Types Of Folktale Research Articles

Gledališki eksperiment na Slovenskem (1966–1986) in njegovi odmevi v mladinski dramatiki – Andrej Rozman Roza

In Slovenian (youth) literature, three authors who have worked in the field of drama and/or theatre stand out – namely, Svetlana Makarovič, academically trained actress (Sapramiška), Milan Jesih (Four Plays for Children, adaptations of Andersen’s fairy tales The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Ugly Duckling) and Andrej Rozman Roza. The paper will focus on the latter, who was strongly influenced by the theatre experiment in Slovenia, especially during the formative period of his studies of the Slovenian language (1974–1978). Andrej Rozman Roza (1956) started performing and/or publishing plays in the period 1981– 1990 (Inspector Schwake, 1986; collection of texts Ana Monró Theatre, 1991, etc.). He is known in literary history as a youth poet and is included in Slovenian language curricula (1998, 2011, 2018). However, the definition of a systemic author is more appropriate for him (I. Even Zohar, M. Dović) since of the six functions in the literary system (author, institution, market, repertoire, book, reader) he holds at least three roles (author, “institution”, book [living book], etc.). This paper focuses on adaptations of classics of Slovenian (Cankar, Levstik, Linhart, Prešeren, etc.) or world literature that – regardless of literary genre or type – have become crossover literature in the process of literary reception, especially in picture-book editions (e.g., A Midsummer Night’s Dream which has the international fairy tale type number ATU 899A [Pyramus and Thisbe]). According to B. Kümmerling-Meibauer’s definition of crossover classics or authorship, Rozman is a crossover author. In addition, according to L. Hutcheon’s theory, adaptations are an important part of Rozman’s work and contribute to the updating of classics and modern classics. The paper presents the collection Brvi čez morje (The Footbridge Across the Sea), which contains thirteen plays, three of which are folktale texts – Janko and Metka (Hansel and Gretel) [ATU 327], Obuti maček (Puss in Boots) [ATU 545B], Vžigalnik (The Tinderbox) [ATU 562] – and one which is a fairy tale, Kekec [ATU 1137]). Intertextually, they refer to folktale types.

Շիրակի մի հրաշապատում հեքիաթի տեղը «Կախարդական մատանի» տիպի հեքիաթախմբում

The subject of the study is the Shirak region magic folktale "The Tale of Jampulad", which belongs to the ATU 560 "The Magic Ring" folktale type group according to the international classification of Hans-Jörg Uther. The actions and realities of the folktale (the status of the character and the presence of an inheritance, the acquisition of faithful animals and a magical item, the presence of taboos, the theft of a magical item by evil forces and its return to the character) are studied in the context of Armenian, as well as Italian, Japanese, Persian, Russian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Kyrgyz folktales of the same type. A scrupulous study of the tales shows that the Shirak version, which has certain similarities with other tales of the group, is distinguished by a peculiar plot structure and some motifs due to the mutual penetration of folklore material and dialectal features typical for the region.

Splątane gałęzie Drzewa Opowieści. Struktury baśniowe w „Berenie i Lúthien” J.R.R. Tolkiena

The article analyses the impact of folktales on J.R.R. Tolkien’s story about Beren and Lúthien. The story was numerously rewritten and modified by the author, so the article focuses on three versions: The Tale of Tinúviel (written c. 1917), The Lay of Leithian (written 1925–1931) and Quenta Silmarillion (written c. 1937), the last of which is the textual base for The Silmarillion (1973). The major instruments of analysis are the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index and Vladimir Propp’s folk-tale characters functions.
 Beren and Lúthien emerges from several folktale types, along with numerous mythological and literary sources. The dominant type is ATU 460–499 (“Supernatural Task”), especially ATU 461 (“Three Hairs of the Devil”), but there are also references to ATU 550 (“The Golden Bird”) and ATU 551 (“The Water of Life”). The functions of the hero, the princess, and the helper are performed by, respectively, Beren, Lúthien, and Huan. However, the functions of the hero and the princess are distributed between the two protagonists and Lúthien assumes the hero’s function because she actively takes part in performing the supernatural task. The reason is that gender roles are subordinated to more important division between the human (Beren) and the divine (Lúthien, who resembles both a solar deity and a Christological figure). The convention of the folktale is also alluded to by stereotypical characteristics and moral values ascribed to the dog, the wolf, and the cat. The Tale of Tinúviel can be recognized as an etiological tale of the type ATU 200 (“The Dog’s Certificate”).

