Last class Todays class

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Last class Todays class

• Central issues
• Food
• Work
• Property
• The importance of gender
• Marriage as a pivotal point for a woman

• Folklore and contradictions
• Parallels to last class in stories about place
  spirits
• American parallels

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American contradictions

• Wealth
• Joe Millionaire
• Bush Sr. buying socks
• Current campaign strategies
• Education
• Key to success, wealth
• All I need to know I learned in Kindergarten
• Pay of grade school teachers
• Getting moneys worth (supersize it) versus
  waistline
• Equality and equal opportunity
• Who pays? Tax issues

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Folklore and contradictions

• Oral folklore (and pop culture) expresses
• Joe Millionaire, Survivor
• Corporate greed McDonalds
• Neiman Marcus, Mrs. Fields Cookies
• Wealth and ostentation Cement Cadillac
• Girlfriends revenge
• Jilted wifes revenge
• Small sports car

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Ritual gt resolve contradictions

• Giving kids lavish presents at birthday
• Teaching them to save
• Weddings and money
• Spend a great deal
• NOT give money to couple who probably need it
• Expecting guests to make it worth while

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Slavic stuff - review

• Share but fence everything off so others dont
  take
• Work but not enough to have stuff so that you
  have to share (Klad beliefs and stories)
• Also evil eye fears and jealous eye beliefs
• Food share also eat only what you need (but
  can you control eating that way?) Getting yelled
  at for wasting energy

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Contradictions within system and also System and
nature

• Food from previous page is lead-in
• Bride is desired, but she is stranger but youre
  not going to continue your family line without
  one
• Babies but not too many in subsistence economy
• Parallels in stories about place spirits (oral
  folklore)

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House spirit domovoi

• Male
• Can be married, have children
• But word for wife based on his name domovikha
• Most of the spirits are male

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Domovoi traits and stories

• Male spirit but likes female work
• Helps with weaving, embroidery, baby
• He is the inverse of human as above
• Food and drink he like black bread and milk
• Active at night
• Appearance naked and hairy, cone head
• Can foresee (and foretell) future
• Cries before death, esp. male, before misfortune

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Modern stories

• Oppresses at night night terror, Old Hag
• Moves to new apartment
• What rural moving to new house entails
• Shaves cat
• In apartment makes phone calls, throws things
• Me and domovoi at Christmas
• Domovoi and old maid
• Sample interpretations

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Barn/yard spirit or dvorovoi

• Same as domovoi? Note functions that occur in
  farmstead rather than in house
• Bathroom
• Cellar
• Cooking
• Can also help with cattle, esp. if he likes
  color, if owner treats cattle well
• Can harm to punish or just because
• Rake and other accidents
• Scratches, injuries to animals

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Ovinnik the drying barn spirit
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Bannik the bathhouse spirit

• Recall location of bathhouse
• Bathhouse and strangers
• How traditional bathhouse (sauna) works
• Punishes for not bathing often enough
• For using 4th steam
• Bannik is intermediary between house/farm and
  outside (nature) spirits
• For being lazy and trying to wash in house

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Outside the farmstead

• Things get big and nasty
• Spirits of the forest, field, and bodies of water
  never help
• Plenty of harm to punish for bad behavior or
  just because you are in their space
• Vodianoi gets you for fishing out of season,
  taking too many fish
• Leshii for taking too much wood, too many
  berries, mushrooms, leads you astray, gets you
  lost in forest

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Forest spirit or leshii Likes babies and steals
them, replacing with own Likes pregnant women
Interpretation
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Can also look like sweet peasant and lead you
astray Interpretation for person who told this
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A 19th century broadside version of the forest
spirit Please note his size