ABSTRACT
The author begin this chapter by testing out some of these assumptions against one of Jolles's nine 'simple forms' the riddle. A genre which seems to be universally distributed and to range from simple children's games to an elaborate literary form. We can guess from their frequent occurrence as children's games that they have something to do with learning about the basic categories of the world. Yet the very richness of this metaphorical focus is in part made possible by the generic structures of the riddle on which Macbeth draws. Some are close to, or even identical with, a single speech act, as is the prayer to praying, the military command to ordering. While others such as the novel or the shaggy-dog story or the music video are made up of a multiplicity of speech acts and can incorporate a wide range of other genres.
