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• The Character of the Wayfarer in Gyula Krúdy's Novel The Travelling Companion

  47-64

  Gyula Balogh

  Views:

  27

  In Gyula Krúdy’s texts, the author’s alter ego figures and mediator types can be given a new meaning with the help of the results of folklore research. The writer got to know the archetypal features of these figures very early on, as even when reading the writings of his youth, it is striking that Krúdy not only wrote the plot and atmos­phere of the mostly family-based fairy tales and ghost stories into his texts, but also used the storytelling techniques that create the folklore treasure.

  The study will discuss Krúdy’s short novel The Travelling Companion, the division of the main character’s identity, the wide range of reading possibilities offered by the story’s sacred character and mystical atmosphere. The present interpretation under­takes to reveal the complex personality of the travelling companion, to examine those scenes abounding in sacred elements, through a detailed analysis of which the com­mon features of the Krúdy hero and certain figures of the folk religious world become visible.

  It can be assumed that Krúdy knew and used in his works certain features of the accompanying, helping spirit, the so-called soul guide, psychopompos, which term denotes Hermes, the god of travel. However, the term psychopompos is not only known in cultures based on Greek myths, it also applies to the accompanying spirits of ancient shamanism. We find the remains of this belief in shamans in the case of the so-called wayfarers, who, together with other strange people, are considered late descendants of shamans.

• Folklore, Nonhuman Animals and Social Darwinism

  283-298

  Nidhi Mathur

  Shailesh Kumar Ray

  Views:

  244

  This article deals with the critical analysis of the selected Grimm’s fairy tales in the context of social Darwinism. First, a brief overview of the term and its historical background is provided. Furthermore, this article looks at various ideas that social Darwinian thinkers have used and presented over time. After that, the article will present the connection between social Darwinism and Grimm's fairy tales. The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm included in the analysis include: The Fox and the Cat, The Wolf and the Fox, The Wren and the Bear. The fairy tales selected are viewed in this article through the lens of the ‘theriocentric-animalist perspective’, since the anthropocentric reading provides fairy tale animals only in terms of 'character masks of human characteristics', hence the fairy tale animals are forced to 'disappear'. This article argues that the Grimm’s Märchen are antithesis to ‘survival of the fittest’.