Narrative
Traditions
Παραδόσεις
Nikolaos Politis · 1904
Synopsis
Tales of belief collected throughout Greece and arranged in thirty-nine categories: old stories, Constantinople and Hagia Sophia, engulfed places and cities, kings and giants, ancient gods and heroes, saints and churches, guarded treasures, spirits of places and of the sea, the kallikantzaroi of the twelve days, nereids, lamias, revenants and vampires, Charon and the underworld. A first volume gives the texts, the second comments on them one by one.
Context
The book rests on the network of correspondents, mostly teachers, that Polítis had built up since his circular of 1887. In it he imposed the word paradosi, tradition, in place of the European term legend, and treated each narrative by comparison with its variants and parallels. His search for ancient survivals in modern beliefs has since been debated, without his corpus ceasing to be used.
Who it is for
Short accounts, arranged by theme, in Greek; the second volume gives the scholarly commentary.
Prizes and reception
His Traditions made folklore known outside Greece as a comparative science, and the collection he began became in 1966 the Centre for Research on Greek Folklore.
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