Kabardian Fable: Archetypal Core and Ethnospecific Poetics

Abstract

Fable artifabulas, which are transhistorical in nature, have many ethnocultural refractions in the literature of different peoples of the world. In this article, with methodological support on the works of I.G. Herder, G.D. Gachev, as well as contemporary Caucasian scholars, the author explores the specifics of the Kabardian fable, taken in the dialectical unity of its stable, archetypal constants and nationally determined contexts. By the example of the fables of K. Atazhukin, A. Dymov, B. Zhanimov, B. Kagermazov, P. Tambiev, B. Tkhamokov, M. Khakuasheva, P. Shekikhachev, T. Sheretlokov, A. Shomakhov, H. Elberdov the law of correlation between moral values declared by poets and the postulates of the Kabardian ethical code “Adyghe Khabze” is shown. Within the framework of historical poetics, the author demonstrates three-stage evolutionary process associated with the transition of fabulists from the practice of borrowing classical subjects to national adaptation, and then to the creation of original texts. Much attention is paid to the decoding of symbolic images.