Publication details
Interdisciplinarity in Mediterranean Fairy Tales Research
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Perhaps the most famous monument of Arabic folk literature, the monumental collection A Thousand and One Nights (Alf lajla wa lajla) is standardly classified as Arabic literature, mainly for linguistic reasons, but also because the Arabic environment played a major role in its formation. It is worth pointing out, however, that although we can also debate the vagueness and over-generality of the label 'Arabic literature', the collection A Thousand and One Nights contains within it the creations of the popular imagination and fiction of the Orient in a broader sense, from India to Persia to the Middle East and North Africa. It is thus a transnational work that stands somewhere at the intersection of several literatures, cultures and continents. However, fairy tales, and not only oriental ones, cannot be studied only from a literary point of view, or if we were to study them only in this limited way, we would miss out on a whole series of precious results that research will show us indirectly. The very centre of gravity of research on folk or folktales is naturally connected with literary science, but also with aesthetics, which is supplemented by semiotics, folklore studies, religious studies, cultural anthropology and psychology. Given this interdisciplinary nature and the wide range of thematic focuses, this research itself becomes a very varied insight into the very depths of the fairy tale soul. |