This article is dedicated to the memory of Croatian eminent folklorist, Maja Bošković-Stulli, who dedicated much of her research to Istrian narrative folklore. She was one of the leading folklorists ...of the second half of the 20th century and a contemporary of Slovenia’s Milko Matičetov, another exceptional folklorist and field researcher. Together, they are responsible for the collection of Istrian narrative folklore and studied the role which narratives had in the lives of Istrian people. The proximity of different ethnic groups in this territory led to the diversity and richness of narrative culture and folk storytelling up to this day. This article discusses some examples of narrative culture from Slovenian and Croatian Istria from the point of view of vital shifts and changes that can be traced through different historical periods until today.
Ovaj je članak posvećen uspomeni na istaknutu hrvatsku folkloristicu Maju Bošković-Stulli, koja je velik dio svojih istraživanja posvetila istarskom narativnom folkloru. Bila je jedna od vodećih folkloristica druge polovine dvadesetog stoljeća, a zajedno s još jednim istaknutim folkloristom i terenskim istraživačem iz Slovenije, Milkom Matičetovim, zabilježila je impozantan korpus istarskog narativnog folklora te istraživala ulogu pripovijedanja u životu ljudi u Istri. Blizina različitih etničkih skupina na ovom području utjecala je na raznolikost i bogatstvo narativne kulture i pučkog pripovijedanja do današnjih dana. U članku se raspravlja o nekim primjerima narativne kulture iz slovenske i hrvatske Istre iz perspektive ključnih pomaka i promjena koje se vide kroz povijest do danas.
In Slovenia people encounter fairy tales primarily in books, during art performances, when they are recounted at folklore events, Assumption celebrations, etc. As a special type of folk narrative ...fairy tales have been preserved only in certain remote places, especially along the border, in which the elderly, when asked if they still remember a fairy tale, sometimes start to tell stories with an occasional fairy tale among them.
Narratives about the plague and other pandemics essentially induce fear and predict death and hunger, triggering a variety of emotions among people, particularly anxiety. The paper discusses how the ...motifs of plague narratives – despite being ancient, traditional and old – resurface from the collective memory and the subconscious as people now have experiences comparable to those endured by humanity centuries ago. Although the COVID-19 pandemic that confronted the planet from 2019 to 2022 is not as deadly as the plague, it is still an ongoing existential threat. A discussion is also presented of the ways that old traditions and social constructs re-emerge in contemporary narratives and discourses about COVID-19, and how the atmosphere of fear affects the emotional and social lives of the people, along with their narratives, jokes, fake news, and the conspiracy theories that have been circulating online.
The tenth male (desetnik) or female child (desetnica), but also the ninth, the twelfth or the thirteenth child, have been preserved in the folk heritage of the Slavic, the Irish and the Baltic ...nations. The folk tradition of other nations contains several similarities in the stories abouth the seventh child of the same sex. Such a child is supposed to be a deity, a demonic creature, or a wizard. Researchers of folk epic and narrative tradition have discovered that Zeleni Jurij and Marjetica were marked as the tenth children as well. Zeleni Jurij is a deity which, according to folklore, brings renewal and fertility in spring, while his sister Marjetica is dedicated to the female counterpart of this deity. In folk songs the tenth son and the tenth daughter are either the tithe destined to the deities Perun and Mokoš, or else represent the two deities themselves.
It is the aim of this paper to examine Slovene traditions, mainly folk narrative and song traditions and partly customs that contain some traces of old Slavic deities and cosmology. These traces are ...then compared to other similar religious structures. In this way the origin of earth, the flood, the thunder deity and the cosmological fight, the mother goddess, the underworld, the yearly cycle, the day and night cycle and the world axis are being discussed.
This article is focused on Kopitar’s work for oral tradition in the eras of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, and on his contribution to South Slavic publications of folk narrative and linguistics, ...especially from the perspective of his cooperation with Jacob Grimm and Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. Jernej Kopitar (1780–1844), Slovene linguist, censor, and scribe in Vienna, was one of the founders of Slavic studies and the author of the renowned first Slovene scientific grammar book, entitled Grammatik der slavischen Sprache in Krain, Kärnten und Steiermark (Grammar of Slavic languages in Carniola, Carinthia and Styria 1809). He was also translator of the Freising Manuscripts (Brižinski spomeniki). As an accomplished philologist, Kopitar maintained contacts and corresponded with numerous intellectuals of that period, notably with Josef Dobrovský and the great German philologists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Some of their letters have been preserved to this day. As a mentor to Vuk Karadžić, whom he encouraged to publish literary folklore, dictionaries, and grammar, he introduced Karadžić to Jacob Grimm and made references of Karadžić in his letters to Grimm, who took Karadžić under his guidance.
This article analyses folklore and narrative tradition about donkeys through the prism of ecological paradigm. It explores the impact of the changing philosophy, stereotypes, and peoples’ attitudes ...towards animals, the donkey in particular. Researched are also changing aspects in the donkey breeding and narrative culture which was for a long time oriented towards speciesism and anthropocentrism, and is now turning towards ecocentric philosophy, which is part of the newly emerging discipline of zoofolkloristics. This ontological shift is projected on the different perceptions of animals in folk literature, language, and everyday life.
Discussed are folktales and songs about the building of important constructions, which include the motifs of human or animal sacrifice or the immuration of other objects, as well as the narratives in ...which the master mason is a supernatural being. The origins of these stories were interwoven into the myths and different beliefs and cosmogonic presumptions and were at the time of their formation considered to be credible, but in the process of spreading them around they lost their plausibility.
Many newly established thematic routes and parks include narrative traditions to be experienced in their natural environment. Quality products of this kind are the result of well-developed concepts ...that follow expert guidelines and strategies and can be, as such, part of sustainable tourism, which strives to preserve ties with tradition to the greatest extent possible. This article includes some examples of different presentations of narrative tradition or local legends in places and discusses the problems with which such presentations cope. The article particularly discusses two examples of thematic trails that are based on professional folklore and ethnological research. The first case involves research activities that served as the foundation for thematic storytelling routes in the eastern part of the Alps – Pohorje above Slovenska Bistrica in Slovenia – and in central Istria in Croatia. The second example shows the influence of a thematic trail on the knowledge about local narrative tradition among schoolchildren in Bovec in the north-western part of Slovenia.
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