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Paper short abstract

Previous scholarship has identified hundreds of parallels between international folktales and Greco-Latin literature. But how many of these folktales actually circulated in areas once inhabited by Greco-Latin civilisation? How could an ecotype approach improve the comparison between the two?

Paper long abstract

Since the dawn of folklore studies, scholars have observed parallels between modern folktales and ancient Greco-Latin narratives. This field of research was reinvigorated when Graham Anderson (2000, 2006) and William Hansen (2002, 2017) used the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification to identify hundreds of correspondences between international folktales and classical texts.

In this respect, Gregory Nagy and Maurizio Bettini argued that such typological comparisons, though not always genealogically linked, can illuminate both systems under comparison. More recently, Tommaso Braccini (2018) suggested focusing on ecotypes from areas once inhabited by Greco-Latin civilization to refine textual comparisons between folktales and Greco-Latin texts, given their geographical and cultural proximity to the possible ancient context.

Expanding on Braccini’s insights, I discovered that, contrary to expectations, international folkloric types with possible Greco-Latin antecedents don’t always circulate in areas formerly inhabited by Greco-Latin civilization. These discrepancies may partly stem from documentation gaps, but also from previously underestimated factors that could have influenced the historical-geographical evolution of certain narrative traditions emerging similarly in both ancient literature and folklore.

In this paper, I propose a quantitative survey of the presence or absence of international folktales with Greco-Latin parallels in areas once inhabited by Greco-Latin civilization. By mapping and analysing these distributions, I aim to lay the groundwork for a future ecotype atlas of international folktales with Greco-Latin parallels. This approach aims to improve our understanding of how some of the world's most enduring narratives have evolved over time and space, addressing the complex relationship between ancient literary traditions and modern folklore.