Old Year and New Year. Dramatic conflict and linguistic imaginary

This article brings to attention the mythological substrate of the authentic folk theatre, specific to winter holidays, illustrating its relationship with ritual drama, through the analysis of the conflict between the New Year and Old Year, two characters with allegorical value. To capture the specifics of the linguistic imaginary that defines the models represented by the New Year and the Old Year, we aim to analyse three texts of the folk theatre from Moldova.