E-mail: krasheninnikova@rambler.ru Tel.: +7 (8212) 20-17-02
26, Kommunisticheskaya str., Syktyvkar, 167982, Russian Federation
PhD in Philology, Head of the Folklore Sector, Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Federal Research Center "Komi Scientific Center, Ural Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences"
The work was carried out within the framework of the planned topic of the research work (registration number 121051400044-2).
This paper analyzes the ritual dialogues of the Russian wedding tradition noted in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. These dialogues were performed before a church wedding behind the closed doors of the bride’s house and at the “ransoming” (vykup) of a place for the groom in the bride’s house. A comparative analysis of these dialogues shows that they are formed from different groups of texts. For example, the episode “unlocking closed doors” uses attributive questions, mythological riddles, questions on cosmological and biblical topics, riddles based on word play, etc. These ritual dialogues use material from several genres and refer to various aspects of traditional culture and everyday life. They also mention facts of local history and culture, and this allows us to verify that the wedding guests play a part in the daily life of the community. The dialogues spoken at the ransoming of the groom’s place come after the identification of those who have arrived for the bride and the groom has proved his readiness to marry. The redemption of the place is a kind of second stage testing the groom, a test of his solvency and knowledge of everyday life. That is probably why texts with mythological and cosmological themes hardly occur here, while everyday verbal object-identification riddles — which help identify objects needed for further ritual activities — predominate.
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