AN ATTEMPT FOR UNDERSTANDING WHY THE IRONSMITH SOMETIME STRIKES ONLY THE ANVIL AND NOT THE IRON PIECE, TOO. FOLKLORISTIC AND COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY PERSPECTIVES
AN ATTEMPT FOR UNDERSTANDING WHY THE IRONSMITH SOMETIME STRIKES ONLY THE ANVIL AND NOT THE IRON PIECE, TOO. FOLKLORISTIC AND COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY PERSPECTIVES

Summary/Abstract: The ironsmiths’ gesture of striking only the anvil without striking theiron piece, too, is integrated in a ritual whose function is to reinforce the devil’schains, on the one hand, and in the mental text of the worker, on the otherhands. Two very different reasons ascribe to one and the same gesture. Thefirst part of the study analyzes the narrative motif of the object who binds inrelation with the ironsmith, Jesus Christ, King Solomon and the devil, asappears in the Romanian and Caucasian culture. The second part purposes, atleast as an experiment, to approach the ironsmith’s work, in order to produce aspecific object, as an oral performance, expressed through body gestures whichput in act the mental knowledge of iron processing.

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