The role and status of snake in Animal-Wife Stories
Subject Areas : ...
Ali
Heydari
1
(Professor, Department of Persian language and Literature, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran)
mousa
Sabzi
2
(Assistant Professor, Department of Archeology, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran.)
Keywords: marriage, animal, animal's-bridegroom, girl snake,
Abstract :
One of the prominent actions occurring in many fairy tales is the ritual and symbolic marriage of princesses. In some of these stories, contrary to the norm, we face Animal-wife, among which one of the most famous is snake. In the course of history, in Aryan as well as global culture, snake has played various and sometimes contradictory roles, at one time attaining a divine status and at another time behaving as an evil. It seems that snake, for various reasons, is one of the most ancient animal of bridegrooms; other birds and animals like frog, bear, swan have assumed this role at the later stages. The influence of the Abrahamic religions on the degradation of the snake is significant. In folk tales, marrying a snake could have different reasons which are historically justified. In addition to the common motives for animal-bridegroom tales, the main reasons for the emergence of snake-wife stories are the antiquity, holiness, and symbolic fertility of the snake wife. In tale symbolism, the snake has both female and male sexual symbol. That is why sometimes the snake is the bride and sometimes is the groom. The presence of this beautiful animal in the tales as a wife who continues to transform into a human being, can dispel the child's fear of a marriage from which those persons around him have made a taboo.
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