Death motif in the folk literature classes: An (im)possible synthesis

The knowledge that the dialogue on death is a sensitive, but then again a necessary topic in the context of education, prompted the emergence of the concept of death education in which literary texts can also play an important role. Therefore, it may be important to say that some oral literary works, frequently with the death motif, have their place in the elementary school curricula. Thus the aim of our paper is: (1) to point to the oral literary texts with the death motif in the curriculum and to those that are incorporated in the approved reading-books and to show (2) the dominant aspects of the thematization of death in the reading-book texts and how to approach them in the didactic and methodical apparatus. The qualitative analysis of the curriculum is focused on the upper elementary classes and the analysis of the reading-books and the didactic and methodical apparatus is done using the reading-books published by the three different publishers. The three dominant areas stand out in the analysis: (1) the description of the emotions that accompany death, (2) the description of life after death, (3) the characteristic motifs featured in oral literature in the service of the thematization of death. Moreover, the analysis shows that, among the already mentioned aspects, the methodical apparatus sheds the faintest light on the images of life after death. Based on the results of research, the specific recommendations are given to increase the genre variety of the reading-book texts and to use the segments of the folklore and folk traditions in order to gain a better understanding of a particular work of literature.