Crossing Boundaries, Breaking Rules: Continuity and Social Transformation in Trickster Tales from Central Asia
By Ildikó Bellér-Hann, Raushan Sharshenova
The article investigates stories from Kyrgyzstan depicting the adventures of a folk hero in tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. These specimens of oral tradition were published in the Soviet and post-Soviet era and are therefore situated at the interface of the oral and written realms. The authors argue that these tales should not be dismissed as de-contextualized and deprived of their original meaning, but as re-contextualized narratives that have been adjusted according to changing power relations.