The greatest "discovery" in folktale research was one that is nowadays so obvious, it's hard to imagine why a hundred years passed after the Grimms' first published their Children's and Household Tales:

The most typical, most interesting, and most effective oral narrators are gifted artists who re-create a folktale every time they tell it! They may follow unwritten "laws" and "morphologies", but they do not memorize their stories, or repeat "word-for-word" what they heard from earlier storytellers. So the whole idea that folktales "preserve" survivals of ancient culture is flawed from the get-go.

Reading

This assignment centers on "listening," not "reading." Listen to two variants of ATU 327. Read the printed varants too, of course, to pick up textual details. But focus on textures.

An eleven-year-old child can teach us a thing or two about how to tell folktales: When Jane Muncy tells "Merrywise," she doesn’t memorize like that professional actor in the video variant of ATU 327. How do both of these stories, analyzed in context, connect to meanings?

Estimated time: 45 minutes

Jane Muncy, (1964). “Merrywise,” in South from Hell-fer-Sartin: Kentucky Mountain Folktales. Edited by Leonard Roberts, pages 42-45.

PDF File : Roberts_1964_Muncy_Merrywise.PDF

Audio recording (5 minutes) at Digital Library of Appalachia: https://dla.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/berea/id/283/rec/4

Maria Tatar, (2019). “Hansel and Gretel,” in , The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales: Expanded Edition, pages 201-210.

UW Library : The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales

Video (15 minutes): Judie Eddington narrates "Hansel & Gretal"

Research Tool: Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) Types of the Folktale. (Find Type 327)

Rationale: Listen to two different narrators, and contrast their art: A child who learned her story in oral tradition, and a professional actor who memorized the text. Which context, and which storyteller better represents the age-old traditions of folktale telling? (and encounter variants of "Children captured by an ogre!")

Lecture

In this lecture keep the following ideas in mind:

How can studying oral folktale narrators help me become a more effective folktale narrator?

Bonus

Background information about Jane Muncy and the folklorist who recorded her telling "Merrywise": Carl Lindahl, “Leonard Roberts, The Farmer-Lewis-Muncy Family, and the Magic Circle of the Mountain Märchen” Journal of American Folklore, 123 (2010), pages 251–275. [link to article uw libraries]

Two more variants of ATU 327:

– Herdis Jónasdóttir, “Sigurður, Ingjiborg, and Króknefja,” pages 275-278, in All the World’s Reward. Edited by R.Kvideland and H. Sehmsdorf. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999 [link to e-book at UW Libraries]

– “Pancake House” in Danish folk tales collected by M. Winther (1823), pages 1-3. Translated by T. Sands and J. Massengale, Dept. of Scandinavian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989. [pdf copy]

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