ТРАНССВЕТОВНИ ИДЕНТИТЕТ И КОНЦЕПТУАЛИЗАЦИЈА ОНОГ СВЕТА
TRANSWORLD IDENTITY AND CONCEPTUALIZATION OF OTHERWORLD

Summary/Abstract: The author analyzes the notions of posthumous existence (of soul) and conceptualization of the otherworld in oral narratives. It’s pointed to the elements that establish transworld identity (“identity across possible worlds”) (physical appearance, age, family ties, etc.) and the inversion as the basic structural principle. The focus is on two basic categories of symbolic thinking- space and time -which are formally remodeled: other- world is imagined as distant and spatially separated, and the flow of time is slower, faster or suspended. Other forms of inversion are also pointed out: the behavior is replaced by anti-behavior (persistent motif in fairy tales and ritual practice), food by anti-food (deceased feed on carrion, garbage, urine, steam, ashes; cannibalism), motionby anti-motion (walking backwards or in one shoe), values by anti-values (coal or stone taken from the otherworld turns into gold in “this” world and vice versa), moral by anti-moral,houseby anti-house (grave is depicted like house without windows and doors).

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