Параметри и социални функции на гатанковото прение
Parameters and social functions of the riddle dispute

Summary/Abstract: Riddle dispute has been analyzed as a form of a verbal test, rooted in the sexual and age rites for transition to a higher social status. Riddle guessers prove their wisdom – intellectual (knowing the wisdom of traditions), as well as sexual (willingness to conclude a marriage). Apart from the symbolic of the wedlock in the riddles asked during a wedding there may be found another semantic background, compiled of cosmological images, corresponding to the general world model. Bulgarian mythological and poetical world images provide the context, unfolding meanings of the fragments and corresponding to each other as elements of a single system.

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