Publisher's Synopsis
"...reflects superior scholarship. Preparing a motif-index of folk literature requires a special kind of scholar with depth in a cultural area and breadth in international folklore studies...There are few practicing scholars in the United States who can produce a motif index, and El-Shamy, I am pleased to report, is one of them." - Ronald Baker. This important text fills a gap in folklore scholarship. Some geographic areas, including the Arab world, are not adequately represented in Stith Thompson's "Motif-Index of Folk Literature". El-Shamy's "Folk Traditions of the Arab World" is based on Thompson's system and is therefore compatible and supplements it. This two-volume guide will be an important research tool in comparative folklore studies, as well as in Arabic studies.
