The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography

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.