Narratives Across Space and Time: Transmissions and Adaptions

Proceedings of the 15th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative
Research (June 21-27 2009 Athens), Academy of Athens, Publications of The
Hellenic Research Centre,
Vol. III, 111-120, Athens 2014

Dimitris Prousalis, PhD Candidate, Storyteller

National and Kapodestrian University of Athens, Faculty of Primary Education-
Postgraduate Studies in Folklore and Culture

“Folktale and contemporary storyteller: When the last word about the world
hasn’t been spoken yet…

1. Introduction
If we accept the view that people act under a multimodal perception of the
environment in which they create and interact (Kress, 1988) then a question is posed:
Beyond the taking-in, the interpretation and the internalization of the messages of a
text that has been approached through multimodality, is it possible for a contemporary
storyteller to use the same multimodal process in order to transfer narrative the
content of a folktale text written in a singe-mode form? At this point we must make a
clarification: The single-mode formation of the text in our times is determined by the
form that the folktale corpus takes, as we find it in a published folktale collection. The
folktale then is “lying down” inside the pages of a book, being cut off from the wealth
of the feelings and the inner-psychological functions of an oral-live narrative form
which constitutes a type of a compound ceremony-ritual in miniature (Tedlock, 1983).
Therefore, it becomes an essentially lifeless presence that brings to mind literary
views, devitalized of the basic function and characteristic of the oral narrative
condition: The multi-leveled interactivity of being together in time and place
(Pelasgos, 2008). A new question is posed: Is it possible for the contemporary
storyteller of our times to influence and activate his audience socially, psychologically
and culturally through the dialectic forms of his approach? In our case we refer to the
relation of the contemporary storyteller with the corpus-body of the story which calls
him through the living experience to adopt it and to deliver it as a communicative
process, a cultural product and a process of perception and consciousness (Pourkos,
2004a) with a multi-leveled function at the social co-living formed by the context of
the storytelling event-performance in place and time. This communicative fact
constitutes a dynamic, social and cultural function influenced by the way that the
identity traits of the story’s anonymous creator, his system of perceptions, ideas and
values and whatever the contemporary storyteller projects on them through his own
“conversation” are reflected.

2. The lived-experience in folktale

There is a definition of the term of lived-experience “as an active, cognitive
and emotional contact of the individual with the object on which he focuses his
attention and about which he speaks, having a conscious or unconscious contact”. At

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this point we should remind you that the folk-storyteller of the past had a close
relation of lived experience with the story material that he was narrating in his
community. Living together, they used to share their stories and at the same time they
were sharing the experience of the community through the metaphorical and symbolic
content of the tales. They were transforming the collective values of truth through a
diachronically travelling dialogue with the unconscious. This material could give
pieces of advice for today through yesterday and at the same time it could teach,
support, entertain, encourage and console by using many different themes-subjects
and having folk originated heroes. These far away collective ancestors of ours were at
the same time “human-narratives” by embodying in their living experience the
content of the stories they were dealing with, combining the realistic fact of everyday
life with the poetically imaginary projective creativity of their myth-making.
(Todorov, 1987), (Pelasgos, 2008).
Greek and foreign essays and articles refer to cases of storytellers who had a
strong emotional involvement during the narration of a story through a variation of
reactions: by expressing a strong emotional feeling, (Adamantiou, 1897), (Κyriakides,
1920), (Μousaiou-Bougioukou, 1976), (Ekonomides, 1978), by criticizing the heroes’
behavior and in some folktales from Thessaly and the islands we find expression of
experiences they are familiar with (Κliafa, 1985), (Loukatos 1979) (Sofos, 1988). In
foreign works we find information about personal experience in storytelling
(Azadovskij, 1926), (Degh, 1969), (Thompson, 1977). We should also mention
references about the creative interventions and changes that the traditional storytellers
do during their storytelling performance by adapting the story’s corpus to the
changing needs and expectations of their community. Having improvisation as a
powerful tool and working the story through their body, they have the possibility to
transform and adapt the material that comes from tradition (Kyriakides 1965),
(Pelasgos, 2008). At the same time, the procedure of their performance is defined as a
kind of communication with an artistic responsibility that the storyteller assumes in
public (Bauman, 1977). The emergence of the contemporary storytellers in the past 40
years in order to revive storytelling as a performance act, brought some new issues
about the quality of the relationship between story and storyteller, the authenticity of
the intentional approach to folktales, the role and the function of storytelling
(Hindenoch, 2001), the issue of story sources, the content and procedures of the
narrative approach, the search for the possibility of conversation in a dialogical and
polyphonic way with the text form of stories (Prousalis, 2009). At the same period, a
new scientific method, the ethnographic one, is interested in the parameters that
influence the sociolcultural microenvironment in which the folktale is created and
told. (Alexiades, 1996), (Gergatsoulis, 2003).
The storyteller of our times is away from the traditional narrative and hasn’t
been brought up and apprenticed in an environmental of orality. The question is how
can the contemporary storyteller, who doesn’t deal with the folktale corpus as a
theatrical text, enrich and deepen his personal relation by trying to find a way to make
the story’s corpus alive again as it was in an oral form before? Here we should stress
that to the degree that the contemporary story-teller deals with the story embodied in
the text as a potential material for a dialectic conversation, he uses his experiences
that will allow him to place himself in relation to the ‘text”. At the same time he is
obliged to take into consideration the frame of reference of the community he is
dealing with, in order to select a story with a content that either has a personal
connection with himself or with the immediate or wider environment with which he is
interacting. So, issues of social partnership, relations between human and natural

