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45-549: Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn devised a preliminary analysis of some 40 tale "formulae" as introduction to his book of Greek and Albanian folktales , published in 1864. Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould , in 1866, translated von Hahn's list and extended it to 52 tale types, which he called "story radicals" . Folklorist J. Jacobs expanded the list to 70 tale types and published it as "Appendix C" in Burne & Gomme 's Handbook of Folk-Lore . Before

90-472: A Distinguished Professorship in Folkloristics, thereby ensuring that upon his retirement folklore would not be abandoned in the department. The former student and benefactor wished to remain anonymous. Apparently they called the university prior to the donation to find out if Dundes was still teaching, or as Dundes told it, "to see if I was still alive." The student mentioned that they intended to send

135-562: A Ph.D in folklore. At Indiana, he studied under the folklorist, Richard Dorson . He completed his degree very quickly and went on to a teaching position at the University of Kansas where he stayed for only a year before being offered a position in the anthropology department of the University of California, Berkeley in 1963. He quickly established himself as a prominent name within folkloristics . Dundes held this position for 42 years, until his death in 2005. His presidential speech at

180-434: A check, but Dundes said he was not sure the student would follow through. The check was made out to the university, Dundes said, but with instructions that he could use it in any manner he saw fit. "I could just take all my students to Fiji and have one hell of a party," he said. The professor instead decided to invest it in the study of folklore. The money funds a Distinguished Professorship of Folkloristics and helps fund

225-413: A folklorist should – for evidence against his theory". Dundes fiercely defended the importance of the discipline of folkloristics throughout his career. Towards the end of his life, he received an envelope containing a check from a former student, which he asked his wife to open. She read the figure out as $ 1,000. In fact, the check was for $ 1,000,000. This money allowed Dundes to endow the university with

270-497: A wider view of the material considered to be folklore also emerged that includes, as William Wilson points out, "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)" (2006, 85). Another implication of this broader defining of the term folk , according to Dundes, is that folkloristic work is interpretative and scientific rather than descriptive or devoted solely to folklore preservation. In

315-635: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article on an Austrian linguist is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Alan Dundes Alan Dundes (September 8, 1934 – March 30, 2005) was an American folklorist . He spent much of his career as a professional academic at the University of California, Berkeley and published his ideas in a wide range of books and articles. He has been hailed as "the most renowned Folklorist of his time". Dundes attended Yale University , where he studied English. Sure that he would be drafted upon completion of his studies, Dundes joined

360-454: Is not enough to simply collect; one must do something with what one has collected. In 2012, linguist Anatol Stefanowitsch credited Dundes with having given rise to a still prevalent "stereotype about Germany as a culture enamored with excretion", but called Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder, "unstructured, poorly argued and flimsily sourced" and "methodologically flawed because he only looked for evidence supporting his theory, and not – as even

405-532: Is not just a pleasant pastime useful primarily for whiling away idle moments. Rather, it is centrally and crucially important in our attempts to understand our own behavior and that of our fellow human beings" (2006, 203). In 1966 Dundes was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1972 was named a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities . In 1980 Dundes served as president of

450-514: Is often credited with the promotion of folkloristics as a term denoting a specific field of academic study and applies instead what he calls a "modern" flexible social definition for folk : two or more persons who have any trait in common and express their shared identity through traditions. Dundes explains this point best in his essay, The Devolutionary Premise in Folklore Theory (1969): With this expanded social definition of folk ,

495-700: The American Folklore Society and in 1993 he was awarded the Pitrè Prize , an international lifetime achievement award in folklore. Dundes was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 - the first Folklorist to be recognized in this way. The range and influence of Dundes's scholarship was recognised in the publication of three different festschrift collections - one by proverb scholars, one by psychoanalysts and one from his former students. Dundes

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540-609: The American Folklore Society conference in 1980 argued that there was an anal-erotic fixation in the German national character; this generated significant controversy. He introduced the concept "allomotif" (coined in an analogy with " allomorph ", to complement the concept of " motifeme " (cf. " morpheme ") introduced by Kenneth L. Pike ) to be used in the analysis of the structures of folktales in terms of motifs identified in them. He has been described as "widely credited with helping to shape modern folklore scholarship", and as "one of

