Cuentos y leyendas tradicionales (Teoría, textos y didáctica) [Traditional Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends. (Theory, Texts, and Didactics)] (review)

The Centro de Estudios de Promoción de la Lectura y Literatura Infantil (CEPLI) at the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) is one of the most distinguished centres for research in children’s literature in the Spanish-speaking world. One of its special areas of interest are traditional, originally orally transmitted literary forms, such as fairy tales, songs or rhymes for children. This orientation is reflected in the titles of the series Arcadia published by the university. The title under review is part of this series; it analyses fairy tales, myths, and legends with the aim of determining the characteristics of these genres by describing their commonalities and differences. While the first part of the book focuses on questions of literary theory and analysis, the second part explores ways in which fairy tales, myths, and legends can be used in classroom settings.

The author, a professor of literature at the Universidad de Extremadura, relates the most relevant results of national and international scholarship and complements these findings with many examples taken mainly from the rich oral tradition of the Iberian Peninsula. Including contemporary forms, some of which have migrated to the modern media, such as urban legends, he shows that there is a strong overlap in motifs between the two traditional literary forms, but that these motifs take shape in different generic contexts. While fairy tales tend to be strongly fictional and formulaic and set the plot within very vague spatio-temporal coordinates, myths and legends are more firmly grounded in time and space, allude to real events, and state examples. Less bound by structural constraints, they can adapt more easily to new geographic or historical contexts.

Due to its very compact form, the book is not an easy read. An index and a more extensive bibliography would also have been useful. Overall, however, the monograph offers a thorough summary of the most important insights of the scholarly study of fairy tales, myths, and legends.