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GSLL 271 Vampires & Empires Fall 2025: Home

What's in this guide

This guide has some ideas to help you complete the Folklore Assignment for GSLL 271. This guide will help you get started with:

Discovering Motifs

Discovering Motifs / Tropes / Archetypes: General Sources

  1. Motif-index of folk-literature a.k.a. Thompson's motif-index

Thompson, Stith, 1885-1976. Motif-index of Folk-literature: a Classification of Narrative Elements In Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-books, And Local Legends. Rev. and enl. ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955-1958.

  1. Garry, Jane, and Hasan El-Shamy. Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: a Handbook : A Handbook, M.E. Sharpe, 2005.

  1. Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index a.k.a. ATU Index

Uther, Hans-Jörg . The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki : Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004.

Thompson's Motif-Index and the ATU Index are important tools aimed at specialists, but require a bit of a learning curve to be able to understand their notations, follow references, decode abbreviations, etc. A source with a lower barrier for entry, which can also be rather fun to browse is the Ashliman Collection, compiled by D.L. Ashliman of the University of Pittsburgh. It also contains the tale texts themselves:

  1. Ashliman Collection

Ashliman, D.L. Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts. University of Pittsburgh, 1996-2024.

  1. Multilingual Folk Tale Database

    • Maintained at Charles University in Prague. You can browse tales by ATU Classification or by country of origin, though the geographic representation is limited. Please note that some texts are in languages other than English and not all have an accompanying English translation.

Discovering Motifs / Tropes / Archetypes: Specialized Sources

The above general sources have been legitimately criticized both for the theoretical approach (Eurocentrism and universalism, censorship, simplification with respect to interdependence or overlap of motifs and tale types) and for their composition and integrity. To address some of these deficiencies, a number of specialized sources have been produced. Some examples are below, you can find more by searching, for, for example, "motif-index" in the Library Catalog.

Finding Folktale Collections

UNC-Chapel Libraries have hundreds of folk tale collections from different cultures and countries across the world. Unfortunately, retrieving them as a comprehensive set in the Library Catalog can be challenging and frustrating because they are not always consistently cataloged.

Issues with keyword searching

Keyword searching "folktales" or "folk tales" (with a space) or "fairy tales", combined with the name of the country, culture, or language seems like it should work, but note the differences in results in the four examples below!

  • All Fields (Keyword) = folk tales poland -- note that many results are not Polish tales, but rather Jewish, Romani etc. tales from Poland!
  • All Fields (Keyword) = folktales poland
  • All Fields (Keyword) = folk tales polish -- note irrelevant results because "polish" is part of the word "polishing"
  • All Fields (Keyword) = folktales polish

Note that some collections don't use the term "folktales", but instead use "stories" or "legends" or "myths", so those collections wouldn't even come up in the above searches.

Issues with subject searching

Two challenges here: 

  1. "Folktales" is not a term the Library of Congress uses, instead they use "Tales".
  2. Ideally, each collection should have subjects of the type "Tales -- [Country or Region]" and "Folklore -- Country or Region]" or [Name of Ethnic Group] -- Folklore". In practice, these are not consistently applied: "Tales" are often left out, while "Folklore" by itself is too broad, applying to other practices beyond storytelling (moreover, results will also include works about folklore). Compare results in these searches:

Browsing

Sometimes, especially when you are not sure what you are looking for exactly, the serendipity of browsing the stacks can be a boon. 

  • Most folk tale collections are on the 5th floor in the GR99-390 section, arranged geographically.

Asking Questions about Folktale Collections

Folktale collection differ in quality, authenticity / integrity, and their intended audience. It is important to examine and question any collection you find.

  1. Who published this book, when, and where?
    • Is the book published in the country that it is about?
  2. Who is the intended audience?
    • Is this a scholarly work aimed at folklorists, or a commercial work intended for entertainment?
  3. Who assembled this collection and how?
    • Were these tales recorded by an individual?
    • Is the book a compilation drawn from other previously published sources?
    • Is the book explicit about where these tales come from? (Are there references?)  
  4. Does the book contain transcripts of oral narrative or is this an adaptation or a retelling?
    • If a retelling, who is retelling the story? Is it a literary adaptation?
    • If a translation is involved, is the original text present? Who is the translator?

Librarian

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Kirill (Kyrylo) Tolpygo
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  • Last Updated: Sep 12, 2025 2:48 PM
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