Paper Short Abstract:

This paper notes the need to re-write the theoretical and methodological framework that Greek folklorists follow to study legends that refer to the community’s relatively recent past and proposes a novel approach using large digital corpora.

Paper Abstract:

In the context of a research on legends concerning the Greek War of Independence (1821), we turned to the digital repository that contains the Archive of Popular Legends of the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre (HFRC) of the Academy of Athens, to search for the relevant legends. The results, however, were meager and did not include several traditions that we knew from our research experience to exist in the rich material kept in the HCFR Archive. This deficiency arises from the fact that the classification scheme that had been applied since the beginning of the 20th century for the organization of the Archive of Popular Legends followed the guidelines of N. Politis –the founder of the discipline of Folklore in Greece– and his successors, which did not include modern history. The need therefore arose to re-approach the theoretical and methodological framework that Greek folklorists follow for the study of legends that refer to the relatively recent past.

Therefore, for the needs of our research, we proceeded to excerpt all the material in the HFRC Archive concerning the Peloponnese, a region that was at the epicenter of revolutionary action throughout the War, while simultaneously combining these legends with relevant material that various organizations and individuals publish on the internet and social media. These new records not only enriched the existing digital repository of Popular Legends, but also constitute a novel approach to legends that refer to the community’s relatively recent past.