Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales

The Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales (Enzyklopädie des Märchens) is a German reference work on international Folkloristics, which is anticipated to run to 14 volumes. It examines over two centuries of research into the folk narrative tradition. It was begun by Kurt Ranke in the 1960s and is continued by chief editor Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, both of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences (Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen).

Like the technical periodical "Fabula" it is published by the Verlag Walter de Gruyter publishing house with working premises at the Georg-August University of Göttingen and as a project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. The forerunner of this work was the "Handbuch des deutschen Märchens" ("Handbook of German Fairy Tales"), of which only two volumes were published.

The first article "Aarne, Antti Amatus" appeared in slip in 1975, and the first volume in 1977. By 2008, twelve volumes had been published through the article on the "Theogony". In all there will be approximately 3600 articles, alphabetically arranged, from over 800 authors from over 60 countries.

The "Encyclopedia of Fairytales" provides an overview in the following areas, as relevant to folk narrative research:
* Theories and methodologies,
* Genre questions, problems of style and structure, issues of context and performance
* Important tale-types and motifs
* Biographies of scholars, collectors, and authors
* National and regional surveys

External links

* [http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~enzmaer/ Homepage of the project "Enzyklopädie des Märchens"] in German
** [http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~enzmaer/verweise-dt.html keyword index for "Enzyklopädie des Märchens "] in German
* [http://www.zeit.de/2005/52/C-M_8archen?page=1 “Was die Zwerge nicht wussten” "Die Zeit " 26 December 2005] , an article about work on the "Enzyklopädie des Märchens", in German