Page:Thompson Motif-Index 2nd 1.djvu/23

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Introduction
17

those whose only point is obscenity or those depending on some play upon words that cannot be carried over to another language. The foundation of this part of the index has been the very learned works of Wesselski on Hodscha Nasreddin, Bebel, Arlotto, and others, and of Bolte in his editions of Frey's Gartengesellschaft, Montanus' Schwankbücher, and similar collections. In addition, of course, monographs on particular jests have been used.

New Edition

The Italian novella in prose has been well indexed for motifs by D. P. Rotunda.

A whole series of motifs from the French conteurs of the Renaissance, such as Les cent nouvelles nouvelles and the Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre have been furnished by a group of students at the University of South Carolina, whose help is acknowledged in the proper place.

Childers's Motif Index of the Cuentos of Juan Timoneda helps fill out this part of the index.

The English jestbooks from The Hundred Merry Tales onward have been explored.

Arthur Christensen's two books on noodles, Molboernes Vise Gerninger and Dumme Folk trace these jests over the world.


Fabliaux.

First Edition

Except for special studies of the various fabliaux, the principal sources for the motifs in that field were Bédier's Les Fabliaux and von der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer.

For North Africa and Egypt, Basset's Mille et un contes arabes and Miiller's Egyptian Mythology.

New Edition

A motif-index of the whole corpus of fabliaux has been examined for additional entries. Fabliaux with obscenity as the only point have been excluded, though good jests with risque elements are retained.

The new Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales has good studies of certain fabliaux.


Fables.

First Edition

Since the principal purpose in mind was to list the fables, the basis of that part of the work was Wienert's classification of the