Repositori URV

Identifier: RP:175

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/RP175

Authors:
Kaplanoglou, Marianthi

Abstract:
The study of folktale variation in Greek folk culture shows that, in the process of their oraltransmission, certain plots and themes are transformed into shorter and more stereotypednarratives. Thus, stories which belong to different subgenres of the folktale (the fable, themagic tale or the anecdote) can evolve to a shorter or simpler form, like a proverb, a parableor an allusion. This is, for example, the case of the paroimiomythoi (proverbs derived fromtales) to use the term coined by Demetrios Loukatos. It is also the case of international folktaletypes which are presented in the Greek corpus not as tales but as proverbial phrases. The mainobjective of this paper is, therefore, to study some examples of these short stories and analyzenot only their explicit images and allegorical meanings but also their adaptations to modernsocial and cultural conditions. The paper is based on the findings of the Catalogue of theGreek Folktale as well as micro-data recently collected during field research mostly on theAegean islands and in northern Greece.