Cuento

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Cuento is a Spanish word meaning literally "story" or "tale". Cuento may specifically refer to folk tales, a category of folklore that includes stories passed down through oral tradition. The word cuento may also be used as a verb to say "tell", as if you are "telling" a story ("Cuento").

Cuentos is more common to read to children at bedtime or just to entertain them. Many times cuentos are a good way to teach children to read at an early age and opens their mind to imagination.[1]

Varieties

Idioms using this word, translated into English, include:

  • contar un cuento – to tell a story
  • cuento de hadas – fairy tale
  • cuento de fantasmas – ghost story
  • cuento de viejas – old wives' tale
  • va de cuento – the story goes, or it is said
  • cuento folklórico – folk tale

In Spain

magic
tales. After several such comparisons showing very close similarities as well as almost-opposite differences, he concluded that the index-analysis should be conducted for the other Spanish-speaking parts of the Americas before any explicit conclusions can be made about folktales in Latin America. Whether or not Latin American folktales should be compared to Spanish folktales as if they were a subcategory was not mentioned in the article; however, with differences in religion, tradition, history and other such elements that can turn a story into an entirely new direction, it is possible that folklorists will regard Latin American tales unique to Spanish tales in the future.

According to Spanish folklorist

Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, the following types are some of the most popular found in Spain, in the following order:[3]

Scholar James M. Taggart stated that tale type 425, "Search for the Lost Husband", was more popular in Spanish tradition than type 400, "Quest for the Lost Wife", which he noted to be more rarely collected.

Hispanist Ralph S. Boggs [de] also remarked on the popularity of types 313 ("The Magic Flight"), 408 ("The Three Oranges"), 425 ("The Search for the Lost Husband"), 706 ("The Maiden Without Hands") and 707 ("The Three Golden Sons").[5]

In Latin America

Latin American tales are unique in that they may represent a time before European invasion, and they may combine those traditions with the history and culture that arrived post-conquest. When the Spaniards came to Latin America in the 16th century, the indigenous people were forced to assimilate their culture with the Europeans'. Likewise, the content of the stories differed between the ages. However, there are few resources on cuentos for pre-conquest indigenous peoples in South America. A folklorist specializing in Spain and Spanish-originated folklore, Aurelio M. Espinosa discovered that "most of the Spanish folklore which is found today in the Spanish-speaking countries of America is of traditional Spanish origin".[6] Pre-conquest information can only be found in what is left; this includes archaeological artifacts, sculpture and pottery, stories engraved in bone, shell, and stones, and codices. Only seventeen codices are intact, "fifteen of which are known to predate the Colonial era, and two of which originated either before the Conquest or very soon after".[7]

With the knowledge that the natives in Latin America were made to blend culturally with the Spaniards when they arrived, the similarity of Latin American stories to Spanish stories must be considered.

folklorist, attempted to index 1,747 folktales into 659 indexes such as "animal tales", "magic tales", "religious tales", and "jokes and anecdotes". The purpose of the study was to make "accessible to folklorists both the individual types and the broad picture of the folktale in a large part of Spanish America".[8]

In Chile

Folklorist Yolando Pino Saavedra [es] compiled two volumes of Chilean folktales. According to his observations, the trickster figure Pedro Urdemales is very popular, and, among the tales of magic, the most common tale types in his country, in descending order, were:[9]

  • Type 425, La búsqueda del esposo perdido ("The Search for the Lost Husband");
  • Type 402, La mona como esposa ("The Monkey as Wife");
  • Type 301, Las tres princesas robadas ("The Three Stolen Princesses");
  • Type 303, Los dos hermanos ("The Two Brothers");
  • Type 313, La fuga mágica ("The Magic Flight");
  • Type 328, El niño roba los tesoros del gigante ("The Boy Steals the Giant's Treasures");
  • Type 471, El puente que conduce al otro mundo ("The Bridge that Leads to Other World");
  • Type 706, La niña sin manos ("The Girl Without Hands").

Saavedra also located other tale types that "sporadically" appear in Chilean collections:[10]

References

  1. ^ "La importancia de los cuentos en la educación emocional de los niños – Actualidad Colegio CEU San Pablo Montepríncipe" (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-03-17.
  2. ^ Boggs, Ralph Steele. Index of Spanish folktales, classified according to Antti Aarne's "Types of the folktale". Chicago: University of Chicago. 1930.
  3. ^ Camarena, Julio. "Conte Oral, Conte Escrit". In: Revista d’etnologia De Catalunya, Núm. 4, enero de 1994, p. 76.
  4. ISBN 9780691226927
    .
  5. ^ Boggs, Ralph S. “The Hero in the Folk Tales of Spain, Germany and Russia”. In: The Journal of American Folklore 44, no. 171 (1931): 34, 35, 40. https://doi.org/10.2307/535520.
  6. ^ Espinosa, Aurelio M., A Folk-Lore Expedition to Spain, The Journal of American Folklore 34 (Apr 1921): 127-142
  7. ^ Read, Kay Almere, and Jason J. Gonzalez, Mesoamerican Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs of Mexico and Central America, Oxford University Press, 2000
  8. ^ Hansen, Terrence L., The Distribution and Relative Frequency of Folktale Types in Spanish South America, The Journal of American Folklore 68 (Jan 1955): 90-93
  9. ^ Pino Saavedra, Yolando. Cuentos folklóricos de Chile. Tomo. I. Santiago, Chile: Editorial Universitaria. 1960. pp. 17-18.
  10. ^ Pino Saavedra, Yolando. Cuentos folklóricos de Chile. Tomo. I. Santiago, Chile: Editorial Universitaria. 1960. p. 18.

Further reading

Studies
Folktale catalogues (general)
  • Amores, Monstserrat. Catalogo de cuentos folcloricos reelaborados por escritores del siglo XIX. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Departamento de Antropología de España y América. 1997.
    ISBN 84-00-07678-8
    .
  • Boggs, Ralph Steele. Index of Spanish folktales, classified according to Antti Aarne's "Types of the folktale". Chicago: University of Chicago. 1930.
  • CAMARENA, JULIO & Maxime CHEVALIER (1995). Catálogo tipográfico del cuento folklórico español. Vol. I: Cuentos maravillosos. Madrid, Castalia.
  • Camarena, Julio e Chevalier, Maxime. Catálogo tipológico del cuento folklórico español: cuentos religiosos e cuentos novela. Madrid, Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, 2003. 2 vols.
Folktale catalogues of Spain
Folktale catalogues of Latin America
  • Andrade, Manuel José. Folk-lore from the Dominican Republic. New York: The American Folklore Society, G.E. Stechert and Co. Agents, 1930.
  • Hansen, Terrence Leslie. The Types of the Folktale In Cuba, Puerto Rico: the Dominican Republic, And Spanish South America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.
  • Robe, Stanley (1972). Index of Mexican Folktales. Including Narrative Texts from Mexico, Central America, and the Hispanic United States. Berkeley-Los AngelesLondon: University of California Press.
  • Vidal de Battini, Berta Elena. Cuentos y leyendas populares de la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Culturales Argentinas, 1980. 10 volumes.

External links

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