Alan Dundes

The Walled-Up Wife: A Casebook

Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.

PN1376.W35 1996 Anthropology Library

"Dundes offers eighteen essays devoted to the folkloric ballad about the immurement of women within a structure to ensure its successful construction, the 'foundation sacrifice' motif in folklore. The essays cover a wide variety of analyses from the Christian interpretation of Krstivoj Kotur to the analysis of gender and power structures. Contributors speculate that the sacrifice motif is either derived from an actual ancient human sacrifice ritual or an allegory for female rites of passage such as marriage."

From: Lorraine Netrick Abraham 1998 review of "The Walled-Up Wife: A Casebook."
Journal of Women's History, vol. 10, no. 3, p. 219.