585-661: The Reserve Officers' Training Corps and trained to become a naval communications officer. When it turned out that the ship he was to be posted to, stationed in the Bay of Naples , already had a communications officer, Dundes asked what else that ship might need, not wanting to give up such a choice assignment. He then spent two years maintaining artillery on a ship in the Mediterranean. Upon completion of his service, Dundes attended Indiana University Bloomington to pursue

630-476: The historic-geographic method of comparative folkloristics , and developed the initial version of what became the Aarne–Thompson tale type index for classifying folktales , first published in 1910 as Verzeichnis der Märchentypen ("List of Fairy Tale Types"). The system was based on identifying motifs and the repeated narrative ideas that can be seen as the building-blocks of traditional narrative; its scope

675-404: The motifs by which they are classified. Furthermore, Propp contended that using a "macro-level" analysis means that the stories that share motifs might not be classified together, while stories with wide divergences may be grouped under one tale type because the index must select some features as salient. He also observed that although the distinction between animal tales and tales of the fantastic

720-507: The online resource links at the end of this article.) As an example, the entry for 510A in the ATU index (with cross-references to motifs in Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk Literature in square brackets, and variants in parentheses) reads: 510A Cinderella . (Cenerentola, Cendrillon, Aschenputtel.) A young woman is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters [S31, L55] and has to live in

765-407: The 1978 collection of his academic work, Essays in Folkloristics , Dundes declares in his preface, "Folkloristics is the scientific study of folklore just as linguistics is the scientific study of language. [. . .] It implies a rigorous intellectual discipline with some attempt to apply theory and method to the materials of folklore" (vii). In other words, Dundes advocates the use of folkloristics as

810-605: The Aarne–Thompson–Uther (ATU) classification system and included more tales from eastern and southern Europe as well as "smaller narrative forms" in this expanded listing. He also put the emphasis of the collection more explicitly on international folktales, removing examples whose attestation was limited to one ethnic group. In The Folktale , Thompson defines a tale type as follows: The Aarne–Thompson Tale Type Index divides tales into sections with an AT number for each entry. The names given are typical, but usage varies;

855-638: The Western branch of the Indo-European languages, comprising the main European language families derived from PIE (i.e. Balto-Slavic , Germanic , Italic and Celtic ): International collections : Johann Georg von Hahn Johann Georg von Hahn (11 July 1811 – 23 September 1869) was a German diplomat, philologist and specialist in Albanian history , language and culture , who spent

900-464: The ashes as a servant. When the sisters and the stepmother go to a ball (church), they give Cinderella an impossible task (e.g. sorting peas from ashes), which she accomplishes with the help of birds [B450]. She obtains beautiful clothing from a supernatural being [D1050.1, N815] or a tree that grows on the grave of her deceased mother [D815.1, D842.1, E323.2] and goes unknown to the ball. A prince falls in love with her [N711.6, N711.4], but she has to leave

945-408: The ball early [C761.3]. The same thing happens on the next evening, but on the third evening, she loses one of her shoes [R221, F823.2]. The prince will marry only the woman whom the shoe fits [H36.1]. The stepsisters cut pieces off their feet in order to make them fit into the shoe [K1911.3.3.1], but a bird calls attention to this deceit. Cinderella, who had first been hidden from the prince, tries on

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990-498: The clever daughter-in-law (and variants); The travelling girl and her helpful siblings ; and Woman's magical horse , as named by researcher Veronica Muskheli of the University of Washington. In regards to the typological classification, some folklorists and tale comparativists have acknowledged singular tale types that, due to their own characteristics, would merit their own type. Although such tales often have not been listed in

1035-450: The documentary. Before the term folkloristics can be fully understood, it is necessary to understand that the terms folk and lore are defined in many different ways. While some use the word folk to mean only peasants or remote cultures, Alan Dundes of the University of California, Berkeley calls this definition a "misguided and narrow concept of the folk as the illiterate in a literate society" ( Devolutionary Premise , 13). Dundes

