Идентичността на мъртвите: аспекти на мотива за разпознаване на родственик в българския юнашки епос
The Identity of the Dead: Aspects of the Motif of Identifying a Relative in Bulgarian Folklore Epics

Summary/Abstract: Discussing the plots of discovering and identifying a relative, which have a very wide distribution in Bulgarian epic songs, the current paper focuses on a major motif in these songs, the one of death. The basic characteristics of this motif demonstrate in fact the travel of the epic hero in the realm of the after-life, and the identifications of the lost relatives are actually cases of “recreation” of already dead people. Thus, far from being aeschatological by nature, the epic songs manifest an explicit aeschatological character that determines their major forms and mythological dimensions. The paper concentrates on the specific projections that the motif of death gives to the issues of identity, and on the logic of modeling identity through representing and interpreting the dead in the epic world.

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