THE COMPOSITION AND VARIANT DIVERSITY OF THE KHOREZM "GOROGLI" EPIC CYCLE

This paper offers a scholarly examination of the epic narratives that make up the Khorezm redaction of “Gorogli”, a foremost monument of the Uzbek oral epic heritage. Attention is directed to how the eighteen dostons of the cycle came to be written down, the position they hold within bakhshi repertoires, the variants in which they survive, and the features that set them apart from other Turkic redactions. The paper argues that the Khorezm cycle constitutes an epic system in its own right.