Aarne–Thompson index, shorthand for The Types of the Folktale, the classification system for international folk tales developed and first published in 1910 by the Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne under the title Verzeichnis der Märchentypen (Index of Types of Folktale). Aarne's system, designed initially to organize and index the Scandinavian archival collections, was translated and enlarged by the American folklorist Stith Thompson in 1928, and revised again in 1961. Although its scope is limited primarily to European and European‐derived tales known to have existed in oral tradition at the time of publication, the principal value of the index lies in the creation of a single classification system by which culturally distinct variants are grouped together according to a common reference number.
Together with Thompson's six‐volume Motif‐Index of Folk Literature with which it is cross‐indexed, The Types of the Folktale constitutes the most important reference work and research tool for comparative folk‐tale analysis. These two indexes, designed to aid the researcher in identifying tale types, isolating their motifs and locating cultural variants, are most closely associated with the historical‐geographic (or Finnish) method, which sought to reconstruct the hypothetical original form (Urform) as well as the history of a given tale by plotting the distribution of different versions over time and space. Although the historical‐geographic method is no longer fashionable, the reference works produced by that direction of folk‐narrative research remain one of the most enduring contributions to the study of folk tales.
In The Types of the Folktale, tales are organized according to type (defined by Thompson as ‘a traditional tale that has an independent existence’) and assigned a title and number and/or letter. For example, the Brother Grimms' tale of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ appears in the Aarne–Thompson index as 410, ‘Sleeping Beauty’. Scholars citing either the Grimm or non‐Grimm version could then refer to it by its tale‐type number, as AT (or AaTh) 410. Each entry begins with a description of the principal traits of the tale in abbreviated narrative form, followed by a list of individual motifs in existent variants, and often concludes with bibliographic information. The bibliography contains information on the pattern of distribution by country and the number of known versions at the time of compilation, as well as the print or archival sources of the variants.
The tales are divided into the following categories: Animal Tales (Types 1–299), Ordinary Folk Tales (Types 300–1199), Jokes and Anecdotes (Types 1200–1999), Formula Tales (Types 2000–2399), and Unclassified Tales (Types 2400–2499). Most folk tales or fairy tales are classified under ‘ordinary tales’, which comprise roughly half of the catalogue.
Bibliography
- Baughman, Ernest W., Type and Motif‐Index of the Folktales of England and America (1966).
- Georges, Robert, ‘The Universality of the Tale‐Type as Concept and Construct’,
Western Folklore 42 (1983). - Thompson, Stith, The Folktale (1946).
- ——Motif‐Index of Folk Literature (1955).
— Mary Beth Stein
