The review by Romina Werth of my Stealing Helen: The Myth of the Abducted Wife in Comparative Perspective (https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/jfrr/article/view/38432/40738) contains several grave errors
Ms. Werth states that I aim at “showing the existence of a specific international tale type.” She refers to “Edmunds's abduction tale type.” Even more egregiously she states: “The most curious part seems to be Edmunds's attempt to establish a folktale typology, which would somehow follow up directly on the work of folklorists such as Antti Aarne, Stith Thompson, and Hans-Jörg Uther. However, scholars have shown before Edmunds that one may find folk and fairy tales in ancient texts by comparing already classified tale types to their ancient analogues (see for example, Graham Anderson's Fairytale in the Ancient World [2000] and William Hansen's Ariadne's Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature [2002]).” I do indeed discuss the concept of the folktale type at some length. I say explicitly, however, that “The Abduction of the Beautiful Wife” is not a type in any sense of the word that folklore typologists would recognize. I say that my typological analysis of “The Abduction” results in a short narrative “syntagma” (59-62).
As for earlier comparative folklore studies by classicists, I refer to Hansen and the state of the question on page 2 and in the course of further discussion I cite six articles and two reviews by him. Werth is apparently unaware that among her “scholars before Edmunds” there was also Edmunds: Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and its Later Analogues (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985, reprint 1996). I might mention also my inclusion of Hansen’s comparative study, “The Sailor and the Oar,” in my Approaches to Greek Myth (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990, second ed. 2014) and my different introductions to this chapter in the two editions.
It seems that Ms. Werth is not clear on typology in folk narrative studies.
To make matters worse, she misunderstands the comparative use of the folktales and other texts that I adduce. She states: “The author concludes that the Greek myth of Helen is indeed a variant of his abduction tale type and is, therefore, also the basic story underlying the Trojan War myth” (my emphasis). The story of Helen would be demonstrably the basic story of the Trojan War myth even if all of the comparative material in my appendix was unknown. The purpose of the comparison that I made was to see what the Greek myth would look like in this new context.
Ms. Werth is unclear also on the Indo-European question. She states: “In his second chapter, Edmunds especially emphasizes the existence of Sanskrit, Old Irish, and Welsh variants of the abduction tale, which leads him to the conclusion that the underlying folktale of Helen's abduction has an Indo-European origin and might even be influenced by a narrative tradition from outside the Indo-European sphere.” The word “especially” is misleading. What I have to say about the variants she names is discussed in one section (§9) of chapter 2. It amounts to four pages of a 36-page chapter. My Indo-European suggestion—it is only a suggestion and nothing is built on it—really comes out only in passing.
Ms. Werth comes back to the Indo-European question. “Edmunds's emphasis on similar story patterns in Sanskrit, Old Irish, and Welsh texts, and his suggestion of an Indo-European origin of the folktale behind Helen's abduction, underline the author's idea of a highly superorganic transmission of the abduction tale and its supposed variants, through time, place, and narrative genre, along the Indo-European language branches.” I confess that I do not know what “superorganic” means in this context but I do know what I had in mind. What I said was: “The proposal of an Indo-European ‘Abduction’ is not the proposal of the origin of anything but a specifically Indo-European form of the story, and even within the relevant branches of the Indo-European languages the possibility of non-Indo-European horizontal influences is great” (69). I call attention to the fact that I referred to horizontal influence “within the relevant branches of the Indo-European languages,” i.e., in post-Indo-European times. As the sentence just quoted shows, I am an agnostic—I have to be—on the question of how originary the Indo-European origin itself was. I have no idea what the absolute origin was.
Ms. Werth also goes in for moralizing insinuation. “The reader might, however, get the impression that Edmunds takes the Greek myth of Helen, his declared ‘target text,’ for some kind of prototype, which would be superior to the claimed forty variants of the abduction tale type. This notion seems problematic in that each variant of a tale type should be regarded as equally important and meaningful.” The whole point of my book is that the Helen myth is not a prototype. I do not know what could show more respect for my comparanda than my use of them (not to mention my collection of them in the first place).
Finally, the publication date of my book is 2016, not 2015.
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[Review length: 837 words • Review posted on October 4, 2016]