“The Legend Of White Snake” In Diverse Folk Narratives And Arts

“The Legend of the White Snake”, “ legend of The Cowherd and the Weaving Maid”, “the Story of Lady Meng Jiang” and “the Butterfly Lovers” are regarded as the four Chinese folk lengends. They were the first batch of state- level intangible cultural heritage. Originated from civilians, the Legend of the White Snake is a very beautiful, holy story, which has deep metaphor of folk culture. Since 800 hundred years ago, through the continuous modification and polishing, it has become a dazzling pearl of our folk culture. As it spread, except for the oral tradition, which was very familiar with us and was on the list of world intangible cultural heritage items, folk arts has also made a contribution to the vatility of its life. The love story and the novelistic establishment of the Legend of the White Snake was deeply rooted in the traditional culture of China, it had strong civilization from the formation to the propagation of the story.This artical was divided into four chapters, first, using the analysis of the formation, prototype and evolvement of the story as the index, and then it revealed the further cultural origin of the stories, also it explored the folk background and the literature value from the aspect of abundant expressive forms.The first chapter stated the analysis of its totem culture and folk religion, which was divided into three parts. The first part analyzied the reason why the snake totem appeared, the second part explored the three stages of the snake totem worship, and the third part illuminated the image and the influence of the snake in the folk culture.The second chapter analyzed the development and the evolvement the story has been through in the context of the traditional Chinese culuture. Formed from the tales of legendia, and baptized by the history for over 800 hundred years, as time went on, both the content and the role settling of the Legend of the White Snake had been transmuted. This chapter was divided into four part to analyze the four versions of its historical evolvements. This chapter will support the backgroud for the third and the fourth chapters.The third chapter analyzed the cultural ecology of the spread of the Legend of the White Snake, which also meant analyzing the civil features. This chapter was divided into two parts. The first part analyzed the motif and prototype of the story, which was benefit for analyzing the origination of the civilization of the story. The second part told the relationship between the story and other folk customs such as the Dragon Boat Festival to prove the folk character of the story.As the emphasis of the whole article, the fourth chapter appreciated the different folk expression of the story from the aspect of aesthetical features and culture psychology. This chapter chose four folk arts, New Year pictures, paper-cuts, shadow puppet and the drama, the most popular ways which the lengend used, and also made a esthetic analysis from the aspect of art expression and cultural metaphor.In recent years, although there were rich studies about the Legend of the White Snake, most of the studies focused on the analysis of the evolvement, images and the cultural connotation. There are less people who analyze it from the aspect of folk art. This artical tries to anylize the legend from the aspect of folk art, and analyze its artistic features and aesthetic value. Through the multi-dimensional research, the author wants to find out the ultimate value of its historical and cultural metaphor, and extend to perspect the deeply cultural psychology of the inheritance and the spread of the Chinese folk arts, in order to complement the characteristic value of the Legend of the White Snake.