An exhaustive study is yet to be written, but this book by folklore and comparative literature scholar Zivile Gimbutas is an excellent beginning. The Riddle in the poem presents a clear and useful discussion of the riddle as it illuminates poetry and as it is used by poets in the creation of poetry. The author, Zivile Gimbutas, has effectively drawns ... Read moretogether research from folklorists and literary scholars to support her description of the essential components of both the folk and the literary riddle, andshe has employed this analytical frame in an examination of selected works of five twentieth-century poets—Francis Ponge, Wallace Stevens, Richard Wilbur, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Henrikas Radauskas. Gimbutas' study is a well-developed application of anintegrative folklore and literature perspective. Perhaps mose valuable is the first chapter, in which she reviews some of the foundational research on the oral riddle tradition, paying particular attention to the formal and structural features of the riddle as outlined by Archer Taylor, Elli Köngäs Maranda, and Alan Dundes... Gimbutas introduces the concept of the 'ekphrasis,' or a verbal description of a visual enigma, as an analytical tool tied to the literary riddle tradition. After offering a number o
Sandra Dolby, Professor, Indiana University
Journal of Folklore Research
An exhaustive study is yet to be written, but this book by folklore and comparative literature scholar Zivile Gimbutas is an excellent beginning. The Riddle in the poem presents a clear and useful discussion of the riddle as it illuminates poetry and as it is used by poets in the creation of poetry. The author, Zivile Gimbutas, has effectively drawns together research from folklorists and literary scholars to support her description of the essential components of both the folk and the literary riddle, and she has employed this analytical frame in an examination of selected works of five twentieth-century poets—Francis Ponge, Wallace Stevens, Richard Wilbur, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Henrikas Radauskas. Gimbutas' study is a well-developed application of an integrative folklore and literature perspective. Perhaps mose valuable is the first chapter, in which she reviews some of the foundational research on the oral riddle tradition, paying particular attention to the formal and structural features of the riddle as outlined by Archer Taylor, Elli Köngäs Maranda, and Alan Dundes... Gimbutas introduces the concept of the 'ekphrasis,' or a verbal description of a visual enigma, as an analytical tool tied to the literary riddle tradition. After offering a number of useful answers to the question 'What is a riddle?' in the first chapter, the author briefly reviews the history of riddle research and points out that much of the study of oral riddle in Europe involved the recording of repeatable texts... To demonstrate how the poets she selected for her book did in fact use the riddling tradition, Gimbutas turns to the process of riddle creation rather than to indexes of traditional riddles... In The Riddle in the Poem, Zivile Gimbutas has given us a clear insight into how contemporary poets absorb the tradition and process of the riddle and use it in their creative verbal comparisons, quests, and questions that emerge as striking and often enigmatic poetry.
Sandra Dolby, professor, Indiana University
Journal of Folklore Research
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