The article is devoted to the problem of existence and analysis of the current state of legends and toponymic legends of Central Kazakhstan. The material was the texts recorded by the authors on expeditions to the Karaganda region in 2012 and 2017. The current state of the folklore of Central Kazakhstan is marked by the functioning of certain genres: legends, wedding poetry, proverbs, toponymic legends. The main layer of the functioning of folklore samples falls on legends and toponymic legends. It is concluded that the Kazakh legends are characterized by a specific informative function. The main plot-forming component is the character, around which all the material is united, the plots themselves, as a rule, are single-motive, do not contain fantastic elements and are designed as a narration about the recent past. The paper notes that toponymic legends explain the names of localities and are associated, as a rule, with the names of famous people. The specificity of the names is the use of speaking names or similarity with natural phenomena. The authors argue that the active functioning of folklore samples indicates a favorable folklore situation and the prospects for further research on the sociocultural aspect of Kazakh non-fairytale prose.

This article reveals the peculiarities of emotional reflection in Akzhan Nurmanov’s novel “The death of Kulan”. The authors study the role and significance of the emotional reflection in the history of kazakh language on the basis of achievements of world literary criticism. The subject of the study is the artistry of the work, where the experience of impressions and emotional reactions of the protagonist comes to the fore. Fundamental in understanding the poetics of the novel is the feeling of experiences. This paper demonstrates that the evaluation of events in the novel occurs through the system of value coordinates of the hero. It allows us to understand the authors’ concept of personality: what it can or should be. The emotional reflection is in the conflict of the work through the consciousness of Kulan to accept the painful suffering and death with the hero. World literary criticism has developed a new approach to the analysis of the art work. This approach helps to reread the novel where the aesthetic attitude to the hero and his feelings comes to the fore. The object of the artistic image is a personality, its inner world and actions with the logic of the development of life.