Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 20-21 (1975-76) (Pécs, 1977)

Néprajztudomány - Zentai Tünde: A hiedelemmonda tartalmi és formai szerveződése

A HIEDELEMMONDA SZERVEZŐDÉSE 153 The Formal and Contentual Organization of the Belief-Legend TÜNDE ZENTAI The contents of a belief-legend is built up out -of folk beliefs following connecting rules existing between belief elements and ist formal characteristics, on the other hand, the literary genre of legends. In the relation between belief and legend the latter acquiring governing rule, it makes it possible for us to talk of belief-legends as distinguished from other subcategories in the legend literary genre. — Belief characteristics have an effect on the way how mithical contents are organized and paralelly, on verbal formulation. At the same time the legend form contributes to the survival of beliefs through its folkpoetic function and characteristics. Althaugh the belief-legend exists in variations and is characterized by a high degree of formal instability, it can be estimated as a self-contained folk-poetic literary genre. The author analyses the formal and contetual elements of the belieflegend in detail, illustrating them with examples in the following order: I. The contentual elements of the belief-legend : belief-motifs, the topic of the belief-legend. its characters, plot, scene and time, its message. II. The artistic method of the belief-legend. III. The mode of formal expression in the belieflegend, its means of artistic expession: the structure of the belief-legend (its basic structure is identical with that of the belief serving as its topic), its language, rythm of language, rythmelements, its style and means of style: vocabulary phraseological elements, images, the sources of word connotations, syntactic categories. In this light the belief-legend can be said to have its main value in its basic structure and function that help set up the belief contents. Its aesthetic-formal values appear in the plasticity and rythm of its language, and in the direct style of realistic presentation. On the whole it does not reach the level of artistic prose, only in some of its parts, and it has no outstanding position among the representatives of the popular literary genre.