Icelandic Folklore and the Cultural Memory of Religious Change

Icelandic Folklore and the Cultural Memory of Religious Change

Story Units of the Types of Japanese Folktales and the Combination with a Noun Conceptual Dictionary

Story Units of the Types of Japanese Folktales and the Combination with a Noun Conceptual Dictionary

Two folktales (Vampire beings in Greek folktales)

This paper attempts to elaborate how the vampire theme is conceptualized in Greek folktales. It’s a case study of the Greek folk tales: “Gelloudi” and “The Lamia bride” found in the compilation Paramythokores (2002). The folktale complies with a strict formulaic style of oral narration and the most time-resilient elements of storytelling are the motifs that create the story. We find similar or echoing motifs in folktales globally; some motifs are darker than others, enhancing the agony and thrill of storytelling. Concerning the Greek folktale, the research led to the classification of six dark motifs. Bloodsucking creatures such as Strigla (in Latin: Strigula, Strix), Gello (gelloudi) and Lamia are found in the dark motif of the supernatural. The tales, in this case study, are horror stories, in a sense, but they evolve in a broad form of narration, depriving the reader of gruesome details and delivering a cathartic ending. The vampire theme is not dominating in the first folktale as a result of the combination of three folktale types, whereas the second one focuses solely on this theme. In both cases the creatures are female attacking animals, men and community, symbolizing the heavy price of the birth of a girl in the family, as it was perceived in these traditional communities. A baby girl and a new bride, attack the world of men. They are powerful and feared, they are ‘horse-eaters’ symbolizing the threat of depriving the established status for men, first by eating their horse and then by eating them.

УКАЗАТЕЛИ МОТИВОВ В ЭПОХУ ИНТЕРНЕТА

In the early twentieth-century Europe, international indexing systems and typologies were developed for folklore archives and research. Later, these indexes formed international standards. As an illustrative example of such international systems, mention may be made of such as the Thompson motif index of folk literature, and the Aarne-ThompsonUther folktale type index. The problem presented in my article is to ponder, how to combine the traditional indexes of narrative folklore with the methodology of computer-based research. The problem with using the traditional motif indexes is that only very rare cases e.g. of Thompson’s index represent Caucasian, Siberian, Central Asian or East Asian traditions, and in general only a few non-European traditions are well represented. Luckily there exists the index developed recently by Yu.E. Berezkin and E.N. Duvakin, entitled “Thematic classification and distribution of folklore and mythological motives by area. Analytical catalog”2 . This index encompasses massive corpuses of myths and other materials of folklore from all parts of the world. An important direction of future research will involve advances from traditional typologies to cross-cultural digital typologies. In the era of digital humanities’, it is possible to enrich the motif indexes to include more traditions, so far not well represented in the previous indexes. Large datasets of “Big Data” offer great potential for developing new computational models. One way to combine modern computing network technology with traditional methods is to use web-ontologies as linked data. The advantage of the digital motif index is its universality: the digital code is language-independent. Digital, annotated corpuses combined with Internet-based type indexes can create a completely new tool for research of oral traditions

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.

Translations of the Thousand and One Nights in Georgia and Their Adaptations in Georgian Folklore

Translation is one of the ways in a process of adaptations of fairytales of foreign origin. From this perspective, it is very important to consider literary sources in the study of oral narrative materials. The large numbers of the folktales has a rich literary tradition and some plots of the folktales come from the literature, spread and interpreted by folk narrators. This article focuses on Georgian folktales related to the stories from “The Thousand and One Nights”, and compares the types of international folktales, such as ATU938 The Tale of the King Who Lost His Kingdom, ATU976 Which was the noblest act?, ATU930A The Predestined Wife, ATU561 Aladdin, ATU35 Ali Baba. The review of these tales reveals to us information about not only Georgian folktales related to “The Thousand and One Nights” but also the unique relationship between oral tradition and literate production.

