Folk Narrative Research Articles

Les rondalles del tipus <i>The Wise Brothers</i> (ATU 655) i la seva projecció en tres obres de literatura culta

Summary: The article analyses the relationship between folktales of the ATU 665 type such as The Wise Brothers, specifically between three Majorcan oral versions collected towards the end of the 19th century, and three works of learned written literature from different countries and periods: The Catalan novel Tirant lo Blanc by Joanot Martorell (15th c.), the French novel Zadig by Voltaire (18th c.) and the Italian novel Il nome della rosa by Umberto Eco (20th c.). From a narrative with the same origin in folklore, which develops a plot based on the hero’s extraordinary capacity for deductive reasoning and sensory perception, each writer inserts it into his work and uses it in a particular way with a specific purpose. The analysis shows that the structures, characters and plots in oral folktales can be highly effective from a communicative perspective when they are inserted into works of more learned written literature.Keywords: folk narrative, ATU 655 folktales, Tirant lo Blanc, Joanot Martorell, Zadig, Voltaire, Il nome della rosa, Umberto Eco

The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev. Volume III

The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev. Volume III

“St. George’s Day Lamb” Victim and Empathy

In Serbian and Croatian, the word žrtva “sacrifice, victim” has two basic meanings: 1. a ritually executed person or animal as offering to a deity, and 2. a person who was killed by accident, through no fault of their own (in a car accident, a fire, by lightning, etc.), or someone who has suffered as a result of someone else’s actions (a victim of violence, cheating, conspiracy, etc.). On the basic level, the two meanings overlap and cover the same archaic notion of victim, which 1. links community to transcendental spheres (communication with god/s, based on a connection between giving and receiving in return, which is unquestionable in traditional cultures), or 2. acts as a (fundamental) way in which gods appear in the human world (punishment as proof of gods’ existence). In both cases, folk narratives abolish empathy with the victims (even if death comes for ritual reasons or as an exemplum) and often conceptualize the victim in animalistic terms (e.g., jagnje đurđevsko “St. George’s Day lamb”– a lamb slaughtered on the main spring holiday, St. George’s Day; kurban). The concept of communicating with god through the victim is radically criticized in modern literature, also in terms of the lamb (Thomas Mann, The Tables of the Law [Das Gesetz], 1944; Joseph and his brothers [Joseph und seine Brüder], 1933–1943; Jose Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ [O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo], 1991; Cain [Caim], 2009).

Indonesian Folk Narratives: On the Interstices of National Identity, National Values, and Character Education

Abstract Folklore has been linked to national identity formation. In this article, informed by Johann Gottfried Herder’s romantic nationalism and following Alan Dundes’s (1965) method of folklore studies, it is argued that Indonesia has historically followed this trail, and its recent movement of collecting and disseminating Indonesian folk narratives from across the archipelago is a culminating point in this endeavour. Although the move was claimed to support the national literacy and character building movement, the rigorous endeavour of the government in garnering folktales from all 34 provinces can also be read as part of the national political agenda of strengthening the national integrity, promoting unity in diversity and disseminating so-called national values. Examining further the contexts and procedures of how the narratives were collected and selected for publication, the study reveals an effort to inculcate national values targeted at students in formal education, but more particularly young children as the future harbingers of national values.

“KILL THE MAN WHO KILLED THE DOG - STORIES BURIED UNDER THE SKYSCRAPERS”

The current paper intends to draw a kind of picture of numerous compelling viewpoints of the Kuwaiti community relying on folk tales. The research is in line with the theoretical and epistemological questions that are cornerstones of researching folk narratives.

Social and philosophical research structures of drama and folk narratives: the manifestations of embodied world views

The article analyzes the methodological potential of drama in modern socio-philosophical research. It is shown that the theoretical reconstruction of the drama model allows us to talk about the dramatic approach in the study and explanation of society, and the morphological analysis of the structure reveals its methodological potential for studying crises in society. Our focus is on the socio-philosophical study of drama. The subject allowed us to appreciate philosophy’s complex, contradictory nature and history with its gains and losses. It also overcomes simplistic and excessive ideologization in the interpretation of the intellectual process of European culture. Our analysis of the concept of drama reveals the differences between the concept of social dramatization and the dramatic approach of I. We examine Hoffman’s approach describing the analysis’s main stages, which is necessary to positively answer whether drama has all the aspects of social dramatization in its invariant structure.

