Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195108566 ISBN 13: 9780195108569

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Untying the Knot collects eighteen previously unpublished essays on the riddle--a genre of discourse found in virtually every human culture. Hasan-Rokem and Shulman have drawn these essays from a variety of cultural perspectives and disciplines; linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, and religion and literature scholars consider riddling practices in Hebrew, Finnish, Indian languages, Chinese, and classical Greek. The authors seek to understand the peculiar expressive power of the riddle, and the cultural logic of its particular uses; they scrutinize the riddle's logical structure and linguistic strategies, as well as its affinity to neighboring genres such as enigmas, puzzles, oracular prophecy, proverbs, and dreams. In this way, they begin to answer how riddles relate to the conceptual structures of a particular culture, and how they come to represent a culture's cosmology or cognitive map of the world. More importantly, these essays reveal the human need for symbolic ordering--riddles being one such form of cultural ritual.

About this title

About the Author

Poet and Essayist, Galit Hasan-Rokem is Professor of Folklore at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. David Shulman is Professor of Indian Studies and Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

From the Back Cover

Untying the Knot collects eighteen previous unpublished essays on the riddle--a genre of discourse found in virtually every human culture. Hason-Rokem and Shulman have drawn these essays from a variety of cultural perspectives and disciplines; linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, and scholars of religion and literature consider riddling in Hebrew, Finnish, Indian languages, Chinese, and classical Greek.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195108566
• ISBN 13: 9780195108569
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 342
• Editor: Hasan-Rokem Galit