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sophia_sol) wrote2020-09-14 08:33 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2020-09-14 08:33 pm
3 folktale collections - soviet, northern pennsylvania, and israel
I don't know why I decided that updates to my efforts to read through all those folk-and-fairy-tale books I was given should be posted three books at a time but apparently I did so here we are. I've finally gotten through three more of them!
A Mountain of Gems: Fairy Tales of the Peoples of the Soviet Land, translated by Irina Zheleznova
This decades-old collection of folk tales first arrived in my possession along with all the others I got earlier this year second-hand, and yet the further I read into it the more I was convinced I've read this book before. So many of the stories within it are familiar to me! One of the libraries I had access to as a child must have had a copy of this book, because I can't think of any other way I would know all these stories. Anyway: some nice stories in this book and I enjoyed reading it, but it's distinctly thin on introductory material so I have no idea how much to trust the collector/translator. And googling gives me nothing but site after site wanting to sell me a copy of the book, and no further actual information about it. So it goes. At any rate I have definite fondness for some of the stories in this collection, especially the one about the woman who makes the rich prince learn a profession before she'll agree to marry him, which later allows her to save his life when he's kidnapped. (He weaves a message asking for her help into a piece of brocade! Amazing.)
Flatlanders and Ridgerunners: Folktales from the Mountains of Northern Pennsylvania, by James York Glimm
A fascinating book, recording an oral folk culture as it was at the time the author collected the materials for this book. I appreciated how it encompassed more than just the standard sort of fictional folk story, but showed how the storytellers also used their skills to embellish on real events from their own lives or local happenings, and talked about their traditions. The individual storytellers are all cited by name, too. The mountains of Pennsylvania have some significant logging history, and so I was interested to note that a couple stories from this collection have analogues in that Paul Bunyan collection I read earlier this year; although here they're not connected with Paul Bunyan, the heart of the story remains the same. I was also interested to note that a couple of the sayings sounded familiar to me, and I wonder if they have broad enough use across the state that I might have heard them when I was a kid in southern Pennsylvania.
Folktales of Israel, edited by Dov Noy
This is one in a series of books about folktales from various countries, which seems to be very reputable, and in which each story is given with detailed notes about the source -- who told it, who recorded it, where it's from, the tale type, and more. Which is great! And there are more from this series in my pile of books to get through so you'll be seeing more of these at some point :) Anyway, this is also one of those collections where tales are organized by theme, which is excellent for being able to note the way that themes are used between different stories. But it makes for a bit more of a tedious reading experience when read cover-to-cover like I do, even if it makes sense from a scholarly standpoint. I just get bored with how similar the stories are that are placed one after the other, and am not able to give them their due attention as a result! I enjoyed though that this was a collection where the stories were collected more recently and so things from the last century (eg airplanes) made it into some of the stories, because folk stories are ever evolving.
A Mountain of Gems: Fairy Tales of the Peoples of the Soviet Land, translated by Irina Zheleznova
This decades-old collection of folk tales first arrived in my possession along with all the others I got earlier this year second-hand, and yet the further I read into it the more I was convinced I've read this book before. So many of the stories within it are familiar to me! One of the libraries I had access to as a child must have had a copy of this book, because I can't think of any other way I would know all these stories. Anyway: some nice stories in this book and I enjoyed reading it, but it's distinctly thin on introductory material so I have no idea how much to trust the collector/translator. And googling gives me nothing but site after site wanting to sell me a copy of the book, and no further actual information about it. So it goes. At any rate I have definite fondness for some of the stories in this collection, especially the one about the woman who makes the rich prince learn a profession before she'll agree to marry him, which later allows her to save his life when he's kidnapped. (He weaves a message asking for her help into a piece of brocade! Amazing.)
Flatlanders and Ridgerunners: Folktales from the Mountains of Northern Pennsylvania, by James York Glimm
A fascinating book, recording an oral folk culture as it was at the time the author collected the materials for this book. I appreciated how it encompassed more than just the standard sort of fictional folk story, but showed how the storytellers also used their skills to embellish on real events from their own lives or local happenings, and talked about their traditions. The individual storytellers are all cited by name, too. The mountains of Pennsylvania have some significant logging history, and so I was interested to note that a couple stories from this collection have analogues in that Paul Bunyan collection I read earlier this year; although here they're not connected with Paul Bunyan, the heart of the story remains the same. I was also interested to note that a couple of the sayings sounded familiar to me, and I wonder if they have broad enough use across the state that I might have heard them when I was a kid in southern Pennsylvania.
Folktales of Israel, edited by Dov Noy
This is one in a series of books about folktales from various countries, which seems to be very reputable, and in which each story is given with detailed notes about the source -- who told it, who recorded it, where it's from, the tale type, and more. Which is great! And there are more from this series in my pile of books to get through so you'll be seeing more of these at some point :) Anyway, this is also one of those collections where tales are organized by theme, which is excellent for being able to note the way that themes are used between different stories. But it makes for a bit more of a tedious reading experience when read cover-to-cover like I do, even if it makes sense from a scholarly standpoint. I just get bored with how similar the stories are that are placed one after the other, and am not able to give them their due attention as a result! I enjoyed though that this was a collection where the stories were collected more recently and so things from the last century (eg airplanes) made it into some of the stories, because folk stories are ever evolving.
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