This article argues that discussions of folktales would be more meaningful if their brief existence as "ideal tales" in a narrative contract could be accepted. The article focuses on the concept of a folktale as an object of experience and of study, by a sustained discussion and charting of the tortuous ways by which so-called folktales…

The reader is a component part of the only form of a text which can be discussed meaningfully as a message. As readers with different linguistic backgrounds experience texts in fusions with their own personalities and their own social and cultural backgrounds, these dynamic texts differ in different languages. Accordingly, intranslatability exists…

This paper briefly reviews the state of the art in reader response research with special reference to the Danish studies in reader responses. The paper then proceeds to a discussion of a number of methodological problems inherent in setting up questions for cross-cultural (and international) studies in general, and for reader response studies in…

This paper is the last in a series of 14 detailing the procedures involved in setting up an interdisciplinary project that explores the similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different countries. It marks the end of the preparatory work for the "Folktale-project." The first section is an overview of the…

As part of the Folktale project, which explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature from and in different cultures, advanced undergraduate students in classes on literary interpretation or literary history analyzed a Danish, a Greenlandic, and a Turkish folk tale. Two male and two female students in classes on literary…

This article discusses editorial "filters" in folktales, specifically the changes ("orientations") which editors deliberately impose on a tale because they want to reach a specific audience. A case in point is the tale called "Allerleirauh," in the Grimm collection, which not only is highly illustrative of editorial…

This preliminary report sets the Folktale project, an interdisciplinary cooperative effort involving literary criticism, linguistics, the craft of translation, psychology, and statistics, in the context of reading and reading research in the modern world, and discusses experimental reader response research in Denmark as well as in other countries.…

This report, the second of seven, part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures, describes the way in which potentially useful texts, i.e. folktales, were selected by team members. The report first…

This report, the third of seven, part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures, describes the empirical selection procedure used in order to identify the three tales which were to be used in future…

This paper, the fourth of seven, part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures, describes the work on organizing texts from different cultures and nations (Denmark, Greenland, and Turkey) in the…

This paper, the fifth of seven, part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures, describes the methods used for the construction of a questionnaire for readers' social, educational, financial, and…

This paper, the last of seven, part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures, supplies the "Folktale project" with readers' statements which can be used for the construction of a…

This paper, number eight in an ongoing series, is part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures. Presented are the written responses from 129 readers in Denmark, Greenland, Great Britain, India, and…

This paper, number 10 in an ongoing series, is part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures. Presented are the written responses from 140 readers in Denmark, Greenland, Great Britain, India, and…