A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FAIRY TALES AND FAIRY TALE WRITERS WITH AN EMPHASIS ON TINA WAJTAWA, THE ‘LITTLE FLOWER’ FROM RESIA

Abstract

The paper deals with the comparative analysis of the fairy-tale motif of the animal groom/bride, which in H. J. Uther's international index of fairy-tale types is marked with numbers from 400 to 459, or the Beauty and the Beast motif, which is marked with the number ATU 425C. The fairy tale type is known from ancient literature, from Apuleius' tale of Amor and Psyche (2nd century), through many versions of European fairy tales, from the French précieuses of M. De Beaumont (Beauty and the Beast), to the golden age of fairy tales and variants by Dorothea Viehmann (The Singing, Springing Lark, 1815), Laura Gonzenbach (Zafarana, 1870), and the variant by Tina Wajtawa (1900–1984), the fairy tale writer from Resia, entitled Dekle, ki je hotela rožico (The Girl Who Wanted a Flower). The results of the comparative analysis show that the fairy tales are similar and different at the same time. The essential similarity of the variants by the Resia fairy tale writer Tina TinaWajtawa, who told the motif of the animal groom/bride three times (Benjamina, The Girl Who Wanted a Flower and Žabica [The Little Frog]), shows that Tina Wajtawa related to the antiquity and the Romanesque tradition, while at the same time she added specific cultural elements from Rhesia as well as modern elements; in addition to the attribute of beauty, she attributedted the attribute of subjectivization (thinking) to her heroines