The Cycle of Kreshniks is one of monuments of the national traditional Albanian culture. The traditional im- ages of this literary work reveal the typical view of our mountainous areas, our mighty legendary figures rendered by means of the fabulous. As a result, the myths shaped and influenced the preliterary creations of the society, the myths which have sur- vived via these creations up to these days and which contain the essence of that society’s thinking. The mentality of this phrase of the mythical thinking dominated the antiquity until the end of paleochristianity. Songs of the legen- dary epos attract the reader’s attention not only because of their great artistic value, but they are also regarded as important sociocultural monuments having historical, philosophical, political and legal value. The mythological figures have a chthonic, terrestrial character. The Cycle of Kreshniks focuses on common people viewed in their relationship with their friends, the girl for whom they are primi inter pares. All the aspects of their lives, and namely, the defence of their land, of the castle tower in the form of a metaphor, as well as their iden- tity, resistance, life, freedom, honour etc. are related to their spiritual condition. The mentality of the resistance which is deeply embedded in their psyche has intuitively developed across common linguistic borders. Operating with artistic between the mythic-pagan imagination and the later imagination as the borderline between the con- scious and subconscious mind, between totemic polytheism and monotheistic faith is traced through antinomy. An- cient people differed from their followers who had a different vision of the life and death, time and space, the man and the divinity, family and the world. The generation of the ancient times dominated by the mythic and legendary mentality refuses to recognize the present and the future because their representatives belong only to the past. The process of converting collective mentalities into artistic truths, mentalities which have emanated from a dif- ferent epoch, approach the historical truths, as well as the process of decoding the archetypal images into epic sub- jects have drawn the attention of various sciences such as: history, linguistics, ethnology and mythology.

Keywords:

culture, literary work, myth, mentality, thinking

Pages:

65-76

Full text

in PDF

Type:

Research Paper

Field:

Literary Studies

Topic:

(Literary) language and social conditioning

UDC:

82.0:821.18.09

DOI:

10.5281/zenodo.495549

Research Paper

Citations

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