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FOLKLORE: FEJF 84
The authors of articles in the 84th issue of Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, come from all over the world: from the Baltic countries to such faraway places as Ethiopia and South Africa, and the topics they discuss are very diverse.
Vladimir Sazonov and Sirje Kupp-Sazonov from Estonia in their article “Do Bulgakov’s Hella (Gella), Azazello, Behemoth, and Abadonna have Ancient Near Eastern origins?” focus on the issue of the possible origins of famous Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s demonic characters in the novel The Master and Margarita, by looking into Akkadian and Sumerian mythology and Mesopotamian religious texts.
Emili Samper and Carme Oriol from Spain discuss the problems of self-determination referendum in Catalonia in 2017, in light of rumours in a situation of political conflict. The authors analyse the rumours relating to the logistics required to hold the referendum, the key figures in the process, the organizations that support it, and the actions of the media.
Laima Anglickienė from Lithuania and Antra Kļavinska from Latvia in their co-authored article “The image of the German, the Pole, the Latvian, and the Lithuanian in Lithuanian and Latvian folklore” discuss the issues of ethnic stereotypes, ethnic self-awareness, and identity influenced by historical circumstances.
Two authors from India, Priyanka Banerjee and Rajni Singh, have attempted a queer reading of the revisioning of Madame Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast” in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Rose” and the 2017 Disney version, showing that both Donoghue’s adaptation of this tale and the Disney musical engage in hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses about cultural constructions of gender.
Júlíana Th. Magnúsdóttir from Iceland, in her article “Women of the twilight: The narrative spaces of women in the Icelandic rural community of the past”, deals with some of the spatial features of women’s storytelling traditions in rural Iceland in late nineteenth century and early 1900s, emphasizing women’s important role in oral storytelling in their communities.
Marc Thuillard, an independent researcher from Switzerland, analyses the worldwide distribution of the ‘man or animal in the Moon’ motif, discussing the different versions of the motif by combining areal studies as well as structural and statistical analyses with information from ancient texts and archaeological artefacts.
Marcin Lisiecki from Poland describes in his article Polish folktales about inanimate nature and atmospheric phenomena, emphasizing the ‘man versus nature’ pattern.
The article by Kennedy C. Chinyowa from South Africa, “Exploring the transformative power of play in African children’s games”, demonstrates how these games were framed by the aesthetics of play such as imitation, imagination, make-believe, repetition, spontaneity, and improvisation, showing that such games could be regarded as ‘rites of passage’ for children’s initiation into adulthood as they occupied a crucial phase in the process of growing up.
The issue also offers an overview of a doctoral thesis and of a young researchers’ conference, as well as a book review.
Folklore: EJF is a peer reviewed open access academic journal published since 1996 and is available online at http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol84.
Tiina Mällo
