry is profoundly Christian.