판소리 명창 설화의 유형과 스토리텔링 방식

판소리 명창 설화의 유형과 스토리텔링 방식

Knowing Nature: Bear–Human Bestiality in the Gesta Romanorum

The exemplum ‘Two Princes Born of a She-Bear’ from the Gesta Romanorum is unique in its joining of two different folktale types. Billed by twentieth-century editors as ‘Androcles and the Lion’, which reflects the story’s opening, the majority of the plot resembles the ‘Strong John’ narrative, also referred to as ‘Juan Oso’ or ‘John the Bear’, with its story of bestiality. Yet it differs from most of these tales of a bear–human child as well, first by changing a male bear abducting a human woman to a human father and bear mother, and then by having three children split along gendered lines into different species. Looking at this adaptation in light of the medieval encyclopedia tradition and ideas about human and non-human animals, this article argues that the text poses questions about the superiority of humans, the distinction of species, and the necessity of women. Although the story seems to make an effort to preserve ‘natural’ hierarchies, it also leaves open the possibility of dismantling them.

ОБРАЗ КОНЯ В ГРУЗИНСКОМ СКАЗОЧНОМ ЭПОСЕ В КОНТЕКСТЕ СРАВНИТЕЛЬНОЙ МИФОЛОГИИ

В грузинском сказочном эпосе встречается большое количество сюжетов, которые широко распространены в странах ближнего Востока и Европы. По сюжетному указателю Аарне-Томпсон-Утер конь-чародей встречается в разных типах грузинских волшебных сказок, особенно в типах ATU314 Золотистый, ATU530 Принцесса на стеклянной горе и ATU531 Ясновидящий конь. Целью статьи является выявление связей сказочных и эпических мотивов, которые содержат общие мифологические черты в образе волшебного коня. Исследование этих мотивов выясняет типологическое и семантическое сходство сказочных фигур с мифологическими божествами.Настоящая статья ориентирована на сравнительное изучение фольклорных сюжетов. Основные методы: структурный анализ и сравнительно-типологический метод. Важно сравнить диахронические элементы устных повествований с определенными трансформациями эпоса и сказки. Для структурного и сравнительно-типологического анализа мифопоэтических символов в сказочном эпосе опорой служат основные положения работ «Морфология сказки» и «Исторические корни волшебной сказки» В. Я. Проппа. Для выявления основных черт содержания использованы культурологические и этнографические труды.В результате исследования установлено, что, в отличие от литературного эпоса, устная сказка еще сохранила отдаленную связь с мифологическими представлениями о звере как о чудесном помощнике человека, основанными на древних тотемистических верованиях. Мифическое происхождение сказочного коня, в первую очередь, олицетворяется в обладании им четырех стихий, проявляющихся в его огненной и крылатой сущности, а также тесной связью с землей и водным миром. Волшебный конь сказок полностью проявляет все детали своего мифического происхождения.Символика коня в мифическом аспекте весьма знакома фольклористам, но сопоставление разных жанров фольклора на примере грузинского материала дает возможность выяснить взаимосвязи сказочных, эпических и мифологических мотивов в междисциплинарном аспекте.Сюжеты волшебных сказок как грузинской народной прозы, так и тех культурных особенностей, которые касаются взаимоотношений эпических традиций кавказцев и других народов мира, создают широкое поле исследователям для текстуального анализа.

