Collection: Folklore and Traditional Narrative in Antiquity

Series Editor: Daniel Ogden, University of Exeter, UK

Editorial Advisory Board members:

Ryan Denson, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland

Debbie Felton, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

Charlotte Spence, St Hilda's College, University of Oxford, UK

Folklore and Traditional Narrative in Antiquity provides a forum for the study of folklore in the texts of Classical Antiquity. It offers a venue for the excellent and exciting work currently being carried out in this interdisciplinary field in a dispersed fashion. ‘Traditional Narrative’ is a purposefully capacious amplification. It extends from narratives embodying tale-types formally classified in Folkloristics’ standard reference works, above all The Types of International Folktales (‘ATU²’), to the expansive group of unclassified or under-classified narrative types with which ancient texts are saturated, be they ‘high’, ‘low’ or ‘popular’, ‘oral’ or ‘literary’, ‘mythical’, ‘legendary’ or ‘fairytale’, or indeed none of the above. Such generosity of purview is called for by Classical literature’s modes of production, but it also addresses the acknowledged difficulty that Classical material has not been accommodated well in ATU² or its predecessors.

Parameters: The series’ chronological cut-off point for the focal material of study is notionally AD 476, the end of the Roman empire in the West (the portion of Late Antiquity prior to this may prove particularly fertile), but this is a soft boundary and the comparative material upon which Folkloristics depends usually derives from later periods, as well as from lands and cultures beyond those of Graeco-Roman civilisation. (Studies fundamentally based in later material might be addressed rather to our companion series, Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folklore and Popular Belief.) Also welcome are studies primarily grounded in the ancient languages of the Near East/West Asia (e.g., Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and Egyptian). Invited too are studies that extend beyond a base of narrative material and into cultural material, e.g., in the fields of ancient folk religion, folk magic or folk medicine.

Format: The series will welcome volumes normally up to 100,000 words in length: monographs; edited volumes (if tightly focused and edited and appropriately introduced); translations of texts, provided that these are accompanied by substantial introductions and/or commentaries drawing out their folkloric interest; and, relatedly, sourcebooks, provided once again that the folkloric interest of the passages selected is brought out in introductions and/or commentaries.

Language: The series is keen to reach beyond Anglo-Saxon scholarship—much outstanding work in this field is done in Italy, Scandinavia and Germany, for instance—but the economics of the series will confine the medium of publication to English.

To discuss your book proposal please contact:

Series editor: Daniel Odgen,