Hans-Jörg Uther:
The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. Parts I–III.
Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (Academia Scientiarum Fennica). First printing 2004. Second printing 2011.
FFC 284. Part I: Animal Tales, Tales of Magic, Religious Tales, and Realistic Tales, with an Introduction. 619 pp. ISBN 978-951-41-1054-2
FFC 285. Part II: Tales of the Stupid Ogre, Anecdotes and Jokes, and Formula Tales. 536 pp. ISBN 978-951-41-1055-9
FFC 286. Part III: Appendices. 285 pp. ISBN 978-951-41-1067-2
Parts I–III (hardback) are available at the Tiedekirja bookstore.
The Types of International Folktales (ATU) based on the system of Aarne/Thompson constitutes a fundamentally new edition with extensive additions and innovations. The descriptions of the tale types have been completely rewritten and made more precise. The essential research cited for each type includes extensive documentation of its international distribution as well as monographic works or articles on that type. More than two hundred and fifty new types have been added. Types with very limited distribution have been omitted. A detailed subject index includes the most important subjects, actions, and other motifs, including actors and settings. The Types of International Folktales is a bibliographic tool that guides its users through the corpus of published traditional narratives of different ethnic groups and time periods, with a description of each type followed by references to catalogs, texts, and published research. Each “tale type” in all the traditional genres (fables, animal tales, religious legends, ordinary folktales, jests, and cumulative tales) must be understood to be flexible. It is not a constant unit of measure or a way to refer to lifeless material from the past. Instead it is adaptable, and can be integrated into new thematic compositions and media. The background for this model of narrative alteration and innovation is evident in a change of paradigm that took place in recent decades in historical-comparative folktale research, a change that has necessarily affected the nature of this new catalog. The catalog permits international tale types to be located quickly, thus providing a historical-comparative orientation toward folktale research for scholars in all disciplines that touch on popular narrative traditions.
HANS-JÖRG UTHER (b. 1944) is Professor of German Literature at the University of Duisburg-Essen, a senior member of the editorial staff of the Enzyklopädie des Märchens, Göttingen, and the former editor of the series “Die Märchen der Weltliteratur”. He is a prominent scholar in the area of traditions and folk literature with special interest in historical and comparative studies. He has edited over fifty books on folktales and legends, among them critical editions of the Brothers Grimm (1996, 2004), Wilhelm Hauff (1999), and Ludwig Bechstein (1998), and published numerous articles in German, English, and other languages.