Slyxaya A. Ethnic myth in the imagery paradigms of Old English Epic-Mythological Texts

The thesis deals with the verbalization means of the sacred history of the Anglo-Saxons in the metrical charms, epics, and riddles of the Old English period. The theoretical foundations of the thesis are formed by a definition of myth as society's sacred history, and of sacred language as a system where mythopoetic semantics prevails and symbols are central carriers of meaning instead of signs in ordinary day-to-day speech. An 'image' or 'imagery paradigm' is defined as (1) the sum total of an image's variants, or variants of various images across a text or texts; (2) a trope (metaphor) in which one image is defined in terms of another. Analysis of ethnic myth in the texts is carried out through research of images singled out as the most effective and universally relevant verbalizers of ethnic semantics, including its mythological, 'sacred' component: color images, number images, spatial imagery and images of natural elements (water and earth). Practical analysis is preceded by a brief overview of the research history for these images within the broader scope of linguistics and mythology as well as within Anglo-Saxon studies.