1080-532: The edition of Antti Aarne 's first folktale classification, Astrid Lunding translated Svend Grundtvig 's system of folktale classification. This catalogue consisted of 134 types, mostly based on Danish folktale compilations in comparison to international collections available at the time by other folklorists, such as the Brothers Grimm 's and Emmanuel Cosquin 's. Antti Aarne was a student of Julius Krohn and his son Kaarle Krohn . Aarne developed

1125-661: The extensive body of sexual and 'obscene' material", and that – as of 1995 – "topics like homosexuality are still largely excluded from the type and motif indexes." In an essay, Alan Dundes also criticized Thompson's handling of the folkloric subject material, which he considered to be "excessive prudery" and a form of censorship. The ATU folktype index has been criticized for its apparent geographic concentration on Europe and North Africa, or over-representation of Eurasia and North America. The catalogue appears to ignore or under-represent other regions. Central Asian examples include: Yuri Berezkin  [ ru ] 's The captive Khan and

1170-599: The history of folkloristics, from an international perspective, and the history and progression of folklore theory. Dundes frequently gave the opening address for the New Student Orientation Program at University of California, Berkeley (CalSO) during summer orientation programs, including jokes and stories. Strongly opinionated, Dundes was not at all averse to the controversy that his theories often generated. He dealt frequently with folklore as an expression of unconscious desires and anxieties and

1215-557: The international folktale system, they can exist in regional or national classification systems. A quantitative study published by folklorist S. Graça da Silva and anthropologist J.J. Tehrani in 2016, tried to evaluate the time of emergence for the "Tales of Magic" (ATU 300–ATU 749), based on a phylogenetic model. They found four of them to belong to the Proto-Indo-European stratum of magic tales. Ten more magic tales were found to be current throughout

1260-1010: The majority of his career working within the bounds of the Austrian Empire . Hahn was born in Frankfurt am Main . In 1847, he was named Austrian consul in Ioannina , which was then part of the Ottoman Empire , today in Greece. He was transferred to the Hellenic Kingdom on the island of Syros in 1851, and until 1869 was the consul-general in Athens . He is considered the founder of Albanian studies . He assembled and published source materials on Albanian language and culture as descendants of ancient Illyrians . Books about him: This Austrian diplomat-related article

1305-685: The many various forms of folklore, from myth, legend, and folktale to proverbs and riddles to jokes, games, and folkspeech (slang), to folk belief and foodways . The final project for this course required that each student collect, identify, and analyze 40 items of folklore. All of this material (about 500,000 items) is housed and cataloged in the Berkeley Folklore Archives. Dundes also taught undergraduate courses in American folklore, and psychoanalytic approaches to folklore (his favorite approach) in addition to graduate seminars on

1350-584: The most admired and influential folklorists in the world" He wrote 12 books, both academic and popular, and edited or co-wrote two dozen more and is credited with authoring over 250 articles. One of his most notable articles was called "Seeing is Believing" in which he indicated that Americans value the sense of sight more than the other senses. Known unofficially as the "Jokes Professor" at University of California, Berkeley, his classes were very popular, combining learning with "an irresistible wit and style". In this introductory course, students were introduced to

1395-401: The original index. He points out that Thompson's focus on oral tradition sometimes neglects older versions of stories, even when written records exist, that the distribution of stories is uneven (with Eastern and Southern European as well as many other regions' folktale types being under-represented), and that some included folktale types have dubious importance. Similarly, Thompson had noted that

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1440-585: The preferred term for the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. According to Dundes, folkloristic work will probably continue to be important in the future. Dundes writes, "folklore is a universal: there has always been folklore and in all likelihood there will always be folklore. As long as humans interact and in the course of so doing employ traditional forms of communication, folklorists will continue to have golden opportunities to study folklore" ( Devolutionary Premise , 19). According to folklorist William A. Wilson, "the study of folklore, therefore,

1485-654: The primary protagonist, for instance The Quest for a Lost Bride (400) or the Animal Bride (402). Subtypes within a tale type are designated by the addition of a letter to the AT number, for instance: tale 510, Persecuted Heroine (renamed in Uther's revision as Cinderella and Peau d'Âne ["Cinderella and Donkey Skin"]), has subtypes 510A, Cinderella , and 510B, Catskin (renamed in Uther's revision as Peau d'Asne [also "Donkey Skin"]). (See other examples of tale types in

