Why the Literary Interpretation of a Tale is Not Popular? Little Red Riding Hood
Why the Literary Interpretation of a Tale is Not Popular? Little Red Riding Hood

Summary/Abstract: Throughout times, folkloristics has focused on the relationship between the oral tradition and the printed texts of folk tales. Contemporary performers sometimes openly admit that they have read a tale in a book. Some literary tales that are well known by the community are very rarely narrated, such, for example, is Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault. The text was translated into Lithuanian in the first half of the 20th century. Although profusely studied, folklore collectors have not recorded the tale in oral tradition because of available literary sources and also probably owing to its rarity in oral lore. The structure of Perrault’s text is different from that of traditional folk tales. This article attempts to determine the tale type under which the tale has been classified, and describe the main plots from Perrault’s text and the structures of each of these plots. It appears that Perrault has substantially transformed the folk tale, and on the basis of the tales recorded from oral tradition, an attempt will be made to reconstruct the tale heard by Perrault.

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