Today, the Aarne-Thompson-Uther index (ATU) categorizes folktales into seven distinct groups: In 2004 CE, the Aarne-Thompson index was revised by folklorist Hans-Jorg Uther who expanded the branches of the index to delineate the categories further and expanded the definition of “medieval folklore” to include cultures beyond Europe. The story of a young girl who is victimized by her evil stepmother and stepsisters, for example, is not unique to the Cinderella story but shares that motif with many other stories. As these tales became written literature, and different versions of a tale could be compared on a page, standard versions were established which correlated to various others. As these stories were told, and traveled between cultures, discernible motifs developed which were finally analyzed and cataloged by folklorists of the 19th century CE (such as Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm) who wrote them down. The performance of a tale, in fact, is considered integral to the very definition of a folktale.
Folk tales definition free#
Unlike literature, which is a written body of work transmitted by an author to a literate audience, folklore is conveyed orally and the storyteller is free to embellish on the tale for a particular audience. Moreover, folklore entails the process of transmission of such shared community knowledge or tradition. Fee defines the term in general:įolklore refers to cultural “items” common to a particular community such items may include stories, rituals, dances, songs, or any other aspect of life in that community that is imbued with some measure of shared experience, wisdom, or fundamental belief.
476 CE (the fall of the Western Roman Empire) and 1453 CE (the fall of the Eastern Byzantine Empire) are considered Medieval Folklore. Tales composed (or at least popularly transmitted) in Europe between c. The folktale continues to be a popular medium of entertainment in the present day and has been mined by film and television companies, as well as modern-day authors, for source material. Further changes to an original story are the result of storytellers embellishing upon a tale for a particular audience. Folktales from the Near East and Asia were transmitted orally to Europe via trade through the Silk Road which accounts for some of these variations. Today there are standard versions of folktales, as well as numerous variations on those standards, which are studied by folklorists in an effort to better understand the culture which produced them.
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