La fiaba: Morfologia, antropologia e storia

La fiaba: Morfologia, antropologia e storia

The Legend of Aku Sika: A Transposition of Folk Narrative to a Stage Play

The Legend of Aku Sika: A Transposition of Folk Narrative to a Stage Play

Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat: Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition ed. by Anita Best, Martin Lovelace, and Pauline Greenhill

Reviewed by: Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat: Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition ed. by Anita Best, Martin Lovelace, and Pauline Greenhill Millie Tullis (bio) Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat: Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition. Edited by Anita Best, Martin Lovelace, and Pauline Greenhill, Utah State University Press, 2019, 313 pp. Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat: Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition, edited by Anita Best, Martin Lovelace, and Pauline Greenhill, highlights the talents of two Newfoundland oral storytellers, Philip Pius Power and Alice Lannon, "whose many long and complex stories show just what artistry is possible without the written word" (3). The tales of Power and Lannon are framed by imaginative, original illustrations by Graham Blair at the beginning of each chapter, and are followed by relevant ATU tale types, motifs, and a concise but detailed commentary section from the editors. The three editors share interest in fairy-tale studies and Newfoundland folklore. Anita Best has an honorary doctorate from Memorial University based on her work as a singer, storyteller, and folklorist working with Newfoundland [End Page 321] culture; she recorded and transcribed Power's tales. Martin Lovelace was an associate professor of Folklore at Memorial University and recorded and transcribed Lannon's tales. Pauline Greenhill is a professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Winnipeg and edited Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms (2012) with Kay Turner. Lannon grew up the daughter of a Newfoundland teacher and received a good education (21). She was greatly influenced by her grandmother's oral tales and primarily told her stories in family settings and frequently to children. Power was a fisherman who told stories to family and friends as well as in more public settings. He often incorporated his audience into his stories "referring to their habits or relatives" or calling on themes relevant to significant events in their lives (29). In the introduction, the editors provide brief histories of Newfoundland as Lannon and Power knew it during the twentieth century. Their account of Newfoundland culture stresses the cultural significance of oral traditions and "good talk" (5). The editors highlight how these living tales are "passed along a network of people" recalling and creating relationships (11). "When narrators tell the tales, they remember not merely words and a plot but also . . . the sound of a voice and often also the warmth of a relationship or a desire to communicate obliquely something that social norms forbid saying directly" (11). Clever Maids emphasizes the living nature of these oral tales, using a transcription method that shows the "interplay between teller and audience" (15). The editor's ethnopoetic transcriptions combine the work of Dell Hymes and Dennis Tedlock to maintain the "word-for-word" nature of Hymes's transcriptions and the "pauses in speech evident on audio recordings" in Tedlock's transcriptions (293). As the "oral fairy tale . . . is never the same tale twice," these transcriptions show the construction of oral tales through familiar but flexible formulas (15). The oral nature of these tales is also reflected in the tales' relationships to similar tales. The tales in Clever Maids do not fit neatly into familiar tale types; most of the tales intersect with several tale-types, which the authors list out. By cataloging the comparable tale types and motifs, the editors illustrate the "flexible, creatively variable" nature of oral tale performance and development in these tales (15). Therefore, Clever Maids works powerfully against the canonizing effect of older published anthologies of fairy tales that seem to cement dynamic tales into one rendering. The organization of the tales frequently emphasizes this flexibility as well; tales such as Power's "Peg Bearskin" and Lannon's "The Clever Girls" are placed next to each other and analyzed in direct conversation with each other in a shared commentary section. However, the editors' commentary sections do not merely connect each tale to the relevant tale type and motif index classifications for comparative purposes. As "identifying folk narratives . . . is not an end in itself," the editors [End Page 322] spend most of their commentary connecting these unique tales to existing fairy-tale research, discussing the role of...

