Resumen de Oral Storytelling, Slavic Mythology, Philological Research and Fairy Tales: the Case of Croatian Tales of Long Ago
The classic book Croatian Tales of Long Ago written by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić in 1916 that contains eight fairy tales is one of the most popular examples of fantasy in Croatian literature. From the very first edition, the stories have attracted the attention of young readers and sophisticated literary critics. The clearest signs that Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić was recognised as a distinguished author were her nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature and translations of her works to numerous foreign languages. Contemporary literary critics have noticed the influence of traditional oral storytelling, which was broadly present in Croatian rural families at the beginning of the twentieth century. Literary analysis of the mythical creatures and fantasy motives represented in the Tales has identified several elements from the contemporary academic tradition and Slavic studies. This chapter examines the transtextual aspects of Croatian Tales of Long Ago including the published Slavic studies. The author of the Tales was highly educated and used her large family library, where she had the opportunity to find numerous classic titles from this field. Thus, I argue that those scientific works are intertextually present in her tales more than traditional oral storytelling.
