Monuments in folk legends as cultural symbols

Abstract

The article examines the cultural connections between legends and natural as well as man-made monuments. The author analyzes monuments in folk legends as elements of cultural symbolism that reveal their significance from the perspective of cultural studies. The study is based on several key legends about monuments included in the Collection of Chinese Folk Tales. Two types of legends are identified: those explaining the origin of monuments and those explaining their characteristics. Within the first group, the article considers stories connected with historical figures, Daoist ideas of immortality, the spirit of traditional culture and motifs of folk literature. The study concludes that the relationship between local monuments and legends is essentially a process of symbolization: legends endow natural and man-made objects with names, spiritual content and memory, transforming them from physical objects into cultural symbols that carry collective memory, value systems and spiritual beliefs. The article also notes that Russian electronic academic databases contain no specialized studies devoted directly to legends about monuments, which makes the cultural analysis of this material a promising research area.

References

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