Ali Shir Navai in Turkish Traditional Literature: Themes and Plots

The legasy of Ali Shir Navai has influenced both Turkish and Ottoman literature and Turkish folklore. His poems penetrated into the Ottoman Empire since the 15th century, and in the 16th century became well known to the Ottoman poets. The article is devoted to the works of Navai in the literature and folklore of Turkey in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. After the reforms of the Tanzimat era, Ottoman intellectuals turned not only to European philosophical thought and Western literature, but also to the Turkic literary heritage of Central Asia. In 1872–1873 (1289 AH), in Istanbul, under the editorship of Ahmed Vefik Pasha, Navai's didactic treatise (which was chronologically one of the poet's latest works) “Mahbub al-kulub” (“Beloved of Hearts”) was published. This publication laid the foundation for the scientific study of Ali Shir Navai in Turkey (works and translations by I. Hakkı, N. Asım, M.F. Köprülüzade), and also to a certain extent anticipated the expression of the ideas of Turkism. After this publication, the Chagatai-Ottoman dictionary of Sheikh Suleiman of Bukhara was published in Istanbul in 1880–1881, which also testifies to the interest in the cultural heritage of the Timurid era in Turkey in the second half of the 19th century. At the same time Ali Shir Navai himself becomes the prototype of the hero of Turkish folklore as the character of the folk narrative about Gül and Mir Ali Şir which performed in Turkey up to the middle of the 20th century

EXPLORING SPATIALITY IN THE FOLK NARRATIVES OF JHAVERCHAND MEGHANI

‘Folk narratives are reflections of the societies and individuals which create and transmit them; consequently, they reflect a wide range of human ideas and emotions.’ The purpose of this research paper is to examine the framework of Space as a tool for positing Saurashtra as a region and place in the context of Jhaverchand Meghani's folk narratives by looking at social, cultural, psychological, topological, and other spaces that can be correlated to storied spaces in folk narratives. This research paper proposes to focus on Jhaverchand Meghani's folk narratives through the theories of Edward Soja and other critical thinkers dealing with the research questions - How has Saurashtra emerged as a region in Jhaverchand Meghani's folk narratives? ; How region contributes in comprehending ‘space/s’ in the narratives in the context of social fabric, culture, region, and the lives of people and what are the critical concepts and literary dimensions that can be examined in the folk narratives of Jhaverchand Meghani in understanding the idea of storied spaces? Attempts are made to locate and explore Saurashtra as a region in terms of geography, culture, and literature in Jhaverchand Meghani's folk narratives.

The Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”

Abstract “The Shift of Sex” is a folktale type that begins with a young woman dressing in men’s clothes to have an adventure, and ends when the protagonist is magically transformed into a man, marries a woman, and lives happily ever after. My goal in this project is to analyze the 26 variants as a group in order to illuminate what they communicate about gender and transgender. ATU 514 has been treated as an aberration or anomaly, a tale that defies categorization. Several feminist scholars have argued that the climactic change of gender reinforces heteronormativity and sexist, patriarchal gender roles. More recent scholarship notes the tale’s transgender possibility, scholarship I build on in this project. My analysis identified two significant patterns in the tales: first, every variant has a happy ending for the protagonist, representing a narrative reward for a character who could variously be read as transgender or gender transgressive. Second, the tales are encoded with details, characters, and events that tell a “secondary narrative” that describes the threat of the patriarchy. I argue that the protagonist of ATU 514 is a transgressive character with transgender capacity and that the tale approves and rewards these transgressions through the concluding happily-ever-after.

The trappings of order

Abstract This study builds off of previous research into Caribbean Standard Englishes (which has largely used newspaper genres) by comparing the rates of features found in corpora of Bahamian, Jamaican, British, and American administrative writing, paying particular attention to whether and how the noted formality of Caribbean Standard Englishes manifests itself in administrative writing. The study employs expanded versions of ICE administrative subcorpora for the analysis. Features analyzed include lexis, orthography, as well as different morphosyntactic constructions such as be-passives and modals of obligation and necessity. The study finds that the contemporary British administrative writing corpus contains the most informal lexical choice of the national corpora studied, problematizing a Caribbean folk narrative that associates formality in administrative language and practice with Britishness.

Narratives and Indigenous History

Folk narratives are sources of information on the movements of people from one region to another, and who take with them their complex and plural speech systems. Other facts arising from their migrations include the routes taken, the motivations for their migration, the topography with its flora and fauna along the way of travel, and the meeting with people of different ethnolinguistic groups. Data for this study represents all the three main regions of Malaysia: The Malay Peninsula, Sabah, and Sarawak, each with its own composition of indigenous groups. Information derived from the narratives are placed in different categories which are not all shared by the three regions. But the common factors present in all the three are the push and the pull factors. However, exponents of these factors differ from one region to the other. This study contributes to an understanding of the growth of geolinguistic domains of the different indigenous ethnic groups of Malaysia as we see them today.

