Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper examines Romanian folk beliefs about strigoi, focusing on two modes of storytelling: (1) autonomous narratives and (2) fragmentary, contextual versions. The case study reflects on the revenant’s motif, oicotype, and how milieu shapes narrative forms.

Paper long abstract

Romanian beliefs and folk stories about strigoi are numerous and diverse. They involve a variety of characteristic subjects and topics, assigned to particular characters of this traditional system. I will describe this group of folkloric characters using the formula “& co”.

These tales sometimes take the form of relatively long and elaborate texts, organized around recurrent and conventional subjects. On other occasions, the narratives are brief, fragmentary, allusive, full of taboos, and with numerous sequences that rely on implicit meanings. There are two separate manners of “using” the same corpus of narrative data, the same index of motifs and the same group of characters. In the first situation, complete, beautiful and self-sufficient narratives are created (and repeted). In the second case, the texts are fluctuating, varying from case to case, and they can only be understood constantly referring to the neighbouring reality and, moreover, by a good understanding of this reality.

Proposed paper aims to provide a brief (as necessary) description of this system of beliefs and stories that are organising aound the Romanian strigoi, focusing on the two forms of textualization. The proposed case study allows a multiple reflection on the concept of oicotype. Firstly, it concerns the adaptation of the widespread motif of the revenant in Romanian folklore. Secondly, the comments on the fragmentary texts which can only be understood in relation to the proximities allow for a more accurate and closer look at the ways in which the “milieu” influences the construction of narrative texts.