Representations of Feminine Monstruousness
Journal of Research in Gender Studies, 2014
As any other mythology, the Romanian folkloric beliefs reveal an extraordinarily prodigious human... more As any other mythology, the Romanian folkloric beliefs reveal an extraordinarily prodigious human creativity. Due to its oral characteristics, our mythology generated customs and rituals, stories, legends, beliefs, that offer real keys for the reading of a history of mentalities. To our present day society it is almost impossible to read into the mind of the people from the past times, for whom the confrontation between humans and obscure forces had the aim of achieving the communication with the sacred. Rudolf Otto finds two important components for the sacred: fascinans and tremendum,1 and these are specific to the Romanian folkloric mentality.Through the mythical discourse we got to know the specific logic of the mythical thinking, and its beliefs that the monstrous as a negative dimension of the sacred generated chaos, death and an ontological disequilibrium, either individual or collective. In fact this ignoble terrible form of sacred manifestation represents a continuous chall...
Uploads
Papers by Claudia COSTIN