Categories of “space” and “time” in the historical-heroic epic of the Adyghe

The article examines artistic forms and ways of reflecting spatio-temporal landmarks in the context of the historical-heroic epic of the Adyghe. The sacred foundations of ancient views are revealed, which are transformed into epic narratives, acquiring features different from mythological ones. In the late epic, they are filled with the semantic specificity of the genre, the task of which is to idealize the hero, to allegorically convey internal experiences and emotional attitudes to current events, as well as to objectify military confrontations and their consequences. An attempt was made to determine the uniqueness in the use of these categories in the artistic text of historical-heroic songs. Identification of figurative forms of manifestation of these symbols is the goal of our work. To achieve it, the following tasks were solved: study of the category of space and time in aesthetic terms; study of the specifics of refraction of spatio-temporal categories in the texts of historical-heroic songs; definition of their sacred features. The initial principles of the study are based on the provisions of foreign, domestic and Adyghe researchers who have considered this problem. The relevance of the chosen topic is an attempt to identify the distinctive features of the manifestation of spatio-temporal ideas in the ideological system of the Adyghe historical-heroic epic. The analysis is carried out using the structural-comparative and structural-semiotic methods. The practical significance of the work is that this article can become an addition to the presentation of a holistic picture of spatio-temporal categories in folklore. The result of the work done is the understanding that spatio-temporal ideas determine the features of the ethnic tradition; they were formed in ancient times; in the historical-heroic epic they are realized as means of artistic expression.