Вуйчото и племенникът – между покровителството и жертвата. Авункулатните отношения в българския юнашки епос
The Mother’s Brother and the Sister’s Son – between Patronage and Sacrifice. Avunculate Relationships in Bulgarian Heroic Epics

Summary/Abstract: Avunculate relationships have often attracted the interest of kinship theorists with their characteristic duality – on the one hand the mother’s brother represents the family power and exercises rights on his nephew, and on the other hand – the nephew is patronized and defended when necessary by him. One of the most interesting representations of avunculate relationships in Bulgarian folklore culture are to be discovered in the heroic epics, where they encompass a variety of plots – about a lad that supports his mother’s brother at his wedding, about a mother’s brother who helps in the wedding trials of his nephew, about the sacrifice of the nephew for the sake of the mother’s brother, etc. The current text aims to analyze these diverse representations and to trace the characteristic ways in which the folklore epics views and interprets the avunculate relationships.

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