За един тип трик-измама в приказките за животни (Набавяне на храна в руските и българските приказки за лисицата)
On a Type of Trickster’s Deceit in Tales about Animals (The Procurement of Food in Russian and Bulgarian Tales about the Fox)

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines one example of the pattern of deceit of tricksters in folktales: the way a fox procures food through deceit. The author analyses the text in the light of the general plot structure of tales about the adventures of foxes. She classifies the types of tricks used by foxes. This is done on the basis of the trickster’s ultimate goal which in turn explains the plot’s structure and its semantics. The most popular type of story is that in which obtaining food is a matter of survival. Some basic moments are arranged in a table which illustrates the different types of plot with the help of motiphemes and allomotifs. There is also a table illustrating the different types of deceit used for the purpose of obtaining food. Those tables show that the number of tricks is limited and that the different variants result from synonymic substitutions typical of folklore. The very first stage of this kind of structural analysis provides solutions for some general problems of genetic and cultural nature. The main conclusion is that the practice of obtaining food through theft is typical chiefly of a society of primitive economy where food was supplied through hunting, fishing gathering food. This is confirmed by the system of semantic categories such as the place of action (a forest), the trickster himself (the fox as a folk-tale transformation of the totem with its typical functions of presiding over a number of rites), the objects of ravishment (the ritual food or another totem – an anti-totem).

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