Thick Corpus, Organic Variation and Textuality in Oral Tradition

The last piece. The publication may have minor cosmetic defects (marks, wears, cuts, bends, crushes) on the cover and spine. This is reflected in the price. The publication is otherwise in good condition and it’s unused. "Thick corpus", "organic variation" and "textuality" are new keywords in folklore theory. They signal a shift of paradigm between the intercultural and intracultural study of variation. The message is that only the latter is capable of disclosing the real variation of folklore in a living culture and of penetrating the processing of meaning in performance. Where the earlier comparative method worked with a bird's eye view on the "variation" of individual folktales, ballads, proverbs, etc. trying to design the history of the origin and dissemination of an oral product, the modern scholar focuses on intensive fieldwork on living systems of tradition, trying to create thick corpora of material reflecting the organic variation of folklore in context.