Shakespeare and the Folktale: An Anthology of Stories ed. by Charlotte Artese

Reviewed by: Shakespeare and the Folktale: An Anthology of Stories ed. by Charlotte Artese Sara Cleto (bio) Shakespeare and the Folktale: An Anthology of Stories. Edited by Charlotte Artese, Princeton University Press, 2019, 373 pp. In 2015, Charlotte Artese published her groundbreaking text Shakespeare’s Folktale Sources, in which she demonstrated how folktales profoundly shaped and influenced Shakespeare’s plays. While scholars had previously noted connections between folktales and Shakespeare’s plots and characters, these observations were largely restricted to motif spotting. In Shakespeare’s Folktale Sources, Artese argued that the majority of Shakespeare’s plays are deeply entwined with folklore and, more specifically, that seven of the plays have plots that are derived directly from folktales. Furthermore, she illuminated the ways in which the network of Shakespeare’s plays and their narrative elements function much like folktales themselves. Artese’s new book, Shakespeare and the Folktale, is the logical and welcome extension of her previous project. In this anthology, she has collected [End Page 383] and edited the folktales that are the backbone of her argument: the folktales that animate Shakespeare’s plays. As she explains in her introduction, “[T]his anthology aims to augment our knowledge of Shakespeare’s sources and influences by supplying examples of his folktales’ sources rather than revisiting his acknowledged literary ones,” which are already generally recognized and are readily available in other texts (3). The book consists of an introduction, eight chapters, a bibliography, and an extensive index. Each chapter addresses one Shakespeare play, including a brief discussion of that play’s sources followed by the full text of five to eight related folktales. In Shakespeare’s Folktale Sources, Artese considered seven plays: The Taming of the Shrew (1592), Titus Andronicus (1592–93), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597/1602), The Merchant of Venice (1596–99), All’s Well That Ends Well (1598–1608), Measure for Measure (1603–04), and Cymbeline (1611), each of which features one or more plots drawn directly from a folk-tale. The contents of Shakespeare and the Folktale: An Anthology overlap with but do not replicate those found in the earlier book. The new anthology includes a chapter on King Lear (1606), which “adapts a legendary history that includes folktales and folk narrative motifs,” a chapter on The Comedy of Errors (1594), which has a classical Roman source as well as a folktale source, and a chapter on The Tempest (1610–11), “whose dependence on the ‘Magic Flight’ folktale is partial and incomplete but fascinating nonetheless” (7). Artese does not include chapters on The Merry Wives of Windsor or Measure for Measure because of the lack of relevant folktale versions available to print in English. There is a significant methodological challenge to Artese’s project, which is, simply put, that we do not know exactly which versions of each folktale circulated in Shakespeare’s day, let alone which ones he personally encountered. The very nature of oral tradition makes a perfect reconstruction of Shakespeare’s folktale sources impossible. However, this does not make Artese’s project any less worthwhile. We know that the folktale plots that underpin Shakespeare’s plays existed before he ever set pen to paper because medieval versions survived (2). Though we will never know exactly which versions Shakespeare encountered orally, “folktales collected in the modern world (the nineteenth century and after) can give us insight into the stories Shakespeare and his audience might have known” (2). The folktales that Artese has assembled are, therefore, not Shakespeare’s exact sources but instead “later members of the genus of his sources” (2). Because we cannot know the exact sources—and because Shakespeare himself may likely have been working from several different oral versions—Artese has included several examples of each folktale type in the collection to provide a sense of possible variations. “Attending to the folktale in its many guises can [End Page 384] give us a clearer sense of the story tradition available to Shakespeare, although we cannot reconstruct it exactly” (3). Because the anthology represents an educated and creative reconstruction rather than a precise replica of Shakespeare’s sources, Artese’s primary criteria for selection was how closely a folktale resembled the Shakespeare play...

Witchcraft, Calvinism and Rural Society in the Netherlands: Storytelling in the Twentieth Century

Abstract The disenchantment of the world initiated by the Enlightenment was not a linear process. Folktales show that a magical world-view persisted in rural society until about 1900. An analysis of two types of folktales demonstrates that even in orthodox Calvinism there were people to whom witchcraft was ascribed. The persistence of belief in witchcraft must be explained both from the rural context and in light of orthodox Calvinism, which held a literal belief in the powers of good and evil personified by God and the devil.

ARIMBAY’S VERBAL LORE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FOLKTALES

This is a descriptive ethno-literary research that documented, translated, classified, and analysed folktales from Barangay Arimbay, Legazpi City, Albay Province, Philippines. The ethnographic methods of data collection, as well as the vertical and horizontal tests of Manuel (1985) were employed in the validation of 74 diversified folktales gathered from the said locale. The Labovian and literary approaches for the structural and textual analysis were employed to identify structural patterns, themes, beliefs, values, cultural practices and traditions discernible from the texts. This study revealed that the environment plays a major influence in the creation, transmission and diffusion of varied types of folktales, while the life of a folktale largely depends upon its narrators and on its generational transmission. Said folktales mirror a belief system where the supernatural and paranormal outweigh religious influences. Arimbay folktales are well-springs of information about the people’s mythical, legendary, historical past and mainstream experiences which bridges

“Tengo Feuza en la Piyadad de Allāh”: Piety and Polemic in an Aljamiado-Morisco “Companion in Paradise” Narrative

