Bronislava Kerbelyt?’s The Structural and Semantic Types of Lithuanian Folktales, a translation of the first two volumes of her Lietuviu Pasakojamosios Tautosakos Katalogas(Vilnius, 1999-2001), is a proposal for a new way to index folktales according to semantic and structural principles. Kerbelyt? proposes that the way we currently classify folktales using Antti Aarne’s and Stith Thompson’s The Types of the Folktale, or the recent revision by Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of the International Folktale, obscures important structural and semantic aspects of folktales. She instead proposes that we classify folktales according to what she calls “elementary plots” that will “reveal typical patterns in the text structures and development of the plots” (12). Although Kerbelyt? does not mention it, one of the important inspirations for her work appears to be Vladimir Propp’s The Morphology of the Folktale.
Kerbelyt?’s proposed typology is an intriguing way to look at folktales, but, as with any typology, this one too has its limitations. Just as with the AT/ATU catalogues, for example, the categories often seem somewhat arbitrary. Nor are the elementary plots distinctive enough as classifiers to function well as the basis for a general typology for folktales; they, like the tale-types of AT system, sometimes obscure relations between tales, just as they sometimes bring out intriguing structural parallels between tales. Kerbelyt?’s system in fact seems less like a fully independent classification system than one to be used in conjunction with AT/ATU. All of her types are given their AT numbers, which facilitates the use of Kerbelyt?’s typology in conjunction with the Aarne-Thompson Types of the Folktale (FFC 184.) Kerbelyt? writes on page 12 that the recent revision of Aarne-Thompson by H.-J. Uther came out after her first two volumes were published, but that the older version works better with her typology anyway.
There are times, too, when her system seems to fail, as for example with Kerbelyt?’s type no. 1.2.1.8 “The hero comes into contact with a dangerous object.” A secondary classification tells us that this is variant 1.1 “H. finds himself in a difficult situation.” Her summary of this elementary plot goes: “A husband goes to sell a goose and to buy a new shirt for his wife. The wife sees her husband bringing back something white. She thinks that it is a new shirt. The husband brings back the goose.” This is listed with the variant: “The wife asks her husband to wrap her up in a sheaf of straw and take her to the wedding. The husband does this. He sets the sheaf down by the wall. The wedding party urinates on it.”
The problem here is that it is difficult to find either of Kerbelyt?’s proposed elementary plots in these variants of AT/ATU 902* “The Lazy Woman is Cured.” Indeed, the AT/ATU synopsis and classification is in fact a better guide to the nature of the story, even on structural and semantic grounds.
While I do not believe that Kerbelyt?’s typology can replace the AT or ATU indices as a general typology of folktales, there is a great deal of useful information in her work. And, although Kerbelyt?’s extensive use of summaries of the folktales she is analyzing is not intended for use as a guide to Lithuanian folktales, in the absence of well-annotated English translations from the enormous corpus of Lithuanian folktales, and with patient use, her book can be used as a guide to the extensive corpus of Lithuanian folktales. Indeed, for many English-speakers Kerbelyt?’s summaries will be the only access they have to this corpus.
Kerbelyt?’s The Structural and Semantic Types of Lithuanian Folktales is an intriguing, but flawed, typological classification of folk narrative. While it will not replace the AT/ATU system for classifying folktales, it nonetheless will be of use as an auxiliary typology for researchers in Lithuanian and comparative folk narrative.
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[Review length: 633 words • Review posted on October 11, 2016]