Research On Huren Uliger's "The Legend Of Stars"

Huurin Uliger is a unique genre of Mongolian folk literature,formed through a combination of oral and written literature of Han and Mongolian people.Although its form of expression is oral,it has always received inextricable influence of written literature.The object of present study,the Huurin Uliger The Legend of Gods,is a story about Ogedei Khan,the second emperor of the Mongol Empire(it is referred as the Yuan Dynasty in the Huurin Uliger),who suppresses Hua Dingyun,Hua Zilong’s rebellion,and conquers the neighboring countries such as Miaoli and Jiaozhi.Like most other Huurin Uligers,this Uliger is also based on a Chinese historical novel.The novel is called Tianbao Map,written by an anonymous writer of the Qing Dynasty.However,its process of adaptation,inheritance and renewal as a Mongolian Huurin Uliger is rather special.In the 1930s and 1940s,Boyannemeh,an illiterate Mongolian Huurchi,first performed the Huurin Uliger to a certain number of audience including the Arkhorchin King of the time,according to his memorization of the oral interpretation of the novel.Since then,due to the instability of social environment,the Huurin Uliger was never performed again by Boyannemeh until 40 years later.In the late seventies of the last century,Boyannemeh re-told the Huurin Uliger to Baljinima at his request,who was a famous Huurchi and national actor,and Baljinima wrote it into a Mongolian novel as a book of Uliger on the basis of his memorization;he later performed it into the present Huurin Uliger,which was recorded at the Zhuu’ud People’s Broadcasting Station(now Chifeng People’s Broadcasting Station)and was broadcast widely.The present dissertation conducts a comparative analysis to the oral text,the original Chinese novel and the written text of the Mongolian novel,with an aim to study the major process and results of the combination of different texts.It consists of introduction,the main body of three chapters,the conclusion,reference and appendices.The introduction mainly gives accounts to the selection of topic,research literature,research methods,data sources,innovations and difficulties of the study,and the interpretation of terminology.Many present studies of Huurin Uliger are conducted from the oral literature perspective,but studies toward its major feature as the combination of oral and written features is relatively rare.The present case study of Huurin Uliger The Legend of Gods reveals its intricate features,shows the academic value of the Huurin Uliger and the performer and will supplement the previous studies of Huurin Uliger.The texts referred to include Huurin Uliger’s radio recordings and oral texts,the original Chinese novel,Tianbao Map,and 13 chapters of Mongolian written text by Baljinima.The main theoretical basis of the study is the polarities of orality and literacy proposed by American scholar Walter J.Ong,as well as oral formulaic theory,narratology and comparative literature studies.Due to the relatively novel research perspective,the major difficulty lies in the lack of reference materials and of standardization of the terminology,and the author tried to offer an interpretation tor the related terminology.Chapter One explores and demonstrates the origin,inheritance and renewal process of the Huurin Uliger and related Huurchis and elaborates the process of the interaction of oral and written texts.These are the fundamental issues in the study of the work.In the process of interpretation,compilation,performance,and transmission,the oral and written forms combined and complemented each other through various ways,resulting in the combined oral and written feature in the oral text,which is inevitable result of many factors such as the popularization of education,development trend of literature and art,change of Huurchi’s style and so on.Chapter Two is a detailed comparison of the radio record and the text of the Huurin Uliger and the Chinese novel The Map of Tianbao and Dibao Treasures,and the discussion of the interaction and combination of orality and literacy.The oral text includes the major elements of the novel such as the main content and thoughts,logical development of the plot,factors shaping various characters,and so forth,showing an evident source-and-stream connection between the Chinese novel and the Huurin Uliger,which is precisely the combination of orality and literacy.Further,due to the several times of recreational process,the variation is also obvious and multi-dimensional.Among them are the imitation of historical documents,the addition of critical content,and the further strengthening of logic,which are strengthened literary features,and the intermixing of folklore and folk literature content,the integration of oral formulas and the plots,and the complementarity of spoken language and music are presentation of its oral features.Chapter Three conducts a comparison between the recordings and oral texts of Huurin Uliger and 13 chapters of Mongolian novel by Baljinima,and analyzes the process,characteristics,and results of the combination of oral and written features.The comparison is mainly carried out on their purpose,preparation and composition process,narrative structures and expressive ways.Mongolian novel is written as the storybook of the Huurin Uliger and for the purpose of reading,writing in the form of novel,while the Huurin Uliger is composed in the oral form for the audience.Many differences are formed thereby between the two.Although the stories and plots in the narrative structure are basically the same,there are many differences in the details of the description;the novel provides the frame and the plot for the Huurin Uliger,but many adjustments have been made in the oral presentation.Besides its focus on the oral and written features of The Legend of Stars,the dissertation also makes a synthetic discussion on the other issues related to the transmission and variation of the Huurin Uliger.