Linguistic-cultural transfer of mythological imagery on the example of the fairytale drama «The Sunken Bell» («Die versunkene Glocke»)

The transfer of mythological and mythopoetic imagery elements is shown on the example of G. Hauptmann’s fairy-tale drama «The Sunken Bell» («Die versunkene Glocke»). The focus is on the transfer of the ancient Germans’ mythological images as this drama has a lot of characters, the basis for figurative expression of which originates from archaic German and Scandinavian mythology. For example, the main male character Heinrich the Craftsman is similar to the Old Norse demigod Volundr the Blacksmith. The main female character of The Sunken Bell named Rautendelein is similar to the superior Old Norse goddess Freya. She has many features of air and solar spirits of Old Norse mythology. Such spirits have been called «elves» in the ancient times (Old Norse word «alfr»). This name means «white», «light», «white as a light». Many other characters (for example, the different elemental spirits) have their prototypes in the mythology of Old Germans too. The paper also shows the ways of the transformation of the images concerned into linguistic-cultural constants in the German culture of the Modern Age. A comparison is given of the semiotic features of these constants, with three ways of the transformation of these features being revealed. The first way is the semiotic weakening of the signs. For example, the character that was the supernatural creature in the ancient mythology loses this sign («supernatural being») in the Modern Age culture. The second way is the actualization of the signs in a new quality. For example, the image of an ancient god is reconsidered in the image of the same god, but he can do some new things in comparison with the same image of the ancient culture. The third way is for the signs to stay in the unchanged (stationary) state. The image of a god, supernatural creature or a human does not change during the transferring and transformation processes. In conclusion, an attempt is made to explain these transformational processes of mythological linguistic-cultural constants from the cognitive-semiotic point of view.

Keywords

Authors

References