Die Rolle des Körpers in den rituellen Initiationen der Braut bei den christlichen Balkanslawen

Abstract

The role of body defect in ritual initiation of woman among Balkan Slav Christians is researched here by the means of standard ethnographic records, original statements of people belonging to the traditional culture, archives, memoirs etc. „The life of the body“, including body checks, body defects, sexual life etc., was a taboo subject and therefore part of „the secret life of the traditional culture“. Applying the ethnolinguistic method of the Russian ethnolinguistic school developed by Nikita Iljich Tolstoy, the ritual of female initiation was taken as complex „cultural (ritual) text“ consisting of many codes, such as verbal, action, folklore, etc. This led us to multilevel analysis of „the ritual texts“. When different codes of one and the same „ritual text” are juxtaposed and compared to each other, it is usually proved that they often convey different information in spite of standing for the same ritual. Furthermore, the very fact that most of the informations upon which theories are construed (and ancient or historical cultures reconstructed) were borrowed from the standard ethnographic records (made mostly by educated people of the epoch) and (un)consciously censored, brought us close to the modern theories of discourse and culture, as proposed by H. Whyte and Alleida Assmann. Interpreting the text’s discourse, revealing hidden, intended, and unintended information according to Whyte, and taking information and notes previously denoted as „rubbish“, „unimportant“, „useless“ for most valid one according to Assmann, enabled us to reveal some of hidden aspects of the body checks in traditional culture, and the role of body defect in woman’s initiation. As the wedding, along with preceding rituals and ceremonies, is the key point of female initiation among Slavs, it was treated as the main subject of this research too. In the result, the variety of body checks is shown, starting with hidden checks in pre-wedding ceremonies and rituals, and ending with ritual body checks in parody paradigm of wedding texts.