Folk tales
Folk tales, as we have already mentioned, are folklore collective narrations and that are perceived as "non historical", that is, aesthetic or fictitious.William Bascom contributed with some charactersitics of the folk tale in his attempt to distinguish it from other forms of narrative prose such as myths or legends. Consequently, the folk tale is identified by the presence of a fictitious protocol (opening and closing), by the liking of structural repetitions and, with respect to the characters, it is ruled by the presence of two roles per scene and giving relevance to the minor or weakest character, following the epic laws of Axel Olrik. The context in which the tales takes places is usually at night (winter, spinning, corn-picking nights) although it is not such a determining charactersitic as the others, as there is a irregular behaviour according to the different types. Also, they are directed to a specific audience according to the subtypes, nevertheless, there are narrations for children as well as for adults and others, for men as well as for women. In addition, the attitude of the narrators with repect to the stories is of maximum distance and minimum tension or to put in another way, there is a fictitous perception with respect to the events and actions they narrate. What differentiates these from the so called "historical" narrations is the indefiniteness of time and space and it enhances transformation and migration phenomena of folk tales, which are a universal cultural manifestation. In folk tales there are mainly lay or not holy characters: humans, anthropomorphized animals and super-natural characters. Structurally, they admit the whole range of narrative possibilities of improvement and degradation and of structural layouts marked the repetition of narrative sequences. Linguistically, what distinguishes them from other types of folklore narrations principally is the dramatization, that is, dE to the importance of the dialogues that equal in tension to the use of narrative phrases; also due to the absence of descriptions and and the minimum description of the characters.Alternatively, great importance is associated to the name of the characters as their main attribute. In this sense, folk tales rejects the use of proper names and prefers common names preceded by the definite article, which facilitates migration. Lastly, the meaning of folk tales permit symbolic, social and performative interpretations according to the subtypes.
Within folk tales we have included three traditional divisions following the international indexes of Aarne-Thompson-Uther:
- Fantastic stories ("Märchen" or fiction stories, heroe stories...).
- Animal stories (Subtypes such as "Schwanke", fables, eulogies...).
- Custom stories (Subtypes such as "Schwanke" or "merry tales", swindler stories, fools stories, pranks, humoristic anecdotes, funny and obscene stories, jokes...)
| Type: | Title | Informant | Classification | Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video | Cuento de Bertoldo y la princesa | Yoldi Ortiz, Josefina | Folk tales | Larraga |
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