E- mail: natacha.rimasson-fertin@u-grenoble3.fr
Tel.: 00 33 4 76 82 41 02 / 00 33 4 76 82 34 06;
Stendhal-University Grenoble 3, 1180 avenue Centrale, 38400 Saint Martin d’Hères,
Faculty of foreign languages, civilizations and literatures;
PhD (Philology), associate professor of German Language and Literature, member of research team ILCEA4 (Institut des Langues et des Cultures d’Europe, Amérique, Afrique, Asie et Australie) (EA 613)
The present article analyses how the motif of the journey to the otherworld and the beliefs related to it appear in the very text of the folktales collected by the Grimm Brothers and Alexander Afanas’ev in the 19th century, as well in the used vocabulary and the stylistic means, as in the structure of the narration itself.
This study first focuses on folk beliefs linked to the travel motif in both German and Russian cultural areas and points the fact that the traveller has in both cases a special status: he is not considered as belonging to the world of the living anymore. It also pays a special attention to the places the hero — man or woman — travels through. Even if the folk tale does not really describe the space and the landscapes, we still are able to gather some details, which, once combined together, compose a certain picture of this imaginary world. Though, to what extent would it ever be possible to map the world depicted in folk tales?
However, it clearly appears that the travel motif is a great help for the storytellers’ memory, and that the spatial organization of the whole world of the tale is closely linked with it. This study proposes a typology of tale structures according to the travelling characters, the number of travels in the otherworld and to the kind of connection existing between them.
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