ABSTRACT
The true riddle is, in all likelihood, a translation of Robert Petsch's das wirkliche Rätsel, for which the author however, reserved a different term, authentic riddle, in order to mark off the conceptual difference in the center of his conceptual field, in contradistinction to the false riddle which he presented in several categories: as the neck-saving riddle, the arithmetical puzzle, the clever question, and the literary riddle. He pointed out that the literary riddle, though it may imitate the true one, is easily recognizable by verbosity, has no structural definition and possesses no distinct place in social life. He broadened the scope of the false riddle, in comparison with Petsch. The strong side of Petsch's theory of the riddle is not simply its structural character, for the first time articulated in meaningful terms, but its fundamental orientation toward the unity of stylistic, functional and structural approaches.