Sama Culture and Folk Narratives Structures

The understanding of a folk narrative lies in the underlying principles that govern its composition. This study focuses on structures and culture found in the folk narratives of Sama, an indigenous group in Island Garden City of Samal, Philippines. The paper uses the theory on narratology by French-Lithuanian literary theorist, Algirdas Julien Greimas, and cultural theory by Bronislaw Malinowski to analyze the selected Sama folk narratives. The study reveals that the ten (10) Sama folk narratives collected do not completely follow the theory on narratology of Greimas. This is because the theories used are foreign and the folk literature collected are of local origin. Regardless of this, the study shows that Sama folk narratives reflected the ways of their people. Consequently, Sama folk narratives exemplify their cultural practices. They present social, economic, political, and religious practices. The leaders from the Sama folk were requested to validate the cultural texts gathered for this study. This research highlights the structure of Sama literature and illustrates Sama’s cultural heritage by gathering and analyzing their folk narratives so that the rest of the population (the new generation) could have the chance to experience their culture and appreciate it. Also, the researcher further emphasizes the relevance of gathering and using local literature to prevent it from vanishing into oblivion.

Unveiling the Tausug Culture in Parang Sabil through Translation

Translation communicates through language and facilitates the spread of information and culture.It is a conscious semantic transfer of culturalitems from one culture to another. In this paper, it aims to unveil the culture of the Tausugs, the people of Sulu, Philippines, in doing the jihad (holy war) through the translation of the parang sabil, a folk narrative song. Anchored on the interpretative theory of translation, this study translates the contemporary parang sabil titled Kissa sin Pagbunu ha Zambo written in Bahasa Sug, a language spoken among the Tausugs, into English. Performed by the Tausug lady named Indah Anjam, Kissa sin Pagbunu ha Zambo (The Story of War in Zambo) talks about the heroic act of Ustadz Habir Malik during the Zamboanga siege in 2013. By mobilizing the researchers’ knowledge in Bahasa Sug, English, and Tausug history and culture, linguistic and cultural issues were addressed in the English translation to maintain the sense or culture of doing the Tausug jihad. The researchers faithfully expressed in the English translation the culture of the Tausugs by maintaining the identity of the Tausugs as Muslims, by showing that the Tausugs are in unity to defend their homeland and religion, and by projecting that they are brave warriors in defense of Islam. Hence, translating this particular Tausug parang sabil placed in its cultural context is an urgent work to do in order to enlarge our consciousness on Tausug culture and history.

An Attempt to Classify Kurdish Legends Using the Juha Pentikainen Method: Example of Adıyaman

Legends are one of the genres of folk narrative that occupy an important place in the daily life of the people. Legends, the creation and destruction of the world for thousands of years; historical events; supernatural beings and events; They are folk narratives that are believed to be "as if they are real" in many subjects, including religious leaders and heroes, and that are transmitted from generation to generation by developing and transforming. The classification of the legends is important in order to know and understand the social memory and beliefs of the people closely. It is urgent to compile, classify and analyze legends, especially in terms of preserving and maintaining Kurdish oral culture and literature. The aim of this article is to determine the Kurdish folk legends compiled from the region of Adıyaman province and to try to classify them with Juha Pentikainen method. In this study, the face-to-face interview technique was applied with 21 people who were knowledgeable about the subject and were identified with the snowball method. As a result of the interviews, 28 legends from the region were identified, compiled, and deciphered. The legends are classified as traveler and locale, according to the method of Juha Pentikainen, and are summarized. As a result, legends of both types were found in Adıyaman region, 7 travelers and 21 of them local. It has been observed that the legends have a universal character in terms of genre, form, and motif. Most of the legends are narrated by men, but it has been determined that the legends about the miracles about personalities important in terms of religious representation are mostly told and cared for by women. It has been determined that the legends play an important role in the establishment and execution of the social order as well as their literary and artistic characters.

