Beschreibung:
The telling of tales has been for many ages a principal form of entertainment among most peoples of the world. The guess is that it is the fundamental form of literature, a form which can be studied on a world-wide basis. The chief purpose of telling tales has been the whiling away of leisure time, an aesthetic practice. Listening to tales has the same function as looking at the movies has with us-simple, innocuous entertainment. There is no utilitarian, educational, or religious basis for folk tales, nor are they meant to be didactic in any way. There is not much realism in the field of folk tales; it is a world of imagination, improbability, and impossibility.