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A Quantitative Folkloristic Approach to European Fairy Tales
Jeana Jorgensen and Scott Weingart
Goals
• In dissertation: – Examine construction of the body in West
European fairy tales – Investigate how gender, age, and social class
influence representations of bodies
• In this presentation: – Display preliminary results – Demonstrate how innovative visualization
technologies facilitate analysis
Collections used:
• Beauties, Beasts, and Enchantment: Classic French Fairy Tales translated by Jack Zipes (covering the classical French tradition from the 1690s onward)
• The Collected Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm translated by Jack Zipes (based on the 1857 edition of the Grimms’ tales with additions from their notes)
• Italian Popular Tales compiled and translated by Thomas Crane and edited by Jack Zipes (spanning Italian literary and folk tales from the 1800s)
• Folktales of France edited and translated by Geneviève Massignon (tales that she and others collected in the 1950s)
• Folktales of Germany edited and translated by Kurt Ranke (compiled from fieldwork collections from approximately 1850-1950)
• Folklore by the Fireside by Alessandro Falassi (tales that he collected in Tuscany in the 1970s and translated)
Hand-Coded Database
Per Tale: Tale ID, Tale, Collection, Author, Teller, Collector, Year Collected, Year of Writing/Collecting, Year of Publication, Tale Type, Region, Original Language, Gender of Teller/Writer, Gender of Collector, Gender of Editor, Gender of Protagonist
Per Adjective / Noun: Tale ID, Noun, Adjective, Text , Page number, Gender (m/f), + / - value, Young/old, High/low, Move (1-5), Quoted speech (y/n), Grotesque (y/n), Violence (y/n), Nudity (y/n), Skin tone, Transform to, Transform From
Basic Information
• 233 tales used • 11,142 total entries
– 4,958 were explicitly-named nouns that referred to bodies, body parts, and things that happened to bodies
– 4,796 were adjectives that described bodies and body parts
– 1,388 words are implied actions or themes that happen to bodies without explicitly referring to a single body noun or adjective
“Mosaic” Visualization Tool
• Google API "Tree Map Gadget" by Yaar Schnitman • This example shows nouns applied to women who
are categorized as low-class in my database
3 Basic Thematic Oppositions
• Holbek: the efforts of fairy-tale characters are “dominated by three sets of thematic oppositions: (1) that of the conflict between the generations, (2) that of the meeting between the sexes, (3) that of the social opposition between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’” (Interpretation of Fairy Tales 410)
Mosaic of Body Part Nouns in the Dataset
Mosaic of Body Part Nouns in the Dataset
Mosaic of All Adjectives in the Dataset
Mosaic of All Adjectives in the Dataset
Body part nouns that apply to women
Body part nouns that apply to men
Body part nouns & themes that apply to women
Body part nouns & themes that apply to men
Explicit nouns applied to low-class females
Explicit nouns applied to low-class males
Adjectives Applied to Women
Adjectives Applied to Men
Adjectives applied to old women
Adjectives applied to young women
Thank you for listening!
• Questions? Please contact Jeana at [email protected] or Scott at [email protected]
