Le roitelet : vie et mort dans le rituel et les contes irlandais : essai sur l'évolution des représentations des rapports nature-culture et homme-femme
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Abstract EN:
The wren (troglodytes) features at the centre of a ritual during the twelve days of christmas, and also in folk tales, in ireland (and europe). The answers to key-questions : why is such a small bird made king ? why is he sacrificed, or caught alive instead ? why at this time of year ? reveal that the wren is "good to think" man's relationship to nature, a relationship which has evolved. The analysis of the variants of the tales confirms this, and permits reconstruction of the evolution of the relationship man-nature, but also that of man-woman, in terms of two successive prevailing ideologies, the first surviving as substratum of the second. In the first, which is pre-neolithic and focussed on blood, life is reproduced by death, nature and woman, devouring and nourishing in turn. In the second, reproduction is made possible, and nature woman is rendered nourishing by sex and by man "penetrating" "her" and being (pro)creative ; the decisive role ascribed to penis and "seed", to the phallic "tool", symbolising human capacity to "pierce" nature's secrets and to intervene in its reproductive cycle, would have thus originated in (agri)culture.
Abstract FR:
Le roitelet (troglodytes) est au centre, en irlande (et en europe), d'un rituel - situe pendant les douze jours de noel - et de contes. Repondre aux questions-cles - pourquoi faire roi un si petit oiseau ? pourquoi le sacrifier ou, au contraire, l'attrapper vivant ? pourquoi pendant cette periode ? - revele que le roitelet est "bon a penser" l'homme dans son rapport a la nature. Un rapport qui a evolue. L'abalyse des variantes des contes le confirme tout en permettant de reconstituer l'evolution de la relation homme-nature, mais aussi homme-femme, en termes de deux ideologies dominantes successives, la premiere subsistant comme substrat de la seconde. Dans la premiere, preneolithique, centree sur le sang, c'est la mort, la nature et la femme, alternativement devoreuses et nourricieres, qui reproduisent la vie. Dans la seconde, c'est le sexe ou l'homme, "penetrant" et (pro)-createur, qui fait reproduire et rend nourricier ; la culture (l'agriculture) serait a l'origine du role determinant attribue au penis et a la "semence", a l"outil" phallique, symbole de la capacite humaine a "percer" les secrets de la nature et a intervenir dans son cycle de reproduction.