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A Critical Semiotic Study of Finnish, Latvian and Czech Myths
Pintāne, Inese ; Švantner, Martin (advisor) ; Váša, Ondřej (referee)
This Master's thesis invites its readers into the realm of myths where various deities and mythical creatures dwell and spend their days creating the human world and different cultural artefacts. To find out more about this realm and its possible variations, the author of this Master's thesis has chosen to study myths of relatively distinct nations. Since the author is familiar with the local language and customs of Finns, Latvians and Czechs, the author's choice fell on the myths of the given nations. Since everything in the realm of myths is in constant flux, the only way to detect what was considered valuable in it by its inhabitants at some point in time was to pause this process. To do it, the author approached the myths through the method called transvaluation developed by James Jakób Liszka in his book "The Semiotic of Myth: A Critical Study of the Symbol" (1989). Although still not very familiar among folklore scholars, this method enabled the author to view myths as trilevel entities and detect in them various social constructs passed from generation to generation. As the readers will later see, the author was able, by approaching myths from the perspective of transvaluation, to reveal various norms encoded in them. Keywords: Finns, Latvians, Czechs, myths, Liszka, transvaluation,...
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