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Concept
Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index
Summary
The Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU Index) is a catalogue of folktale types used in folklore studies. The ATU Index is the product of a series of revisions and expansions by an international group of scholars: originally composed in German by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne (1910), the index was translated into English, revised, and expanded by American folklorist Stith Thompson (1928, 1961), and later further revised and expanded by German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther (2004). The ATU Index, along with Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932) – with which it is used in tandem – is an essential tool for folklorists.
In The Folktale, Thompson defines a tale type as follows:
A type is a traditional tale that has an independent existence. It may be told as a complete narrative and does not depend for its meaning on any other tale. It may indeed happen to be told with another tale, but the fact that it may be told alone attests its independence. It may consist of only one motif or of many.
Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn devised a preliminary analysis of some 44 tale "formulae" as introduction to his book of Greek and Albanian folktales, published in 1864.
Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, in 1866, translated von Hahn's list and expanded to 52 tale types, which he called "Story Radicals". Folklorist Joseph Jacobs expanded the list to seventy tale types and published it as Appendix C in Charlotte Sophia Burne and Laurence Gomme's Handbook of Folk-Lore.
Before the edition of Antti Aarne's first folktale classification, Astrid Lunding translated Svend Grundtvig's system of folktale classification. This catalogue consisted of 134 types, mostly based on Danish folktale compilations in comparison to international collections available at the time by other folklorists, such as the Brothers Grimm's and Emmanuel Cosquin's.
Antti Aarne was a student of Julius Krohn and his son Kaarle Krohn.
Official source
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