Antti Aarne

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Antti Amatus Aarne (December 5, 1867 – February 2, 1925) was a Finnish folklorist. He was the student of Julius Krohn and his son Kaarle Krohn. He further developed their historic-geographic method of comparative folkloristics, and developed the initial version of what became the Aarne-Thompson classification system of classifying folktales, first published in 1910. The American folklorist Stith Thompson, in translating Aarne's motif-based classification system in 1928, enlarged its scope, and with his second addition to Aarne's catalogue in 1961 created the AT-number system (also referred to as AaTh system) often used today. The AT classification system has only recently (2004) been expanded by Hans-Jörg Uther (Aarne-Thompson-Uther or ATU system).

The Aarne-Thompson system catalogues some 2500 basic plots from which, for countless generations, European and Near Eastern storytellers have built their tales. As Europeans and Near-Easterners travelled to the New World, the Far East, Africa, and other distant places, their tales migrated as well, often flourishing in their new environments. Hence, the Aarne-Thompson system encompasses tales found around the world.
—Ashliman, p. ix

The classification was criticized by Vladimir Propp of the Formalist school of the 1920s, for ignoring the functions of the motifs by which they are classified. Furthermore, the "macro-level" analysis means that the stories that repeat motifs may not be classified together, while stories with wide divergences may be, because the classification must select some features as salient.

[edit] References

Antti Aarne, The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, Helsinki, 1961. ISBN 951-41-0132-4
Ashliman, D. L., A Guide to Folktales in the English Language Greenwood Press, 1987.
Uther, Hans-Jörg 2004. The Types of International Folktales : A Classification and Bibliography, Parts I-III: the ATU classification system