E-mail: vera_kuznetsova@mail.ru
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8, Nikolayev str., Novosibirsk, 630090, Russian Federation
PhD (Philology), leading researcher, Institute of philology Siberian Branch of the Russian
Academy of Sciences
The paper is devoted to studying of the destiny of the mythological motif about floating on a stone. The main goal of the work is to elucidate and compare forms of this motive in oral tradition and in Old Russian handwritten books. We detect the motives of stone-floating in several groups of the texts in the folk tradition. These are legends about creation of the world (demiurge floats on a stone), narratives about the founders of settlements and churches (local founders float on a stone), variants of religious poems (Christ establishes the “Faith onto a stone”) and in several belief-legends. Written forms of this motif are considered in the hagiographic legends about saint founders of monasteries.
Comparison of the forms of this motive’s existence enables to educe its semantics in oral tradition and in writings. There in folklore, the personages who undertake miraculous floating on a stone, accomplish creative acts — they create the entire world or transform it; the personages of hagiographic legends, arriving by means of floating on a stone, indicate this semantics as well. Essence of both oral appearance in folklore tradition and in handwritten books indicates folklore source of the motif of floating on a stone, being considered within cultural and historic context.
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