Paper short abstract:

Where do proverbs of the tales of László Arany (’Eredeti népmesék’ /Authentic Folktales’ 1862) come from? The presentation investigate the possibility of evaluating former proverb collections as sources of shaping the narrative style of folktales in 19th century Hungary.

Paper long abstract:

In 1862 a volume of tales and riddles was published under the title 'Eredeti népmesék' (’Authentic Folktales’) collected and edited by László Arany. This work has been classified as the first canonical folktale collection in Hungary regarding to the genuine ’folkish’ narrative style of the tales. The tale texts from this collection have become extremely popular in the past one and a half century thanks to the continuously republishing practice. The narrative style of Arany’s tales understood as simple and natural way of storytelling which has been accepted as the standard manner of narration of Hungarian oral tradition. Altough the tales of László Arany derived from Hungarian oral tradition he considerably reworked the texts as a collector and an editor, applying comprehensive stylistic modifications according to the tale-collecting and -publishing methodology of the era. The process of textual modification of 'Eredeti népmesék' formed by Arany can be explored by the help of comparison of the manuscripts with their published versions. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Arany’s textualization was incorporating the number of proverbs and proverbial expressions in the tales. But where do these phrases come from? Could have Hungarian proverb collections served as sources shaping the narrative style of published folktales? Or the vocabulary of proverbs and idioms appearing in Arany’s tales reflects the traditional oral narrative style? The presentation investigates the possible intertextual relationship between linguistic documentation (e. g. proverb collections) and folkloristic documentation (e. g. folk and fairytale collections) in 19th century Hungary.