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Carme Oriol & Josep M. Pujol: Index of Catalan Folktales. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica. 2008. 313 pp. ISBN 978-951-41-1014-6 (hardback) 35 euros (hardback) |
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| The Catalan language is spoken over a large area covering some 70 000 km2 divided among four states (Andorra, Spain, France and Italy), with a total population of 13.5 million inhabitants. Catalan culture has a large body of literature dating from the medieval period to the present day as well as a rich and extensive tradition of folklore studies beginning in 1853 and continuing without interruption ever since. Catalan folktales were ignored by the Types of the Folktale until the second edition (1961), which included only references to the collection published by Joan Amades (1950). The present Index of Catalan Folktales brings together the work of some seventy collectors working along 150 years and for the first time gives a faithful and complete image of the Catalan contribution to the world’s folklore heritage.
CARME ORIOL is a lecturer in oral literature in the Department of Catalan Studies of the Rovira i Virgili University (Tarragona, Catalonia). She has done research into oral narrative in Andorra, Tarragona and Aragon and has pubished several books on the subject of oral literature, as well as articles in Fabula, Revista d’Etnologia de Catalunya, and the Enzyklopädie des Märchens. JOSEP M. PUJOL graduated in 1982 in the University of Barcelona. He is a lecturer in the Department of Catalan Studies at the Rovira i Virgili University (Tarragona, Catalonia). He specializes in the theory of oral literature and its history, oral narrative (folktales and legends) and conversational folklore, and has written several publications on these subjects. Carme Oriol and Josep M. Pujol are the founders of the Rovira i Virgili University’s Folklore Archive. Both have built up the online RondCat database (http://www.sre.urv.cat/rondcat) dedicated to the research and international divulgation of Catalan folklore heritage. They are currently working on the Bibliographic and Biographic Catalogue of Catalan Folklore, which will bring together all the writings published on Catalan folklore and oral literature since the nineteenth century to the present day. |
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