Book chapter
"Это такая же правда, как то, что мы видим друг друга": библейские легенды Сельмы Легерлёф
In book
The Apostle Andrew, which the New Testament mentions very sparingly, appears in the Acta Andreæ (2 half. II c.) as a preacher of encratism, but in the Byzantine era these acts have been revised by removing the “heresy” and served as a statement of the cult of the apostle in Patras in the Peloponnese. In addition, the mention of Byzantion has been interpreted afterwards as the foundation of Constantinopolitan siege and updated by metropolitan legends. Andrew is also a hero of the apocryphal acts which show him together with the other apostles. Among these quite fantastic narratives, one must mention the Acts of Andrew and Matthias (beginning of the IV c.). The action takes place along the southern Black Sea coast. Particular data from all these sources were compiled from the VI c. in the so-called lists of the Apostles, and they in turn infl uenced Epiphanius the Monk, who wrote in 815-843 The Life of Andrew – a very singular text in the tradition of Apostles’ stories. This life, where the Apostle acts in the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire of IX c., gave rise to a number of revisions in the IX-XI cc. (Nicetas Paphlagonian, Simeon Metaphrastes, etc.), but also infl uenced the formation of the legends about Andrew’s preaching in Georgia and Russia. From the preacher of encratism he was at fi rst, Andrew became the Apostle of Byzantium and its world.
The article describes the main genre forms of “story within story” in “The Alhambra” by W. Irving: history, anecdote, legend. Tradition is the least rigid of the genres. Anecdote is an instructive story involving historic personages. Legend shares the form of the fairy tale and becomes the major genre of romanticism narrative.
The study concerns the veneration of saints in the traditional peasant culture of the XIX-early XXI century. and specifically - the legends of the saints, their interaction with literary and folklore tradition. Many literary lives of the saints are based on folklore legends, but sometimes the influence may have the opposite direction: the lives of saints being retold and changed in the oral tradition acquire the characteristics of folklore of legends. In the monograph the mechanisms of legends transformation and functioning are studied, The socio-cultural role and functions of folk legends about saints, their interaction with the literary lives of the saints, as well as a detailed analysis in the ethnographic and historical context of the corps of folklore texts, about the saints Alexander Oshevensky, Cyrill Chelmogorsky, Nil StoLobensky, Nikita Stylites and Irinarkh the Recluse.