Serbian Folk-lore cover

Serbian Folk-lore

Rating 3.8
Word count
435K words
Chapters
44

Tags

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Serbian Folk-lore by W. Denton and Elodie Lawton MijatovichAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: GR: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation: Folklore, Release Date: Apr 5, 2014

Editor's review

This is a collection of Serbian folk tales selected by W. Denton and Elodie Lawton Mijatovich, in English, available as a free eBook from Project Gutenberg. Its value lies in preserving tales, legends, and folklore motifs from Serbian oral literature, offering primary material for comparative folklore and Slavic cultural studies. Readers will see heroic legends, supernatural motifs, and everyday ethics interwoven, and can also observe the recording perspective and choices of nineteenth-century compilers. It is best read with attention to tale types and variants rather than consumed straight through as children's fairy tales; reading alongside basic folklore concepts is more rewarding. The free electronic edition makes searching motifs and cross-cultural comparison easy, serving researchers and interested readers alike.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers interested in Slavic culture or Balkan folklore
  • Students and researchers in folklore or comparative literature
  • Writers collecting story motifs and narrative types
  • General readers who read English and enjoy legends and tales

Not a good fit for

  • Parents and child readers looking only for bedtime stories for young children
  • Readers expecting a systematic introduction to Serbian history
  • Readers unaccustomed to nineteenth-century English style and scholarly notes

Reading tips

  1. Read the introduction and notes first to understand the compilation context, then move on to the tales themselves.
  2. Make reading cards by motif, recording types and variants for easy cross-comparison.
  3. Read three to five tales at a time and retell their plots to avoid blurring similar stories in memory.
  4. Read alongside other Slavic folk-tale collections to observe shared features and differences.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44

FAQ

Are these stories suitable for children?
They are not suitable as direct children's reading. The collection contains violence, supernatural elements, and adult ethical content, and as a nineteenth-century record it carries the language and attitudes of its time. If telling them to children, adults should select and adapt them first.
Can this book be read as a Serbian history book?
No. It is a record of folk tales and folklore, not a historical narrative. The stories can reflect social attitudes and historical memory, but they cannot replace historical scholarship. For history, look for general histories instead.
Can I read it if my English is not strong?
The text is in English and contains nineteenth-century expressions and folklore terminology, so weaker English readers will find it demanding. You might start with Chinese-language overviews of the motifs, then read short pieces alongside a translation, or work through it gradually with a dictionary and the notes.

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