THE LITERARY AND FOLKLORIC TREND IN KAZAKHSTAN’S TURKOLOGY (FORMATION FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE SOVIET ERA)

Abstract

Literary Turkology makes it possible to conceptualize the historical origins of national literature as a multilayered spiritual and cultural system formed at the intersection of a common linguistic foundation, mythopoetic memory, epic tradition, written heritage, and civilizational continuity. The article examines the pathways in the formation of the literary and folkloric trend in Turkology in Kazakhstan, from its medieval spiritual and intellectual origins to the system of academic research developed during the Soviet period. The main purpose of the study is to systematically identify the historical foundations, scholarly continuity, objects of study, and methodological significance of the Turkological trend in literary studies in Kazakhstan. The objects of the research include medieval Turkic written monuments, nineteenth-century folkloric and ethnographic materials, national literary-theoretical thought of the early twentieth century, and dissertation research of the 1960s-1980s. The study employs historical-literary, comparative-typological, historical-poetic, hermeneutic methods, as well as the method of systematization. The results of the review analysis show that a significant part of the fundamental research aimed at expanding the chronological boundaries of the history of Kazakh literature is academically continuous with B. Kenzhebayev’s school. The study establishes that literary Turkology contributed to the interpretation of ancient Turkic, medieval, epic, Sufi-didactic, and folkloric layers within the context of the national literary process. The scholarly significance of the article lies in its interpretation of Kazakh literature in continuity with the common Turkic cultural and civilizational space. The practical value of the study is determined by the possibility of applying its results in courses on the history of Kazakh literature, Turkology, folklore studies, and comparative literary studies. In addition, the article addresses the connection of literary and folkloric Turkology with scholarly schools in Kazakhstan, the process of its institutionalization through dissertation research, and the need to reinterpret ancient heritage in the context of contemporary literary paradigms.