Consideration on the Anthropology of the Center in the Romanian fantastic fairy tale. The Mundi Tree motif
Costel CIOANCĂ
Academia Română, Muzeul de Artă Veche Apuseană
kishinn@gmail.com
Homo sapiens have always been fascinated by the presence of impressive trees in their world. Especially in archaic societies that did not know/use writing, such real representations will easily pass into mythical thinking, having the role of translating, verisimilizing, adapting the unreal according to the respective community’s own needs for understanding and valorization. In the imaginaryrepresentationmemory cultural relationship regarding the symbolism given to the tree/wood over time, the Romanian space could not be an exception. Adapting a mythical matrix of reference, the popular mentality imagined it based on its own needs for symbolic representation and valorization. Being positioned by the anonymous creator between the real and the symbolic, such trees discovered in the fairy tales anthologies are not accessible to anyone, they are „extramundi” located, they are matrices of other realms/worlds: multilayered and mineral, worlds discovered by the hero in a tree are inhabited by fantastic beings of fairy tales and are mythologically connoted such as the days of the week, a dragon, unnamed ascetics/saints or fairies, etc.
Keywords: imaginary, Arbor Mundi, mythanalyze, Romanian fairytale.
