Linguoculturological Aspects of Studying Serbian Heroic Epos in the Works of Russian Slavists of the First Half of the 19th Century

The present article focuses on some important facts concerning the development of Slavic studies in Russia in the first half of the 19th century. Within this context, the author of the article analyses the driving force behind the increased interest among the scientific community in studying Serbian epic poetry. This interest is claimed to have become a necessary condition for the establishment of cultural linguistics as one of the areas of linguistics, which studies certain cultural phenomena reflected in the language and significant for national self-consciousness and historical memory. Scientific research conducted by Russian Slavists (e.g. V.I. Lamansky, I.I. Sreznevsky, A.A. Maikov, N.I. Nadezhdin, etc.) lead to the conclusion that the monuments of folk literature served as a rich and valuable linguistic and ethnographic source to them in studying the history of the Serbian language and culture. The article targets the scientific and cultural community the members of which work towards consolidating Slavic unity.