The topic of this paper is biblical motifs in epic poems about Nemanjic dynasty. The holy dynasty of Nemanjic, during which Serbia experienced a cultural, economic, territorial and social ...flourishing, left an indelible mark in the Serbian collective memory. Folk epic poems about the Nemanjić dynasty bear witness to the beauty, strength, and grandeur of Serbian medieval rulers, while not disregarding their flaws and weaknesses. Among these poems, special emphasis is placed on those that preserve the memory of the impressive endowments and righteous deeds of the Nemanjić. Folk epic poems interwoven with biblical motifs have shaped the popular perspective on the world. Through them, ethical categories such as good and evil, justice and injustice, conscience, shame, guilt, and yearning for freedom are understood. Many generations have become acquainted with the Bible through folk epic poems. The influence of the Bible on folk epic literature is so strong that it is impossible to understand and interpret this type of Serbian cultural heritage without knowing biblical motifs and symbols. The presence of biblical motifs in folk epic poems related to the Nemanjić dynasty signifies the intertwining of spiritual heritage and cultural expression. The convergence of biblical themes and the epic narrative tradition is a testament to the lasting resonance of these literary works in the hearts and minds of the Serbian people.
The article analyzes the central work of fiction by the famous Soviet science fiction writer of the second half of the 20th century, whose work was almost not considered in scientific works, and the ...problem of anthroponymy was not considered at all. The science fiction novel by S. Snegov “People as gods” served as the material for the study. Using contextual, mythological, structural-semantic and intertextual methods, an analysis was made of the proper names of the key characters in this work in order to better understand the author's intention. The protagonist's name, Eli, has an obvious connection with the biblical name El, which is found as a common and generic designation for God in various languages and dialects of the Middle East. In addition, it is a direct reference to the title of the work, which contains the central question in the artistic system of the novel about man as a god-like being. The name of the protagonist's wife – Mary – is the English form of the Russian name Maria, which contains a high meaning, well understood by the Christian consciousness. In the complete absence of any external or internal similarity between the heroine of Snegov and the Virgin Mary, there is an associative connection between them: as a biologist, Mary is looking for ways to spread life on uninhabited planets. In addition, she is the mother of a boy named Astre, who in the novel is associated with the Person of the Gospel Savior. The semantics of the names of other characters also connects the ideological space of the work with the foundations of the Christian worldview. Thus, consideration of the names of the central characters gives the author the opportunity to show that the onomastic field in terms of anthroponyms is semantically connected with biblical motifs and plots. System analysis leads the author to the conclusion that anthroponyms in the novel create a special semantic space that contributes to a deep understanding of the author's intentions.
As Biblia pauperum, we define not only books with an abbreviated text of Sacred Scripture, which were dominated by illustrations, but also cycles of artistic representations, e.g. painted on the ...walls of churches or decorating window stained-glass windows. However, other iconographic sources, such as stove tiles, are much less known. As archaeological monuments, most often preserved in fragments, they have not yet been thoroughly analysed. The article discusses medieval and Renaissance tiles with figural scenes with biblical motifs. As the archaeological sites most often feature several tiles decorated with similar thematic motifs, they should be treated as evidence of a conscious decision to show the cycle of events described in the Bible on the stove.
Religion does not play a major role in Norwegian Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun’s work. The one brilliant exception to this detached and seemingly cavalier attitude toward religion or, should I say, ...Christianity, is Hamsun’s masterpiece, Growth of the Soil (1917), which won him the Nobel Prize in literature in 1920. In this mythic novel, Hamsun draws upon a plethora of biblical motifs to create a heroic cosmogony that proposes an alternative to the rapid social and economic transformation under way in Norway in the second half of the nineteenth century and a vision of Norway founded on the cultivation of the land through hard labor and the populating of the earth.Numerous critics have remarked on the Biblical allusions in the novel (e.g., Per Thomas Andersen, Nettum, Rottem, Storfjell, Øyslebo); however, only Rolf Steffensen and Andreas Lødemel have studied the role of religion in Growth of the Soil in any depth. I will expand upon their work to examine whether Biblical allusions are part of a rhetorical strategy that aims at a coherent worldview. Biblical motifs cleverly interspersed throughout the novel suggest that it is always gesturing toward a world outside its pages through a dialog with pre-existing texts, in this case the Bible, absorbing and transforming voices from culture and society, historical memory and national identity. I will reexamine not only the place of Christianity in this important novel but also the foundational myth that undergirds it, that is, the idea that Isak is the founder not so much of a new civilization as a biblical exemplum of a traditional way of life and old values based on the cultivation of the land.That said, upon closer examination, Growth of the Soil does not amount to a faithful adaptation of the Old Testament; the novel is fraught with contradictions and the narrator also subverts its biblical framework by promoting an ambiguous reading of key scenes and motifs. Isak is not a bona fide practicing Christian and the novel should not be seen as an apology for Christianity in any way, shape, or form. Hamsun’s Isak is no biblical patriarch, even though he, too, at first appears to be divinely chosen to bring about a new beginning for humankind; instead, Isak turns out to be just another human being—albeit an exceptional one—who works hard to make his life dream come true. Moreover, it “er tvilsomt om MG var tenkt som en ‘agrarisk opbyggelsesbog’” (Rottem, Hamun og fantasiens triumf 167); however, an intertextual reading does enrich the novel’s narrative as well as moral authority by drawing on Biblical persona and antecedents.Finally, I feel compelled to address a postcolonial perspective if for no other reason than that an insistence on a Biblical reading of the novel largely ignores the import of the Samí, who ultimately pay the price of Isak’s colonization of the land, which prefigures the conquest of Northern Norway by homesteaders like him as well as the advance of what is euphemistically called “civilization.”
