THE MOTIF “DROWNING” IN RUSSIAN AND CHINESE MYTHOLOGIES – ITS LEGACY IN LITERATURE AND LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL INTERPRETATION

Abstract

(The work is carried out with the financial support of social science foundation of jilin province, china, project 2018b30). The article considers one of the common Russian and Chinese mythology motif “drowning”, which has important cultural meanings, but does not attract attention in the field of comparative studies in Russia or China. The author compares the content of this mythological motif, the forms of its expression in myths, and especially its embodiment in fiction. Russian National Corpus and Chinese Language Corpus materials and corresponding non-fiction texts are used for comparative analysis of the representation of the mythological motif of “drowning” in works of Russian and Chinese fiction. The linguistic and cultural features of fragments of mythological and linguistic pictures of the world of the two peoples, as well as their mentalities, are analyzed. The author concludes that the ways and methods of embodying the mythological motif in Russian and Chinese fiction are unique.