Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/229

 II. POPULAR PROSE FICTION

HE works to be dealt with in the present lecture are widely separated in time and place. They include "Æsop's Fables," a collection which bears the name of a Greek slave of the sixth century, but is actually a growth of many generations before and after him; the "Arabian Nights," which contains Oriental stories of diverse origin; the sagas of mediæval Ireland, as represented by "The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel"; and the folk origin; the sagas of mediæval Ireland, as represented by the Grimms or imitated by Hans Christian Andersen. In so broad a range of writings there is naturally great variety of matter and style, and there might seem at first to be few common characteristics. But all the works mentioned—or all except Andersen's tales—are alike in being popular prose fiction, and Andersen's collection is an artistic imitation of similar productions.

THE MEANING OF "POPULAR"

The term "popular" is here employed, of course, in a technical meaning, and does not have reference to vogue or popularity, in the ordinary sense. Popular works, in the stricter definition of the term, are anonymous and are held to be the product of many successive authors. They commonly pass through a long period of oral transmission before being committed to writing, and they are consequently cast in a conventional or traditional, rather than an individual, style and form. The exact nature and extent of popular composition is a matter of dispute. In the case of ballad poetry, with its dancing, singing throng, the process of communal authorship can sometimes be actually observed; but in the case of the prose tales no such opportunity exists for collective composition. Still even there the changes and additions introduced by successive narrators make of a story a common product, for which no single author is