“A HUMAN IS AN ANIMAL AND AN ANIMAL IS A HUMAN”: TRANSFORMATION FROM HUMAN TO ANIMAL IN SLOVENIAN BALLAD TRADITION
“A HUMAN IS AN ANIMAL AND AN ANIMAL IS A HUMAN”: TRANSFORMATION FROM HUMAN TO ANIMAL IN SLOVENIAN BALLAD TRADITION

Author(s): Marjetka Golež Kaučić
Subject(s): Customs / Folklore, Slovenian Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Psychoanalysis
Published by: Instituti Albanologjik i Prishtinës
Keywords: Parallel World; Slovenian Mythological Ballads; Human and Animal; Metamorphoses; Ecocentrism;
Summary/Abstract: The most famous authors on topic of transformation from human to animal in the tradition of European literature were Publius Ovidius Naso (Metamorphoses) and Franz Kafka (Metamorphoses), both of whom conceptualized the parallel worlds of reality and mythology. In the Slovenian ballad tradition we can trace several mythological ballads with thematic transformations from human to animal and back, as well of animal brides and grooms. This paper focuses on the question of the parallel worlds of animal and human and about the fluid boundaries between them as represented in ballad stories. By analyzing a number of ballads and incorporating theoretical perspectives from folkloristics, psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, critical animal studies and zoofolkloristics, I will uncover the purpose of mythological transformations and their imagery. The underlying question is whether these mythological stories represent a notional duality of human versus animal and nature versus culture, or to what degree the stories may transcend this conceptual juxtaposition.

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