We were excited to welcome Riccardo Ginevra, a CHS Fellow in Hellenic Studies 2019–2020 for an Open House. The title of the discussion is “Comparative Mythology and Folktale Studies: Kore, Demeter, Baldr, and the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty”” It took place on Friday, May 15, at 11:00 a.m. EDT and was recorded.
In preparation, you might like to read:
- Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, chapter 49
- Homeric Hymn (2) to Demeter
Greek, online at Scaife
English, online at Scaife - Two versions of Sleeping Beauty:
Grimm
Perrault
Handout (PDF):
Open House Handout: Comparative Mythology and Folktale Studies
You can watch the event on our YouTube channel, or in the frame below.
Mentioned during the presentation:
Propp, Vladimir. 1928. Morphology of the Folktale.
Propp, Vladimir. 1946. Historical Roots of the Folktale.
Also mentioned: the work of Irene de Jong and Stith Thompson.
https://harvard.academia.edu/RiccardoGinevra
For further videos please visit the Watch page.
Riccardo Ginevra
Riccardo Ginevra received his PhD in Historical-Comparative Linguistics in 2018 from the Università per Stranieri di Siena (Italy) in joint supervision with the University of Cologne (Germany). Before that, he studied Classics (BA 2012; MA 2014) with a focus on Archaic Greek epic poetry and historical linguistics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano (Italy). In his doctoral dissertation, he analyzed the onomastics and the phraseology occurring in the Old Norse mythological poem Vǫluspá ‘Prophecy of the Seeress’ and in other traditional Germanic texts from the perspective of historical linguistics, systematically taking into consideration the comparative evidence attested in Ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hittite, and Celtic languages, among others. He has published, given talks, and taught at the university level on the comparative analysis and reconstruction of Indo-European poetic formulas, theonyms, and myths. As a Fellow of the CHS, he will carry out a systematical study of the phraseology, thematic structures, and onomastics of the Greek myth of Kore and Demeter as attested in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (and related texts), with particular focus on their Indo-European background and on the interplay between inherited poetics and narrative motifs of areal diffusion.