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environment, ontological quests and interpersonal relationships, matters of self-
development or philosophical questions can be some of the subjects that he will
decide to approach through his stories.

3. The storytelling of folktales as a living dialogical relationship

Some questions that are to be answered are the following: What are the
sources from which the contemporary storyteller shall choose his stories and what
shall his criteria be? What is the relation of the storyteller with the corpus-body of the
story? How does the function of the storytelling work? How and with whom does the
storyteller communicate? Is there any part of the story that allows a polyphonic and
dialogical approach? The body of the story is an “open” one or not? Has its last word
about the world been spoken or not?
I will begin with some folk sayings: The Cherokee Indians say that: “The
world is full of stories which from time to time permit to themselves to be told”.
There is a belief in Kazakhstan that anyone who knows stories must share them with
his neighbors otherwise something very-very bad will happen to him. Now a days,
most of the contemporary storytellers take their stories from published books or from
tales that reached them orally by other storytellers and rarely from folk people or their
own personal research.
To the degree that the contemporary storyteller is in an open relationship with
the seeking of answers about personal issues or social partnership, he can choose to
deliver to his audience folktales that can be heard by the widest percentage of the
community. It is then that the stories fulfill the esthetic criteria that he possesses and
reveal truths about himself or his environment. At the same time, he shares that which
speaks inside him with those around him by opening communication channels. Then
there is a situation of “being inside the story” and “telling the story” at the same time,
since the one belongs to the other (Ricoeur, 1990). The storyteller is not an entertainer
but an intermediate-carrier of the story, a servant of the folktale and not a servant of
his audience. It is the storyteller who delivers the story in a certain time and place, the
story speaks inside the storyteller and through the storyteller in an attempt to trace,
seek and expect the limits of the inter-subjective dialogue (Baker & Greene, 1977)
(Colwell, 1980). Storytelling is not a performance like a theatrical monologue but the
total exposure at the audience; it is a living relationship. For the storyteller to be and
stay alive in front of the audience, means that he should develop that kind of inner
strength that will help him to not repeat himself each time he tells a story. It is even
more difficult for him to be able to differentiate himself from stories that he has told
again in the past, so that he can be as alive, sincere and honest as possible with his
inner point of view and mood, with the communicative frame that is determined by
the specific audience that is present. The storyteller doesn’t cheat, he is truthful. He
has no doubts about the truth and the importance of his words although he knows that
they are lies. He takes his material from his personal experience which is expressed
by the symbolic function of folktales or the experience of somebody else which the
storyteller has heard and it is his turn to make it an experience of those who hear the
story. The storyteller doesn’t articulate indisputable truths because each one in the
audience shall discover his own personal truth either small or great, if, of course, he is
in a process of seeking it. He hopes that there will be even one person in the audience
that will receive the story and will willingly pass it on to others through his own new-
dynamic point of view (Benjamin, 1996). Essentially, we would say that people are
searching for their own story inside the stories of others, because storytelling is a way
of looking back at our past in order to walk forward (Barton & Booth, 1994). But

