LES REPRESENTATIONS DE LA FÉMINITÉ BENEFIQUE ET MALEFIQUE DANS LA CULTURE TRADITIONNELLE ROUMAINE
LES REPRESENTATIONS DE LA FÉMINITÉ BENEFIQUE ET MALEFIQUE DANS LA CULTURE TRADITIONNELLE ROUMAINE

Summary/Abstract: The Romanian representations of feminity acknowledge about the social perception, attitudes and behaviors towards woman and femininity. They are still based on the social imaginary and the actual definitions of gender identities can hardly influence them. The “feminization” of the mythical reprezentations corresponds to the representations – most of them pre-Christian – of the intertwined categories of life and death, purity and impurity. The confusion and the vagueness are the principal reasons of the association between woman and evil. “Ielele” (representations of the lost souls), “vâlvele,” “ştimele” (malefic divinities of mountains and rivers), the death, the violent divinities of time or vegetation are hypostasis of the malefic femininity. But, in the same culture, “Maica Precista” (Holy Mother), the Romanian most invoked divinity, is the principle of the primary goodness, fertility and chastity, of the gift of life and death; she opposes and completes in the same time the principle of paternal good.

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