1530-469: The same tale type number may be referred to by its central motif or by one of the variant folktales of that type, which can also vary, especially when used in different countries and cultures. The name does not have to be strictly literal for every folktale. For example, The Cat as Helper (545B) also includes tales where a fox helps the hero. Closely related folktales are often grouped within a type. For example, tale types 400–424 all feature brides or wives as

1575-406: The shoe and it fits her. The prince marries her. Combinations: This type is usually combined with episodes of one or more other types, esp. 327A, 403, 480, 510B, and also 408, 409, 431, 450, 511, 511A, 707, and 923. Remarks: Documented by Basile, Pentamerone (I,6) in the 17th century. The entry concludes, like others in the catalogue, with a long list of references to secondary literature on

1620-571: The tale type index might well be called The Types of the Folk-Tales of Europe, West Asia, and the Lands Settled by these Peoples . However, Dundes notes that in spite of the flaws of tale type indexes (e.g., typos, redundancies, censorship, etc.; Author Pete Jordi Wood claims that topics related to homosexuality have been excluded intentionally from the type index. Similarly, folklorist Joseph P. Goodwin states that Thompson omitted "much of

1665-474: The tale, and variants of it. In his essay "The motif-index and the tale type index: A critique", American folklorist Alan Dundes explains that the Aarne–Thompson indexes are some of the "most valuable tools in the professional folklorist's arsenal of aids for analysis". The tale type index was criticized by V. Propp of the Russian Formalist school of the 1920s for ignoring the functions of

1710-462: The university's folklore archives and provides grants for folklore students. Shortly before his death, Dundes was interviewed by filmmaker Brian Flemming for his documentary, The God Who Wasn't There . He prominently recounted Lord Raglan's 22-point scale from his 1936 book The Hero , in which he ranks figures possessing similar divine attributions. An extended interview is on the DVD version of

1755-463: Was European. The American folklorist Stith Thompson revised Aarne's classification system in 1928, enlarging its scope, while also translating it from German into English. In doing so, he created the "AT number system" (also referred to as "AaTh system") which remained in use through the second half of the century. Another edition with further revisions by Thompson followed in 1961. According to American folklorist D.L. Ashliman , The AT-number system

1800-559: Was basically correct – no one would classify " Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf " as an animal tale, just because of the wolf – it did raise questions because animal tales often contained fantastic elements, and tales of the fantastic often contained animals; indeed a tale could shift categories if a peasant deceived a bear rather than a devil. In describing the motivation for his work, Uther presents several criticisms of

1845-529: Was born in New York City, the son of a lawyer and a musician. His parents were not religious, and Dundes considered himself a secular Jew . He met his wife Carolyn while attending Yale University. They were married for 48 years, and had a son (David) two daughters (Lauren and Alison) and six grandchildren." On March 30, 2005, Dundes collapsed from an apparent heart attack while giving a graduate seminar at University of California, Berkeley, and died on

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1890-493: Was incredibly strong. Dundes did not participate in the American Folklore Society annual conference for many years. When he finally participated again, in 2004, he again gave a plenary address, this time taking his fellow folklorists to task for being weak on theory. In his opinion, the presentation of data, no matter how thorough, is useless without the development and application of theory to that data. It

1935-573: Was of the opinion that if people reacted strongly to what he had to say, he had probably hit a nerve and was probably on to something. Some of his more controversial work involved examining the New Testament and the Qur'an as folklore. However, of all his articles, the one that earned him death threats was "Into the Endzone for a Touchdown", an exploration via psychoanalysis of what he contended

1980-463: Was the homoerotic subtext inherent in the terminology and rituals surrounding American football. In 1980, Dundes was invited to give the presidential address at the American Folklore Society annual meeting. His presentation, later published as a monograph titled Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder , uses folkspeech, customs, material culture, and so forth seeking to demonstrate an anal-erotic fixation in German national character. Reaction to this paper

2025-455: Was updated and expanded in 2004 with the publication of The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography by German folklorist H.-J. Uther . Uther noted that many of the earlier descriptions were cursory and often imprecise, that many "irregular types" are in fact old and widespread, and that "emphasis on oral tradition " often obscured "older, written versions of the tale types". To remedy these shortcomings Uther developed

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