Review article
THE MOTIF WORLD OF DEMONOLOGICAL LEGENDS IN CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY OF POSUŠJE AREA
Josipa Širić
orcid.org/0000-0003-1195-5737
; Poslijediplomski doktorski studij, Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Mostaru
Abstract
The paper includes thematic and motif analysis of demonological legends
collected during fild research in the period between 2010 and 2012 in the territory of Posušje. The legends are content-rich and a thematically very extensive, but an insuffiiently explored area. Furthermore,they are occasionally written down in the works of various writers, but never included in one collection. Demonological legends are often connected with the mythological/mythical and sometimes eschatological.
However, unlike the eschatological and mythical, demonological legends aim at clarifying the characters that belong to dark forces. Written demonological legends relate to beings with supernatural abilities that always in one way or another do evil to others. Based on the collected legends, a thematic motif analysis, as comprehensive as possible, of the above texts has been carried out. The analysis is complemented by using the relevant literary-theoretical literature. An analytical approach helped to establish the stories, creatures and phenomena that have demonological aspect, while the methods of synthesis and classifiation helped to put the beings into specifiC categories. Belief in supernatural beings and phenomena originates from the earliest times of human existence, and the written legends testify about the motifs related to demonological beings and phenomena being taken over, thus creating
different variants of legends.
Keywords
oral literature; demonologicallegends; beliefs; motifs; fildresearch
Hrčak ID:
136751
URI
Publication date:
3.2.2015.
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