켈트 신화에서의 구혼과 구애의 상징적 의미

Abstract

Originating from about B.C.3000, the Celtic myths include, among others, the stories of Fomorii and Tuatha de Dannan, Cuchulain's romance, Finn's Adventure. This thesis focuses on particular stories from all periods of Celtic myths relevant to courting and wooing of heroes and gods and also focuses on the coexistence of the contraries in the Celtic myths. The courting and wooing in Celtic myths have some distinct patterns. While courting, the hero first experiences some trials and tribulations, which sometimes contrast and sometimes compare those of Hermia and Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare. Then the hero overwhelms the woman's family by killing the woman's father. Next, the murdered father maintains a degree of sacredness by helping the society resuscitate into a healthier form. Culhwch beheads Olwen's father, Ysbaddaden after going through all the hardships that he had been tasked to complete. Beheading signifies that the man has been deprived of his social hegemony. By being beheaded or killed, he lost his Goddess of Sovereignty. Olwen can be regarded as a Goddess of Sovereignty. The Goddess was originally the daughter of Mother Earth. But some goddesses or women who were sharply different from other women and who had influence over people were regarded as having the Sovereignty and were referred to the Goddess of Sovereignty. Since the influential power resides in the Goddess, not in the men, men came to achieve power by allying themselves with the Goddess of Sovereignty. By killing the women's fathers, once strongly united with their own daughters, the source of power, the heroes came to be attached to the women, their love and the source of power. Wooing, as opposed to courtship, is usually performed by gods, and their love is full of the supernatural elements such as magic, transformation and reincarnation. The use of magic, transformation from divine form into swans, meeting at the lake or river and the introduction of dream in the story suggest that the gods use all the power they posses to realize their desire and love unattainable in reality. The most important pattern of wooing is that gods, the wooing subject, resort to supernatural force and therefore their wooing is romantic, beautiful and beyond all boundaries. Courting and wooing appear somewhat different, due to the hardships and killings courtship introduces to the process of obtaining the women, while in wooing the full energy of gods is concentrated on obtaining the heart of their beloved. However, courting and wooing do share one element in common. They, heroes, gods, and maidens do all in their power to realize their love, as represented by the cases of Froech, Midhir, Cuchulain and Oengus. The Celts, who have been perceived to be aggressive, show some contrasting aspect of incomparable sincerity in the area of love, revealing a deep characteristic of these people. Furthermore, the Celts harmonized the contraries into undifferentiated unity.