Hasan-Rokem Galit, Shulman David (Editors). Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes

Oxford University Press. 1996. — 329 p. — ISBN: 0195101863.This book collects eighteen previously unpublished essays on the riddle genre of discourse found in virtually every human culture. Hasan-Rokem and Shulman have drawn these essays from a variety of cultural perspectives and disciplines; linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, and religion and literature scholars consider riddling practices in Hebrew, Finnish, Indian languages, Chinese, and classical Greek. The authors seek to understand the peculiar expressive power of the riddle, and the cultural logic of its particular uses; they scrutinize the riddle's logical structure and linguistic strategies, as well as its affinity to neighboring genres such as enigmas, puzzles, oracular prophecy, proverbs, and dreams. In this way, they begin to answer how riddles relate to the conceptual structures of a particular culture, and how they come to represent a culture's cosmology or cognitive map of the world. More importantly, these essays reveal the human need for symbolic ordering riddles being one such form of cultural ritual.General and TheoreticalRiddles and Their Use
Traps of Trans-formation: Theoretical Convergences between Riddle and Ritua!
"I'll Give You Three Guesses": The Dynamics of Genre in the Riddle Tale
Hebrew Riddles
Toward a Theory of the Literary Riddle
"Spinning Threads of Sand": Riddles as Images of Loss in the Midrash on Lamentations
A King, a Queen, and the Riddle Between: Riddles and Interpretation in a Late Midrashic Text Enigmatic Modes in India
The Yaksa's Questions
When Is a Riddle Not a Riddle? Some Comments on Riddling and Related Poetic Devices in Classical Sanskrit
Why an Allama Poem Is Not a Riddle: An Anthological EssayTexture and Authority: Telugu Riddles and Enigmas
Enigmas of Sexual Masquerade in Hindu Myths and Tales
Chinese Riddling
Riddle and Enigma in Chinese Civilization
Riddles in The Dream of the Red Chamber
Notes from the West
One Voice and Many Legs: Oedipus and the Riddle of the Sphinx
Myth as Enigma: Cultural Hermcneutics in Late Antiquity
Squaring the Circle
Connecting through Riddles, or The Riddle of Connecting