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storytelling is not the words that constitute the body of the folktale. The content of the
stories, their subject, and the words through which they are expressed as well as the
personality of the storyteller, the art of storytelling, are in my opinion a living
dialogical relation, being a small part of what happens during a storytelling
performance (Pourkos 2004a, 2004b, 2007). The most important thing is that the
storyteller addresses his stories to living people who are present in the same place
with him and that together they all build, at the same time, bridges of communication.
The storyteller hearkens his audience, breaths with it, has the responsibility to guide
his audience emotionally but without encaging it in his personal projections on the
story. He creates a condition of common experience and interactivity, there, where to
coexist retaining your individuality brings the inter-subjective relation of becoming
acquainted. The intention of the storyteller co-exists with the synchronicity of place
and mood, self and other, message and necessity, conversation and rethinking. The use
of present tense in verbs eliminates the distance between “Once upon a time…” and
creates the feeling that “It can happen now…” A poet says: “Take my words and give
me your hand”. And Vygotsky maintains that: “Consciousness reflects on the word
like the sun does on a drop of water. The word behaves towards consciousness like the
small world towards the great one, like the living cell towards the organism, like the
individual towards the world”. (Dafermos, 2002)

4. Our words are the children of many people…..

The storyteller becomes aware of himself and discovers himself through the
presence of the other, through the other’s existence and help. But to what degree is the
folktale that he decides to tell “his” and how much the other’s? And who is this other?
Is he the unknown anonymous, but so familiar at the same time, the one who together
with the previous ones formed the body of the traditional story and retold it as time
went by, till it reached orally the story-teller of our times? “A Greek poet says: “Our
words are the children of many people.” This distant unknown anonymous narrator
and the ones after him that inherited the story helped the body of the tale -corpus of
collective memory- to lie down on the pages of a folktale collection. One wonders,
how many voices and how many others have existed before the current receiver-
interlocutor of the story? Perhaps a small example will help us to understand: There
is the story of the ATU 330 type of the international classification index, by the title
“The blacksmith that outwits the devil”. A blacksmith was in his workshop when one
day two strangers visited him. They ask him to make a new horseshoe for their
donkey that was limping. The smith makes a new horse shoe using all his art and the
strangers ask for the price that they have to pay. At this point the polyphonic and
dialogical approach of mine begins. The smith replies “Don’t mention it. I won’t take
money from you. It is your first time in my land. Have a nice travel!” That is a
reflection of a personal experience that I had 12 years ago when I was traveling to the
Western part of Greece. It reflects my critical outlook on the idea that now a days in
our world everything is viewed under the new “social” notion of profit. You must pay
for every kind of social or cultural action. On the other hand, the stranger in the
folktale insists that the smith’s work must be paid, that his time and art must be
rewarded. This approach, which doesn’t exist in the main body of the story and its
variants, reflects my ideological point of view about the payment of the human work,
something that in our time is an issue of major importance and has always been
through time a point of political, economical and ideological dispute. The smith
insists on his view and the two travelers reveal that they are Jesus Christ and St. Peter,
so they grant him three wishes. One of them is a magical bench where the one who

