“Language of flowers” as a phenomenon of folklore culture

This article analyzes the manuscript “The Language of Love” by V. I. Ponomarev, a folklore collector from Lalsk in the former Vologda Province. The manuscript is currently archived in the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The study specifically explores the “language of flowers”, which gained popularity among urban dwellers due to the influence of D. P. Oznobishin’s books “Selam, or the Language of Flowers” (St. Petersburg, 1830), “The Language of Flowers (the Language of Love): A. A. Bykov’s Edition” (Riga, 1903), etc. The folkloric nature of the Lalsk “language of flowers” is emphasized, suggesting that this provincial variant of the “language of flowers” supports the so-called Russian “aristocratic theory” of the origins of folklore proposed in the early XX century, as well as the similar theory by German folklorist Hans Naumann from the 1920s, which posit the transmission of artistic works from the social elite to the broader populace.