Content area
Full Text
It must be said at the outset that the six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature and the Aarne-Thompson tale type index constitute two of the most valuable tools in the professional folklorist's arsenal of aids for analysis. This is so regardless of any legitimate criticisms of these two remarkable indices, the use of which serves to distinguish scholarly stuthes of folk narrative from those carried out by a host of amateurs and dilettantes. The identification of folk narratives through motif and/ or tale type numbers has become an international sine qua non among bona fide folklorists. For this reason, the academic folklore community has reason to remain eternally grateful to Antti Aarne (1867-1925) and Stitii Thompson (1885-1976) who twice revised Aarne's original 1910 Verzeichnis der Märchentypen - in 1928 and in 1961 - and who compiled two editions of the Motif-Index (1922-1936; 19551958).
There has been considerable discussion of the concepts of motif and tale type. Highlights of the motif literature include B0dker 1965:201-202; Meletinski 1977; Ben-Amos 1980; Courtes 1982; Bremond 1982; and Würzbach 1993. Representative views of the tale type may be found in Honti 1939; Greverus 1964;Jason 1972; and Georges 1983. Thompson defined the motif as "the smallest element in a tale having a power to persist in tradition" (1946:415; 1950b:1137).
Perhaps the most lucid delineation of the concept of tale type was made by the brilliant Hungarian folkloristjanos Honti. In his 1937 essay in FoUc-Uv, Honti proposed three different ways of considering a tale type as a viable unit of analysis. First, it consisted of a specific binding togetiier of motifs; second, any one tale type could stand as a unique entity in contrast with other tale types, e.g., Cinderella is not the same story-plot as Little Red Riding Hood; and third, a tale type could be perceived as a kind of cookiecutter Platonic form or model which manifested itself through multiple existence (such multiple instances being termed versions or variants) . In an extended essay on "The Tale - Its World," Honti makes it perfectly clear that he understands that "the concept of 'type' is merely an ideal construction." But by the same token, Honti does not recognize the genuine utility of the concept: "... for the researcher, behind all these variants, only...