Type- and motif-indices 1980-1995: an inventory.

The present article considers current trends in the documentation of narratives. Approximately seventy indices published during the last fifteen years are compared for contents and structure and are evaluated within the framework of the existing national and international systems of classification.

Three basic tendencies were observed: 1) a renewed interest in the documentation of narratives in Europe and beyond; 2) the inclusion of genres that up to now have received less scholarly attention (e.g., animal tales, nursery rhymes, ballads), and of specific forms within individual genres (e.g., ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.