The paper presents the classification of the folk tales with the hero Itya – the most popular
character of the Selkup folklore. The name of the hero has many dialect variants in the Selkup
language: It’ja, Id’ja (Ob (Ivankino), Ič̇a (Taz), Ičkɨča, Ičkɨčeka (Turuhan), Itt’e (ket’), Iʥe
(Tym), Iʥe-Kaʥa (Narym). Both the published folk tales about Itya (60 texts) and the unpublished
tales from the archival materials of the researchers from the field of Samoyedology
(O. Kazakevich, K. Donner, L. Varkovitskaya, R. Uraev)) were classified. In total, about 100
texts were examined. In different dialect groups of the Selkup people, the storylines of the tales
about Itya are different, each group having its own subjects and plots. Some of the plots are
known to the neighbouring groups of the Selkup people (i. e., the areas of their distribution overlap
to a certain degree), but only a few stories are widespread among all the Selkup groups.
The Northern and the Southern dialect areas are represented by almost the same number
of published texts with the hero Itya: there are 24 «northern» texts and 32 «southern» texts. Furthermore, there are 20 «northern» texts about Itya which are still unpublished, while in the
«southern» dialect areas only three unpublished texts about Itya are left. The «central» dialect
area is presented by twelve folk tales about Itya: there are seven published texts and five unpublished.
The indexing was organized by searching all the possible plots and subplots (motifs) in all the
ethnic subgroups of the Selkup people, and further subjects were compared with themselves (but
not with the plots (plot types) of different Indexes). Comparative-typological study of the interethnic
level and the correlation of these subjects with the Index AaTh (ATU) and the electronic
catalogue of the motives by Yu. Berezkin is the next step in the complex process of the study
of the Selkup folklore.
The analysis identified 22 plots. Also, some subjects are combined in the plot groups. Eight
plot groups were selected. The groups are characterized not only by the similarity of the plots but
also by the manifestation of the general genre peculiarity. In the analysis, the characteristic features
of each of the plot group were distinguished. In all identified subject groups, the dramatic
core of the narration is the struggle-confrontation of the hero Itya with somebody else, but in each
of the plot groups, this struggle manifests itself in a special way.
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