| Abstract [eng] |
The object of the research is the conception of infectious/contagious (‘sticking’) diseases in Lithuanian folklore. The dissertation is aimed at the exploration of the conception of the ‘sticking diseases’ in Lithuanian folklore. The research attempts to determine the framework of the conception and what factors might have governed classification of a disease as a ‘sticking one’. Several methods were combined in the research: to give an international context of the Lithuanian material, folklore of other countries was referred to and thus a comparative method was applied. Lithuanian folklore was examined by the means of structural analysis; descriptive and interpretative methods were also applied in the research. The paper also avoids the already settled classification of protective and treatment/healing means into ‘rational’ and ‘magical’ ones. The material is viewed from the emic perspective, i.e., the analysis is carried out disregarding criteria of other branches of science (e.g., medicine) thus trying to highlight mental structures and terms prevailing in traditional community. The research revealed that in Lithuanian folklore, infectious/contagious (‘sticking’) diseases were conceived of as independent beings. Some of them took high positions in the hierarchy of mythical beings. Sticking diseases were considered to be something strange (other) and opposed to the familiar, i.e. a human being, in Lithuanian folklore. In the 19th-20th centuries, this paradigm of strangeness, non-human nature, could be expressed by means of another social status, gender, age, ethnic identity. Beside these anthropomorphic shapes, diseases could ‘acquire’ various zoomorphic shapes; diseases could be imagined as inanimate objects. Traditional community conceived ‘sticking diseases’ as migrating beings as it is reflected in the image of a traveller found in folklore. The image embraces all aspects of strangeness discussed above. For this reason, three levels of spatial system, embracing each other and interacting in between, were distinguished and discussed: extra-social, social and personal spaces. Vertical mythical dimension of the space titled Anapus ‘Otherworld’ in the present paper has become evident; it bore features of the world of the dead and the world of mythical beings and was considered to be the place of residence of ‘sticking diseases’. Protective rituals adopted in traditional community against the ‘sticking diseases’ indicate attempts to manage the migration of diseases and their spread in the social space as well as restore the lost balance between the extra-social and social spaces. |
