Paper short abstract:

The evaluation of folktale led from contempt and neglect to present-day appreciation, and even cult in Hungarian culture. I present this journey of folktale from scorn to glory and discuss how, upon what presumptions and practices the corpus of folktales was created.

Paper long abstract:

In September 2020 a member of the Hungarian Parliament publicly exterminated a freshly published book of tales. The book contained rewritten versions of folktales to raise awareness of social and gender inequalities. The act of destruction generated a nationwide scandal and debate. A main argument of those who supported the banning of the book was that it desecrates true Hungarian folktale, a container of ancient and timeless truth, moral values and national character. So how did the innocent folktale (as it is often interpreted) get into a political-ideological context and how did it become the basis of aggression?

In Hungarian culture, folktale is the emblematic genre of the traditional vernacular culture named as folklore. The evaluation of folktale from the beginning of the 19th century led from contempt and neglect to present-day appreciation, and even cult. I try to present this journey of folktale from scorn to glory and discuss upon what presumptions and practices the corpus of folktales was created. I investigate those filters that were applied in course of editing and publishing these tales, and also prior to the act of textualization, and which defined the selection of tale-tellers and recording of tales. The corpus was created, the canon was established, highlighting, neglecting, or silencing certain sub-genres and types of tale. By now folktale is generally seen as a sort of natural entity that existed from the beginning of times and can be used as a basis of comparison in evaluating other narrative forms and artistic expressions.