Oral Fairy Tale or Literary Fake? Investigating the Origins of Little Red Riding Hood Using Phylogenetic Network Analysis

The evolution of fairy tales often involves complex interactions between oral and literary traditions, which can be difficult to tease apart when investigating their origins. Here, we show how computer-assisted stemmatology can be productively applied to this problem, focusing on a long-standing controversy in fairy tale scholarship: did Little Red Riding Hood originate as an oral tale that was adapted by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, or is the oral tradition in fact derived from literary texts? We address this question by analysing a sample of twenty-four literal and oral versions of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood using several methods of phylogenetic analysis, including maximum parsimony and two network-based approaches (NeighbourNet and TRex). While the results of these analyses are more compatible with the oral origins hypothesis than the alternative literary origins hypothesis, their interpretation is problematized by the fact that none of them explicitly model lineal (i.e. ancestor-descendent) relationships among taxa. We therefore present a new likelihood-based method, PhyloDAG, which was specifically developed to model lineal as well as collateral and reticulate relationships. A comparison of different structures derived from PhyloDAG provided a much clearer result than the maximum parsimony, NeighbourNet or TRex analyses, and strongly favoured the hypothesis that literary versions of Little Red Riding Hood were originally based on oral folktales, rather than vice versa

The theoretical, methodological and technical issues of digital folklore databases and computational folkloristics

The study examines the problems and possibilities presented by the digitization of national folklore archives and collections in the wider context of folklore archiving and digital humanities. The primary goal of the study is to present a problem-oriented and critical overview of the available digital databases containing folklore texts (WossiDiA, Sagragrunnur, ETKSpace, Danish Folklore Nexus, Nederlandse VolksverhalenBank, The Schools’ Collection, etc.), and of the analyses conducted on these using computational methods. The paper first presents a historical overview of the conceptualization that went into the creation of folklore databases (genre-centered, collector, and collection-centered approaches), followed by a discussion of the practical, technical, and theoretical aspects of digital content creation (crowdsourcing, markup languages, TEI, digital critical editions, etc.). The study then takes a look at the new digital tools and methods applied in the analysis of digitized folklore texts (text-mining, network theory methods, data visualization), and finally places databases and computational folkloristics within a larger theoretical framework

Digitális szövegfolklór-adatbázisok és a számítógépes folklorisztika elméleti, módszertani és technikai kérdései

The study examines the problems and possibilities in the digitisation of national folklore archives and collections in the wider context of digital humanities and the archiving strategies in folkloristics. The primary goal of the study is to present a problem-oriented and critical overview of the available digital databases containing folklore texts (WossiDiA, Sagragrunnur, ETKSpace, Danish Folklore Nexus, Nederlandse VolksverhalenBank, The Schools’ Collection etc.), and of the analyses conducted on these, using computational methods. After a concise historical introduction of European folklore archives, the study first presents the historical reasons behind the concepts of folklore databases’ contents (genre-centred; collector, and collection-centred approach), followed by the practical, technical, and theoretical aspects of digital content creation (crowdsourcing, markup languages, TEI, digital critical editions etc.). The study then takes a look at the new digital tools and methods applied in the analysis of digitised folklore texts (text-mining, network theory methods, data visualisation), and finally sums up the theoretical foundations of databases and computational folkloristics

Red Riding Hood Across Media: Transmedia Storytelling in Contemporary Adaptations of “Little Red Riding Hood”

The dissertation explores the complex structure of transmedial universes, which are the most prevalent and pervasive model in contemporary popular culture, and examines them within an interdisciplinary framework. In the chapter on the theoretical background of the research, in addition to general theories of adaptation, certain notions of media theory and transmedial narratology are included as well. Furthermore, as the title of the dissertation already indicates, the genre of the primary sources makes it necessary to incorporate relevant theories from the field of fairy tale studies as well, especially those referencing and relevant for the discussion of the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” in particular. The notion of transmedial microcosm used in this dissertation combines and complements Henry Jenkins's and Jan-Noël Thon's theories with Cristina Bacchilega's conception of the fairy-tale web. Transmedial microcosms thus designate and delineate specific groups of adaptations that are based on the same source text and recount narratives set within a shared storyworld, yet they are markedly distinct from other transmedial microcosms relying on the same source text. The dissertation analyzes five distinct groups of adaptations that can be understood as transmedial microcosms from within the transmedial universe of “Little Red Riding Hood.

AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO BIBLIOGRAPHIC CLASSIFICATION

This dissertation is research in the domain of information science and specifically, the organization and representation of information. The research has implications for classification of scientific books, especially as dissemination of information becomes more rapid and science becomes more diverse due to increases in multi-, inter-, trans-disciplinary research, which focus on phenomena, in contrast to traditional library classification schemes based on disciplines.The literature review indicates 1) human socio-cultural groups have many of the same properties as biological species, 2) output from human socio-cultural groups can be and has been the subject of evolutionary relationship analyses (i.e., phylogenetics), 3) library and information science theorists believe the most favorable and scientific classification for information packages is one based on common origin, but 4) library and information science classification researchers have not demonstrated a book classification based on evolutionary relationships of common origin.The research project supports the assertion that a sensible book classification method can be developed using a contemporary biological classification approach based on common origin, which has not been applied to a collection of books until now. Using a sample from a collection of earth-science digitized books, the method developed includes a text-mining step to extract important terms, which were converted into a dataset for input into the second step—the phylogenetic analysis. Three classification trees were produced and are discussed. Parsimony analysis, in contrast to distance and likelihood analyses, produced a sensible book classification tree. Also included is a comparison with a classification tree based on a well-known contemporary library classification scheme (the Library of Congress Classification).Final discussions connect this research with knowledge organization and information retrieval, information needs beyond science, and this type of research in context of a unified science of cultural evolution

Pottery Ancestories: comparing ceramic evolution in the Eastern Mediterranean and south-east Arabia during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000-1550 BC) with the use of phylogenetic methods

This thesis uses phylogenetic methods such as cladistics to address and revaluate the evolution of ceramic data. Evolution is often implied in ceramic studies but its exact operation in relation to cultural transmission is rarely specified. This thesis asks how phylogenetic methods can be used to study ceramic evolution and how these can reform our perception on the narrative of ceramic change. It does this by forming a theoretical approach based on current anthropological and archaeological theories on ceramics, in conjunction with insights from evolutionary methods. A synthesis of ceramic theory tries to outline the different theoretical approaches and how they might fit with evolutionary perceptions of material cultural change. It suggests that the chaîne opératoire of ceramic production is critical in identifying ceramic characteristics to use in evolutionary analysis, and forms the key conceptual framework to address the meaning of ceramic evolution relating to cultural processes. Subsequently the methodology and application of phylogenetic methods is discussed. The following chapter uses a phylogenetic approach based on the general idea of ‘descent with modification from a common ancestor’ to gain insight into the suggested evolution of Tell el-Yahudiya ware in the Eastern Mediterranean. A second case study focusses on the Middle Bronze Age in south-east Arabia and examines the evolution of Wadi Suq vessels, focussing on shapes associated with communal drinking. In the discussion, the results of both areas are brought together and synthesized with a view to evaluating the use and application of phylogenetic methods and their implications for our understanding of ceramic development and what they reflect in terms of the distinct social changes in these regions. Finally, the thesis seeks to evaluate both the use of evolutionary approaches to ceramic change, and the challenges these methods pose to the way archaeologists have traditionally processed ceramic data and analysed ceramic change

An analysis of the coherence-based genealogical method using phylogenetics

The Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior is the first major critical edition of the New Testament for a century, aiming to document the New Testament’s textual history through its first millennium. To date, two of the six volumes have been published. As part of this project the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster has developed the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM), a computer-aided method designed to handle complete sets of textual evidence and to identify their initial text and textual history. The CBGM is widely held to be difficult to understand and its results are treated with scepticism. Phylogenetics is the study of relationships between groups of organisms and their evolutionary history. Phylogenetics and the CBGM (and wider textual criticism) have many commonalities. This thesis provides a thorough examination of the CBGM using phylogenetics. Part One documents the literature surrounding the CBGM and includes a worked example of the process. Part Two explores the ECM data for John’s Gospel and identifies appropriate methods for applying phylogenetics to it. Part Three compares the results of phylogenetics and the CBGM. It concludes that the CBGM is producing valid results from the data, but could be improved in a number of ways

Handbook of Stemmatology

Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects, ranging from traditional to digital methods. Authors from all the disciplines involved examine topics such as the material aspects of text traditions, methods of traditional textual criticism and their genesis, and modern digital approaches used in the field