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Abstract:

The article is devoted to Mongolian poetry as a phenomenon of medieval literature, which developed following its own specifiс patterns. When it comes to the early Mongolian literature of the medieval period, it is certainly important to present at least in general terms the type of culture that gave rise to certain poetic works with their functional classification, and to understand what life situation (real practical necessity) causes each genre variety of poetic texts and and, finally, the features of poetic consciousness, which reveal themselves through certain mental formations. The poetic creativity of the early period of Mongolian literature, starting from the 13th century, mainly followed poetic norms, traditional canons that had developed in oral poetry. The existing orientation towards previous literature samples, however, did not prevent a kind of innovation, the addition of a proper artistic, aesthetic canon of medieval Mongolian literature. Artistic literature at that time gave its best creation called “The Secret History of the Mongols” (1240). A number of the most common genres presented in this historical and literary monument, their connection with rituals and ritual poetry allow us to attribute them to the primary speech literary genres. Following M.M. Bakhtin, the we distinguish between primary (simple) and secondary (complex) literary genres. Considering the primary literary genres, we turn to the oath genre and the hymn genre as the most common and characteristic for that period of development of Mongolian literature and allowing us to trace the emerging principles of literary evolution, the formation of the medieval literary canon in the present.

Keywords: medieval Mongolian literature, poetry, traditional canon, poetic norm, oath genre, hymn/praise genre, “The Secret History of the Mongols”.