FFC 284–286 reprinted

Hans-Jörg Uther: The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. 3 vols.

The catalog of international tale types (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.

Part I:    Animal Tales, Tales of Magic, Religious Tales, and Realistic Tales, with an Introduction. 619 pp.
Part II:    Tales of the Stupid Ogre, Anecdotes and Jokes, and Formula Tales. 536 pp.
Part III:    Appendices. 285 pp.

Folklore Fellows’ Communications Nos. 284–6. First published in 2004, reprinted in 2011.

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FFC 299

Timo Kaartinen: Songs of Travel, Stories of Place. Poetics of Absence in an Eastern Indonesian Society

This book explores narratives of people who trace their origin to Banda, the famous Nutmeg Islands of Eastern Indonesia. They were displaced from their ancient homeland by the Dutch colonization of Banda in 1621 and carry on their language and traditions in the village described in this study. The Bandanese continue traveling to distant places in pursuit of recognition by their ancestral allies. They bring their past into life through rituals and verbal arts which commemorate absent travelers and anticipate their return.

The expressive genres of the Bandanese force us to ask what counts as history and how people’s own interpretations of world-scale political events shape their predicaments and possibilities of action. This book argues that ethno-history can be a source of exemplary acts which inform collective responses to new circumstances. The folk poetry of the Bandanese is neither a subaltern reaction to colonial contacts and state interventions nor evidence of their hegemonic effects. It places real, historical events in several chronotopic frameworks in which they are relived as memory and given a total meaning as history. By analyzing poetic expressions and their effects on society this book contributes to the efforts of anthropologists to historicize the ethnographic realities they study.

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FFC 300

Bengt af Klintberg: The Types of the Swedish Folk Legend

The documentation of folk legends in Sweden was begun already in the sixteenth century by Olaus Magnus, the last Catholic archbishop, and reached its peak as late as in the first half of the twentieth century. This rich material has hitherto been accessible to international study only to a limited degree. The over 1800 legend types listed in the present catalogue give a vivid picture of the Swedish peasant society with its trolls, ghosts and witches and illustrates its concept of history. The index is based on unprinted records in the four largest folklore archives of Sweden and about 150 printed sources, covering all provinces in Sweden and the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland. Each section of the catalogue contains an introduction, in which the general background of the legends is described.

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