Author
Kurochkin Oleksandr
a Doctor of History, a professor, a senior research fellow at the Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine). ORCID ID: https:orcid.org/0000-0002-3365-7266
Wedding Ritual Games of Ukrainians (Typology and Semantics)
Abstract
The submitted research fills in an essential gap in the study of entertaining and gaming culture of Ukrainians. These problems have been left out of the attention of Ukrainian scientists for a long time under the influence of clerical, ideological and moral censorship.
Collected and analyzed folklore-ethnographic materials give a certain idea about a rich gaming repertoire of the second part of folk wedding, called perezva. Mainly the agrarian nature of Ukrainians’ traditional culture explains the fact, that the principal part of this repertoire is formed by the gaming practices, imitating the production activity of grain-grower (from the land cultivation and harvest gathering to the production of foodstuffs). In the context of archaic consciousness the working processes have been associated closely with the productively-erotic magic, called for the support of happiness and welfare of newly-created family.
The games with brightly expressed erotic symbolism and attributes, accompanied with a shameful folklore and expressive vocabulary, belong to the most ancient layer of the agrarian rites. In the traditional perezva of Ukrainians this group is represented by the games Tovkty Stupu (To Pound the Mortar), Zabyvannia Kilka (Chopa) (Driving down the Stake), Pokazuvaty Mezhu (To Show the Bound) and others. The games Molotyty Zhyto (To Mill the Rye) or Siiaty Zhyto (To Sow the Rye), Kosar (Mower), Koval (Blacksmith), Melnyk (Miller), Tokar (Turner), Molotarka (Thresher), Kombain (Combine) and others belong to the category of imitative performances. In the patriarchal Ukrainian village, where the owners of another profession, than the grain-growers themselves, form an absolute minority, their figures and activities are imparted with definite sacral features, typical for the representatives of strange world.
The way of gaming undressing (nudity), observed by us in the wedding customs, is the antithesis of carnival mummering and masking. Both these gaming practices become traditional ways of people transference into the atmosphere of holiday, where everything is upside-down, not as it is in everyday life.
Historical development of wedding ceremonies, which has lasted for many centuries, takes place in different ways. One of them are the most barbarian and archaic. They disappear and are forgotten after the contradictions with new conditions of life. Another have changed gradually into the folk amateur theatre. Humour, life optimism, dramatic improvisation are considered as the typical features of it.
Keywords
wedding, rite, game, traditional entertainments, erotic folklore, folk humour, holiday leisure.
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