Boletín de Literatura Oral (Jul 2021)
Dialogues of judgement and dream interpretation in folk tales
Abstract
Some of the kings in the narrative actually follow Kantian orientation in their judgment and allow the right of necessity to enter into their thinking: they listen to others or (the good sense of) the truthful heart because of their limited or deficient knowledge. Others, delighted with their self-belief and mania for power, throw scorn on the law, on mercy, pardon, and forgiveness, and let themselves be led by anger, stupidity, complacency, stigma and desire for exclusion. In the tale narratives, they are further represented as scholars/wisemen, fortune-tellers, the ‘foresighted’, ancient old men, old women, wizards, taltoses (in the words of folklorist Ilona Nagy “mysterious people of fate”), doubles/doppelgangers, or animals with extraordinary abilities (the ability to speak human languages, or to transfigure themselves), prestigious kings from another country, ministers, advisors, witches who deceive the king (not uncommonly Gypsy women), depending on whether the intention is to link the giver of advice and the meaning of what he says to the sacred (biblical) or the profane (sometimes mythical), as it illuminates his/her existential character.
