Volume 65, Issue 3-4

Zusammenfassung Am 20. Juli 2024 hat Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Uther sein 80. Lebensjahr vollendet. Zu diesem Anlass hatte die Fabula. Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung diesen überragenden Erzählforscher zu einem Gespräch eingeladen. Daran teilgenommen haben: Prof. Dr. Hisako Ono von der Toyo-Universität Tokio, Prof. Dr. Alfred Messerli von der Universität Zürich und der Herausgeber der Fabula , Prof. Dr. Harm-Peer Zimmermann. Das Gespräch hat an zwei Tagen am 11. und 12. März 2024 im Universitätszentrum Zürich stattgefunden. Für Korrekturen, Kürzungen und Lesbarkeit des Manuskripts hat der Herausgeber gesorgt. Auch die Ordnung in drei Themenbereiche hat er vorgenommen: zur Person und Lebensgeschichte, zur Märchenforschung und zum internationalen Typenkatalog (ATU), zur Enzyklopädie des Märchens (EM), gefolgt von Schlusssätzen. Mit diesem Beitrag möchte die Fabula die jahrzehntelange Arbeit von Hans-Jörg Uther, sein immenses Werk und sein unübertroffenes Wissen auf dem Gebiet der historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung würdigen und ihm ein Geburtstagsgeschenk machen. Herzlichen Glückwunsch, lieber Jörg!

We hear weather reports every day and, in a digitally networked world, learn in real time here and how catastrophic damage causes weather upheavals. The universal significance of the weather for humans, animals and the environment is reflected in different ways in European folk tales. Popular beliefs often play a role in this. This article is intended as an overview of the most important phenomena.

Winds are fascinating forces of nature, awe-inspiring and devastating when they appear as storms, and therefore a powerful theme in religion, literature and narrative, in music and the arts. Greek-Roman Antiquity personified the winds as nature deities, bearing resemblance to the angels and often represented as embodiments of forceful and tyrannic masculinity. These classical traditions are reflected in their own ways in the visual arts since the Renaissance. In legend and literature from the Middle Ages up to our times, however, winds and storms seem to be preponderantly allied to the dark forces of evil, the devil, wizards and witches, the Wild Hunter, whereas in folktales, the unruly winds appear mostly as helper figures, creating often moments of extraordinary fun.

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag möchte auf einzelne Handlungssequenzen in der deutschen Literaturgeschichte aufmerksam machen, die als Mosaiksteinchen einer mittelhochdeutschen, vorgrimmschen Dornröschen-Tradition lesbar sein könnten. Mit einem diachronen Blick werden epochenspezifische Umbesetzungen und Umakzentuierungen zur Diskussion gestellt. Zugleich legt eine methodische Reflexion über das motivgeschichtliche Einschlägigsein Unsicherheiten und Zweifel offen, was als Dornröschen-Parallele überhaupt gelten darf.

This article attempts to interpret folk narratives featuring the motif of producing millstones from erratic boulders and their subsequent reuse in new functional contexts. According to our assumptions, in folk narratives originating from the northern regions of Germany and Poland, where these motifs are present, one can find references to the methods of obtaining stone materials characteristic of these areas. These narratives also include information about the occurrence of erratic boulders – consistent with the geomorphology of regions affected by the last glaciation, and residual information regarding the distribution of millstones as well as semi-finished products. Thus, folk narratives can often serve as an interesting point of reference not only for ethnologists and folklorists but also for geologists and geographers.

Résumé Le motif que Stith Thompson classe comme Supernatural Lapse of Time in Fairyland (Mot. F 377) joue un rôle important dans le répertoire de la fiction médiévale. Il a cependant été peu étudié dans les textes médiévaux français. L’article vise à en donner des exemples peu connus dans les romans arthuriens et les lais du douzième au quatorzième siècle, du Guingamor (et du De Nugis Curialium de Walter Map) à Meraugis de Portlesguez .

Little is known about the dissemination of Carolingian literature outside of Europe. This article focuses on an intriguing example from the African island of Annobón, where a new variant of the story of Roland’s birth and youth developed. It analyzes the Annobonese story from a comparative perspective that identifies parallels with other known variants of this tale and highlights the unique characteristics of Lohodann, the African Roland.

At the sound of the expression, “Ti tiin itiin” (translated as ‘Let us tell stories’), every Konkomba who is familiar with Konkomba storytelling knows that it is time for some traditional entertainment, education, and free psychotherapy, among other things, via oral storytelling. Although storytelling and its benefits have been widely explored, the Konkomba storytelling culture remains largely unexplored. This paper seeks to fill this gap by exploring the oral performance esthetics associated with the art of storytelling among the Konkomba people of Ghana. The paper discusses the key performance structures or elements of the Konkomba folktale, gestures to the culture-specificity of some of these structures, and argues that though oral and seemingly arbitrary, indigenous oral performances such as Konkomba storytelling are well-structured oral verbal arts. The paper further notes that community – and for that matter the audience at a storytelling session – plays an integral part in the composition and performance processes in traditional theaters such as Konkomba storytelling sessions.

This paper examines three films that mark Disney’s foray into postmodern fairy-tale narratives to determine if these attempts to move beyond or complicate Disney princess or fairy-tale narratives are successful. Drawing from fairy-tale studies and age studies, it particularly examines how gendered narratives and stereotypes operate within these narrative spaces, looking at the figures of the princess, the godmother, and the stepmother in Enchanted (2007), Godmothered (2020), and Disenchanted (2022). Through this study I aim to discover if Disney’s contemporary postmodern fairy-tale narratives open up more potential for women in various roles as they age, or if they reiterate various age-related gender stereotypes.