Page:Thompson Motif-Index 2nd 1.djvu/13



In the two decades which have now elapsed since the first edition of this work began to appear, the need for a revision and enlargement has become more and more insistent. As the Index has been used for analyzing tales and myths from every quarter of the globe and from almost every narrative literary genre, a large amount of bibliographical material and many new items for the classification have accumulated, so that the revision about doubles the size and scope of the original.

Several very large and important areas have been comprehensively surveyed for motifs during recent years and find place in the present index.

As a result of nearly twenty years of work Professor Tom Peete Cross succeeded in covering the rich field of early Irish literature. Dr. Inger M. Boberg has indexed a large section of the Icelandic sagas and Eddas. There have also been very extensive motif-indexes of the oral tales of India, of the West Indies, of the British and American tale tradition, and of the Talmudic-Midrashic literature — to mention only a few of these important areas. Collections from other parts of the world and from many literary traditions have been examined so as to make the present revision as truly representative as possible of traditional narrative over the entire world.

The introduction to the first edition has been revised to indicate an occasional modification of fact or point of view, to clarify matters about which questions have been raised, and especially to indicate the ways in which the scope of the original index has been widened.

The actual index system has been reconsidered at every point and occasionally changed, but such changes are always minor and are sufficiently indicated. They should facilitate the making of new motif-indexes as well as satisfy the demand of logical arrangement.

The doubling of the scope of material covered, the frequent improvements in the technique of classification, and the amplifying of bibliographic references in the new edition should make the work more useful as a tool for literary and folkloristic research and as a reference work covering a field never before made easily available to the general reader.