Fairies: The Fatal Allurement

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Published: Jan 1, 2010
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/benaki.29
Χρυσούλα Χατζητάκη-Καψωμένου
Χαράλαμπος Πασσαλής
Abstract
Taking it for granted that the people who lived in the so-called traditional societies imprinted the experiences of their everyday lives on oral literature in a very indirect fashion, this article attempts to decipher the thematic choices in the ‘traditions’ (one of the genres of oral literature) referring to fairies. So why are the fairies, who are presented in these tales as being extremely beautiful, seductive and behaving in a positively erotic fashion towards men, hostile and aggressive towards them? How do they behave towards women? Why does oral literature situate them in distant lands, which are presented as alarming and dangerous places for human beings? Why are fairies described in some tales as hybrid creatures (with the feet of goats or donkeys) and what could this mean? Finding some answers to the above questions may help reveal the hidden desires or fears of people in traditional societies or what was construed by the community as a whole as permissible or unacceptable.
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