4
will sit on it shall stick there. That happens indeed when God sends the archangel to
the smith’s place because it is the time for him to die and go to paradise. The smith
asks the archangel to give him a promise that he will not came again to take him for at
least 10 years, otherwise he will be stuck on the bench for ever. The archangel gives
his promise and so he is released. At that point comes my ascertainment-realization in
a self monologue form which expresses my thoughts about how quickly time passes
by. That part wasn’t in the story from the beginning and appeared during a storytelling
performance by saying loudly some personal thoughts. “And what is a ten years time.
Ten years time is nothing. It runs like water. You are a child of 13-14 years old and
suddenly you become an adult ready to go into life and open your own road”. The
interesting part is that the people in the audience who were adults over forty years old,
on hearing my phrase, nodded and momentarily moved their bodies in agreement.
Some of them were whispering “Yeah. Ten years run and go like water…” The
folktale ends with the punishment of the smith who is not allowed to enter neither
paradise nor hell because of his behavior against angels and devils who try to take
him with them. At this point I express a new point of view: The right of everyone to
decide the way of his death and the time of it. So, in my variant the smith, after being
expelled from paradise and hell, decides to return down to earth and start a new life
from the beginning (Prousalis, 2007).
What was that element that created the need for the first creator to make a
story like this? How many received the main body of the story and passed it down to
the next re-tellers? What was the story corpus like in the beginning when it was
created by the imagination of its first storyteller? How was the tale-corpus formed
through the passing of time? The story’s existence is documented in the 14 th century
AD (Angelopoulou and Brouskou, 1999). What kind of images did they see while
they were telling the story, what was their rhythm? Under what conditions and
circumstances was the story spread all over the European Continent and parts of
Middle East becoming one more folktale type in the international type Index? (Uther,
2004). This co-existing narrative fact is a bridge towards an open dialogue, it is the
meeting of our inner experience with somebody else on the door-step and creates an
interactive circumstance on the limits between consciousnesses and expresses the
fundamental social acceptance that no human event is developed or resolved inside
the limits of only one conscience (Bakhtin, 2007).
Dialogue is what every new storyteller who approaches the same story seeks
as he co-forms together with the unknown storytellers of yesterday the tale that he
tells today, seeking a meaning about the world that surrounds him and his inner world.
(Brunner, 1997)

5. Polyphony in folktales
At this point maybe somebody shall wonder: Where does polyphony emerge from?
In my subjective opinion, polyphony in folktales emerges in an interpretative way from the
polysemy of the symbolic representation and structurally from the conception of the
creative individual that is reflected on the enrolment of a huge number of variations
presented in each folktale re-telling. An example could be the folktale known as
Cinderella’s tale (ATU 510A) which presents the attempt of the young daughter to gain her
autonomy and to form a complete feminine personality. In the Greek National
Classification Catalogue of Folktales there is a number of 300 enlisted variations,
(Angelopoulou, 2002) which means that there were at least 300 various-different
“conversations”-narrative approaches through time and from place to place in the same
country. If we study the qualitative characteristics of all those Greek variations-versions of

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Cinderella’s tale, we shall ascertain a large variation of titles, episodes, motifs and heroines
that differentiate this folktale’s structure from place to place and from each narrative
approach. The previously mentioned folk-tale is found in many different oral traditions all
over the world and this means that it reflects the same psychological need on a global level.
(Cox, 1893). In other tales the freedom and structural looseness (laxity) of folktales
combined with the creative fantasy of the teller creates new types of tales that are presented
by more than one ATU types as, e.g., the Greek folktale under the title ‘The drunkard wife
of the priest” (ATU 1387+ ATU 1384+ ATU 1450+ATU 1540) (Gergatsoulis, 2006). Also,
the 40.000 motifs that are enlisted by Stith Thompson obviously give us the possibility of
countless combinations and structural formations that may produce new probable
conversations (Thompson, 1989).

5. Epilogue
The question if folktale is an open or closed narrative form still remains to be
answered. From my point of view - the point of view of a storyteller who converses and
interacts non-stop with his storytelling material-, folktale is an open narrative form. If
folktale is placed respectfully again in the center of our interest by setting off its
importance for the human soul and culture, then we will definitely help it to occupy a better
position. In my opinion, the last word of folktale will have been spoken when man stops
existing as a Homo Narrans, when he stops organizing his living experience in a structure
of plot, when the process of symbolization ends, when his need for reframing through
interpretation, understanding and acceptance of the unusual, the impossible, the imaginary,
of the desirable in adverse conditions, vanishes; in a word, the day that mankind stops to
breath on this earth…

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