Abstract The subject of this study is the Aljamiado-Morisco narrative, the Alḥadix đe Musā kon Yako el-karniçero, found in Madrid, BNE, MS 5305; an adaptation of the popular “Companion in Paradise” folktale type. Through a comparative reading of this and similar renderings of this tale, I will demonstrate that the Aljamiado narrative develops a detailed exemplification of ritual-like domestic practices that, within a Morisco context of use, served as a model for the proper care of one’s parents. For his fulfillment of these practices, the protagonist Jacob, condemned by the members of his community identified collectively as Banī Isrāʾīl, is promised a privileged place in Paradise alongside the prophet Moses. Contextualized within an Aljamiado-Morisco manuscript, Jacob’s reward is reframed as a polemical victory for Islam over other monotheistic traditions; a recurrent theme linking several of the texts contained in this manuscript.

The Quality of Whiteness: The Thief of Bagdad and The Merchant of Venice

ABSTRACTThis article reads Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice through a framework of critical whiteness studies, addressing the invisibility by which whiteness operates as a racial formation. Using the Aarne-Thompson taxonomy of folk-tale types, it analyzes the structural parallels between Merchant and the hyperbolically Orientalist 1924 silent film The Thief of Bagdad, with which it shares the archetypal plot motif of the Suitor Test. In articulating the unacknowledged debts of both the silent film and the Shakespeare play to Islamic folklore, the article opens up a reading of Merchant in which Portia and Bassanio are made visible as figures of white feminine virtuousness and masculine entitlement. It argues that whiteness in The Merchant of Venice is dramatized as a way of being, a set of values and behaviors (hazarding with others’ resources, re-casting good luck as moral virtue) rewarded and celebrated in the text. The article culminates in a new reading of Portia’s “quality of mercy” speech as an apologia for nascent ideologies of whiteness in Shakespeare.

Medkulturnost v pravljicah Dorotheae Viehmann, Laure Gonzenbach in Tine Vajtove ob primeru pravljic o začarani nevesti (ATU 402)

In the article, three female storytellers are compared – Dorothea Viehmann, Laura Gonzenbah and Tyna Wajtawa, with an investigation of their narrative repertoire and their socio-cultural background. Their fairy tales reflect multilingualism and intercultur - alism, with the influence of elements of German, Romance and Slavic cultures. Based on the comparative analysis of the ATU folktale types, it was discovered that they have all included in their repertoire a fairy tale of the folktale types ATU 402 (animal bride) and ATU 425 (searching for a lost husband). The article includes a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences of their variants of fairy tale type ATU 402 “The Animal Bride”.

The Oedipus myth and its analogues, especially its characteristic manifestation in Finnish folk tales

ABSTRACTThe play of the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles is the most famous story of Oedipus. However, similar stories have been told before and thereafter throughout history as legends and folk tales in different parts of the world. There is a specific folk tale type classified according to its narrative components and named the Oedipus tale. There are somewhat conflicting opinions about the universality of the Oedipus tales and Oedipus complex. This review deals with the nature of the Oedipus legend and its folk tale analogs. There are 25 examples of Oedipus folk tales that are known to be from Finland – a high prevalence compared to other regions of the world. From Scandinavia, for instance, they are virtually absent. The most of Finnish Oedipus stories have a special feature that is unique in the world.: a peculiar prophecy of a sheep that will be born at the same time and eaten by a wolf. An example of these Finnish folk tales is told. Possible interpretations of this tale are offered and discussed. The specific feature of the Finnish Oedipus tales stimulates a discussion on the different opinions regarding the timing of the Oedipus complex, especially considering its oral precursors.

СПЕЦИФІКА ЗАЧИНУ НАРОДНОЇ СОЦІАЛЬНО-ПОБУТОВОЇ КАЗКИ

Для того, щоб виявити особливості національного світобачення, здійснити комплексний аналіз мовного втілення жанрової специфіки різнотипних народних казок, з’ясувати спільне й відмінне в мові цих творів усної народної словесності, треба приділяти належну увагу мовним особливостям казок різного типу. У статті ми звертаємо увагу на мовну специфіку зачину соціально-побутової казки. Фантастична складова, характерна для більшості казок, заступається в аналізованих творах побутовим, цілком реалістичним елементом, характерним для життя різних верств суспільства. Це певним чином позначається й на ініціальних формулах, що часто через типізацію констатують у казках соціально-побутового типу конкретні явища суспільного життя.