The article deals with the concept of Paradise and its figurative representations inherent in the poetic generation of the 1980-2000s. The study is based on the material of the poetry of Russian ...meta-realists — A. Parshchikov, I. Zhdanov, A. Eremenko, A. Dragomoschenko, V. Aristov, S. Soloviev, Ye. Danin, and N. Iskrenko, a member of the Moscow "Poetry" club. The author reveals the specific character of the metaphorization of the mythologeme and the realization of its symbolic meanings in poetic representations of the Garden of Eden, the earthly and heavenly Paradise in the image of the city and the mountain, the boundaries of Paradise, the light as a marker of heavenly elements and energies. The study shows that both the Old and New Testaments determine poetic interpretations of Paradise, and the Paradise itself looks apocalyptic. The author analyzes the images of the Forbidden fruit and the Tree of knowledge, and reinterprets the expulsion from Paradise into exile in Paradise. It is emphasized that the poetry of the period under consideration is characterized by philosophical reflections on Paradise as a Purgatory; it shows the traumatism of paradise freedom, which is determined by the experience of this poetic generation of moving from the literary underground to the centre of the literary process and by changing the reality reflected in poetry, the appearance in this reality of signs of "paradise life" and new, sometimes surpassing the creative personality, opportunities for self-expression. There is also a connection between the new "paradise" poetry and the literary tradition that comes from Dante, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva.
This paper explores the extratextual meaning of The Little Prince based on the evocations of biblical associations, namely the associations with Jesus Christ. Biblical motifs and the biblical context ...are evoked primarily by the title “prince”, since Jesus is called “The Prince of princes” in the Bible, and further congruence and symbolism continues in his physical appearance and in the overall story which is filled with biblical associations and biblical symbols as signals for interpreting the text. Attention is also given to the drawings of the Little Prince where many graphic symbols can be discovered, again connected to the person of Jesus Christ. The text of The Little Prince, therefore, surely cannot be read literally and unambiguously. The analysis is based on indirect meanings and seeks confirmation in the links between the direct, explicit text and the biblical, implicit context.
In the article the author explores how the Bible could be art theoretically "read" in biblical paintings. Most hermeneutical approaches towards the problem are art historical in nature, focusing on ...standardised visual symbols in biblical artworks. However, less research is concerned with the formal nature of biblical artworks, that is with the understanding how in biblical paintings, the Bible could be "read" through shapes and their spatial and compositional relations. In the article the author exemplifies this hermeneutical problem by comparing The Parable of the Prodigal Son and Rembrandt's painting The Return of the Prodigal Son.
The aim of our article is to discover biblical allusions, motifs and plots in Andrey Bely's last and least studied novel, Moscow (1925-1930). Besides the biblical plane (both Old and New Testaments), ...the novel features a lot of eschatological imagery. We have analysed the key scenes of the novel where biblical motifs and imagery acquire the status of a sign. Our analysis allowed us to conclude that the Gospel plane of the text helps the reader comprehend the overall idea of the novel, i.e. the protagonist's initiation, his departure from the Old Testament regulations to the Christian idea of mercy and compassion, as well his discovery of the spiritual laws of nature and the universe. The image of the eccentric in the novel helps us more profoundly understand the continuity and transformation of the biblical, eschatological and anthroposophic motifs throughout the whole creative heritage of Andrey Bely.
The aim of this paper is to explore some of the ways in which Christian values are present in contemporary Croatian children’s stories. Contemporary Croatian children’s literature is extremely ...diverse. However, Christianity has been immanent in Croatian children’s literature from the very beginning and has engaged with contemporary children’s stories through various creative processes. One of the contemporary approaches to Christian themes in Croatian children’s literature will be presented, analyzing the works of the Croatian writers Sonja Tomić and Stjepan Lice. Their stories are inspired by biblical themes, motifs, and forms such as parables, the stories of rich symbolic relationships and strong messages in which Jesus Christ speaks in a vivid and understandable way about ordinary things, elevating them to the level of timeless meaning, thus pointing to correlations between the everyday world, spiritual reality, and the Kingdom of God. Sonja Tomić and Stjepan Lice approach these biblical themes through contemporary narrative concepts of children’s literature and bring the original, complex way of Christ’s teaching closer to the children’s world and the potential experience of religiosity as it applies to children.
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