Folk Tales of Britain: Narratives
by Katharine M. Briggs
Folk Tales of Britain: Narratives (Collections and Selections — set)
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A classic in folklore scholarship arranged in 2 parts. Folk Narrativescontains tales told for edification or delight, but not thought to be factually true. Folk Legendspresents tales the tellers believed to be records of actual events.Tags
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This is a big, big book. Big in volume. Big in price. But big in value, too.
For some reason, the study of British folk tales was slow to catch on. Charles Perrault in France and the Grimms in Germany came long before Joseph Jacobs compiled the first serious collection of English folktales. This lack meant that there was never a collection as substantial as that of the Grimms. Katherine Briggs changed that. She gathered up just about everything in this multi-volume work, organizing the tales into categories and then arranging them by title within the categories.
That by itself would have been important enough, but she also classified them by motifs (based on the Aarne-Thompson motif set) and indexed them on this basis. And she listed show more parallel versions, allowing the user of the dictionary to find the materials not included in the book.
The result is one of the greatest references on folklore in the English language. If the works of Stith Thompson are the first thing anyone should acquire (and they probably are), this book has a very strong claim to be second. You'll quickly learn to work around the few minor defects it has. show less
For some reason, the study of British folk tales was slow to catch on. Charles Perrault in France and the Grimms in Germany came long before Joseph Jacobs compiled the first serious collection of English folktales. This lack meant that there was never a collection as substantial as that of the Grimms. Katherine Briggs changed that. She gathered up just about everything in this multi-volume work, organizing the tales into categories and then arranging them by title within the categories.
That by itself would have been important enough, but she also classified them by motifs (based on the Aarne-Thompson motif set) and indexed them on this basis. And she listed show more parallel versions, allowing the user of the dictionary to find the materials not included in the book.
The result is one of the greatest references on folklore in the English language. If the works of Stith Thompson are the first thing anyone should acquire (and they probably are), this book has a very strong claim to be second. You'll quickly learn to work around the few minor defects it has. show less
Folklore, Folio Society, Multi-volume Set
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38+ Works 2,638 Members
Some Editions
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Folk Tales of Britain: Narratives
- Original title
- A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language: Part A: Folk Narratives
- Original publication date
- 1970
- People/Characters
- Nut-Brown Maid; Adam Bell; Clym of the Clough; William of Cloudesly; Allison Gross; Black Bull of Norroway (show all 21); Brown Robyn; Child Rowland; Dougal Graham; The Frog Prince; Jack Hannaford; Kate Crackernuts; Gawain; Robin Hood; Snow White; Tam Lin; Titty Mouse; Tom Hickathrift; Tom Thumb; Molly Whuppie; Sir John Lambton
- First words
- Introduction -- The scope of the collection -- The tales included in this dictionary are not translated tales -- except for the few translated from the medieval Latin, which must originally have been told in Middle English.
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Statistics
- Members
- 131
- Popularity
- 248,584
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.38)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 5
