Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Reading Notes: Twenty-Two Goblins (Part B)

In this part of Twenty-Two Goblins, some of the riddles didn't have a clear-cut answer among those supplied by the goblin and required the king to give his own answer rather than those provided. This gave those stories more of a "riddle" quality.

Like Greek and Roman mythology read for previous weeks, these stories had themes of righteousness and beauty. As I wrote about for Part A, each riddle seemed to impart a moral message. The exception was with the last riddle that the king was unable to answer. I drew it out and at least to me it looks like a son born to the daughter/father and a son born to the mother/son would be uncle and nephew to each other in both directions.

A painting of Shiva. (Pixabay)

The end of the framing story included a bit about telling the riddles to others in order to cleanse sin, which probably helped the tales propagate.

Bibliography. Twenty-Two Goblins, translated by Arthur Ryder. Web Link.

2 comments:

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  2. Hi Dakota!

    I also read Twenty-Two Goblins, and after the final riddle, I definitely needed to know the right answer. I ended up making a diagram so I could see everything laid out, and that really helped. I wrote about it in my Reading Notes for that week as well, if you're interested in looking. I came to the same conclusion as you did about their relationship!

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