INTRODUCTION
PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK
With each passing year the need of a comprehensive classification of the materials in all kinds of traditional narrative becomes more apparent. Our great libraries of folklore, enriched by the ceaseless activity of field workers and scholars, grow daily more difficult to explore. Tales, ballads, myths, and traditions have poured in from all parts of the earth, both civilized and uncivilized, so that no man, however great his industry and skill in languages, can read the thousands of volumes in a lifetime. By a careful division of labor, scholars have, however, examined many parts of this field, with the result that the body of writings about traditional narrative also grows beyond the compass of one man's mastery.
That some kind of systematic indexing of this vast accumulation should be undertaken has been long realized. Though several beginnings of such a work have been made during the past century, no plan has been completed with sufficient thoroughness to warrant general acceptance.
For the special field of the folktale, to be sure, the classification of Antti Aarne[1] has been found useful. In this index some eight hundred complete stories current in Europe have been logically arranged, and by its system the tales of more than a dozen European peoples have now been catalogued.[2] For the European area such an arrangement of tales as Aarne's proves reasonably satisfactory, since popular traditions assume much the same pattern throughout, and the same narrative-complexes are found over much of the continent.[3]
- ↑ Verzeichnis der Märchentypen, FFCommunications No. 3, Helsinki, 1910. A revision by the present author appeared as The Types of the Folk-Tale, FFCommunications No. 74, Helsinki, 1928.
- ↑ For a summary of the results of these classifications see R. S. Boggs, A Comparative Survey of the Folk-tales of Ten Peoples, FFCommunications No. 93, Helsinki, 1930. In addition to the surveys discussed by Boggs may be mentioned: Andrejev, Ukazatel' Skazochnik sjuzhetov po Sisteme Aarne, and Plenzat, Die ost- und westpreussischen Märchen und Schwänke. For more recent surveys see Thompson, The Folktale, pp 420f.
- ↑ Every scholar who has constructed a new catalogue of tales has, of course, been obliged to add types of tales not already to be found in the classification, but it has thus far proved practicable as far as European peoples are concerned, to use the Aarne list for the folktale and jest. How far an expansion of the type-index may permit a cataloguing of such partly literary forms as the exemplum and the fabliau, only experiment can tell. As long as the entire tale-complex remains intact in transmission, such an index as The Types of the Folk-Tale is useful; when such a condition does not exist, a more analytical list seems necessary.
