Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes

by Galit Hasan-Rokem (Editor)

This book collects eighteen previously unpublished essays on the riddle--a genre of discourse found in virtually every human culture.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.

Genres: Theory

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Galit Hasan-Rokem is a folklore scholar, translator, and Professor Emerita in the Department of Hebrew Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She continues to conduct research, supervise graduate students, and translate poetry, mainly from the Swedish into Hebrew. She is the author of many books and articles and a published poet, as well as the founding editorial board member and cultural editor of Palestine-Israel Journal, the coeditor of Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore, and the associate editor of Proverbium.

Reviews

[Chris Duval · Rating 2 out of 5]

Opaque language mars parts of the book--particularly in the first section and the afterword. Some of the literary analysis that is more readable is flawed by overwrought, brittle arguments. But some essays--Andrew H. Plak's being the premier example--are concise, lucid and instructive.