The Emergence of a Nationalistic Vernacular: The Ideal Peasant Man and the Roma People as His Antagonists

Abstract This article discusses ethnic folklore as mirroring the ideals of peasant culture in Finland until the first half of the twentieth century. Using folk narratives about the Finnish Roma and proverbs as told by Finnish rural peasants, I investigate how such elements of everyday communication laid bare notions of social hierarchies. Historically, the sense of belonging to a nation has often been “invented” by the majority or by the people in power. Because the collecting of Finnish folklore was conducted primarily with an idealized notion of the peasant majority in mind, minority folklore or urban elements of life appeared inauthentic and thus not worthy of collection. Unlike the sedentary population, the Finnish Roma were itinerant, and they specifically became an object of ethnic folklore. The aim here is to understand the role of narrative culture in creating and maintaining institutionalized social differences.

Folklore and Ethno-Rock Art Studies in the Kaimur Region of India: The Story of the Oraon Tribe

The present work engages with a comparative study of the Oraon Folklore and their Rock Art for assessing how both these genres seemingly record the geo-cultural history of Oraon origin, their forced migrations and their current state of habitations in another Indian state Jharkhand. It attempts to establish a relation between archaeological data available in the form of rock art supplemented by written accounts and local traditions wherever possible. Based on field works, personal interactions with local inhabitants, especially on important events like, marriage, festivals, rituals etc., and archeological scrutiny of rock art available in the Oraons’ previous habitation, i.e., the Kaimur Region in current Indian state of Bihar, the paper attempts to expose the historical value and cultural parallelism of Oraons’ folk narratives and rock art. The paper strongly believes that both these genres conspicuously display the cultural history of a marginalized tribe that has undergone several historical and cultural ordeals. Besides this, the paper also offers, for the first time, an English translation of Oraons’ oral folklore, adhering to the interdisciplinary approach of this paper. However, most significantly, the paper in its attempt to trace the continuity of rock art in this Kaimur Region also becomes an addition to the domain of ethno-rock art studies.

August Schleicher as the First Publisher of Lithuanian Folktales

The article focuses on the Lithuanian cultural activities of the famous German linguist August Schleicher (1821–1868). These activities included not only accumulation of linguistic data and writing of a Lithuanian grammar, but also recording and publication of the Lithuanian folklore. Schleicher edited the particularly valuable reader of the Lithuanian language and vocabulary (Handbuch der litauischen Sprache, Bd. 2: Lesebuch und Glossar, 1857), which included the first publication of Lithuanian folktales, among other kinds of folklore.The author of the article aims at elucidating the objectives and circumstances of Schleicher’s recordings of the Lithuanian folktales, establishing of their genres and defining the typical narrative qualities. Besides, the importance of the tales that Schleicher recorded in terms of the Lithuanian folklore research is highlighted.The letters that Schleicher wrote in the course of his research trip to the Eastern Prussia in 1852 reveal the kind of difficulties that he encountered during this journey, his ways of communication and his experiences while collecting the Lithuanian folktales. The folk narratives published in his Lithuanian reader and vocabulary include fifteen tales of magic, seven joke tales, four novella tales, three animal tales, three tales of lying, two tales of the stupid ogre, one religious tale, four folk-belief legends and one local legend. The scholar was the first to record numerous examples of various Lithuanian tale types, which mostly belonged to the popular Lithuanian oral tradition.The linguist himself highly valued his work among the Lithuanian inhabitants of the Lithuania Minor, being well aware that it served to the preservation of the declining culture at least in the scientific purposes. He hoped that folklore recorded and published by himself and his assistants could support the Lithuanians resisting the intense assimilation processes. The results of his research trip in the Lithuania Minor testified to the vitality of the folk narrative tradition among the local Lithuanians in the middle of the 19th century.By researching the Lithuanian language and recording the Lithuanian folklore, Schleicher established the importance of this culture to the Indo-European studies in general and attracted numerous followers that carried on with his scholarly activities. His activities prompted Lithuanians themselves to collect their oral folk heritage as well. Thanks to Schleicher, the first Lithuanian folktales were translated into German, published and attracted notice of the foreign scholars. Their subsequent publications reached even broader social layers. Therefore, Schleicher may be regarded as the promoter of the Lithuanian folktales across other countries. Nowadays the Lithuanian folktales published by Schleicher have been included into various folklore collections as anonymous folklore pieces and have acquired literary interpretations.