Alcune implicazioni tassonomiche dello studio di un motivo etnoletterario

Drinking and boasting of warriors is a recurrent situation, that is a motif, exemplified by many texts, heterogeneous as for language, age and culture; if one decomposes the motif in a series of characteristic features, one can observe that none of these features is present in all the texts. To adequately classify the motif and the texts that realize it, it is therefore better to be founded on family resemblance (Wittgenstein) or on polythetic classification. The article reviews some taxonomical principles that are linked with these two models (family resemblance and polythetic classification) and then discusses their possible use in literary and cultural studies.