A polip, a kesztyű és a népmese: Gaal György meséinek megjelenése és fogadtatása a korabeli német nyelvű sajtóban = The octopus, the glove and the folktale: the publication and reception of the tales of Mährchen der Magyaren (1822) in the German-language press

Gulyás, Judit (2023) A polip, a kesztyű és a népmese: Gaal György meséinek megjelenése és fogadtatása a korabeli német nyelvű sajtóban = The octopus, the glove and the folktale: the publication and reception of the tales of Mährchen der Magyaren (1822) in the German-language press. ETHNOGRAPHIA, 134 (2). pp. 211-243. ISSN 0014-1798

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Abstract

The first collection of Hungarian tales was published in Vienna in 1822 by Georg von Gaal. The Mährchen der Magyaren contained 17 tales in German, but Gaal’s manuscript collection of tales is much larger, it consists of more than 100 texts. This paper provides some insights on the largely unclear history of the creation and reception of the Mährchen der Magyeren, based on texts published in the German-language press of the era. In the first half of the essay, the author presents the tales that Gaal published in various newspapers before the publication of Mährchen der Magyaren. Between the summer of 1817 and the autumn of 1819, newspapers in Vienna, Dresden and Karlsruhe published the tales Waldhüter-Mährchen, Die gläserne Hacke and Die dankbaren Thiere. All three tales (with the same title) were part of Gaal’s collection published in 1822, but the press releases also included the designation Pannonisches Mährchen (’Pannonian tale’, i.e. referring to Pannonia province of the Roman Empire) next to each text, indicating that these tales were part of a series. The texts published in the newspapers (five in German and one in Hungarian) differ in style and minor motifs from the variants in the 1822 volume, so it is likely that Gaal continued to elaborate the tales published in the newspapers as a showpiece until they reached their final form. The notes to the press releases also show that by 1819 at the latest, a plan to publish a volume of the tales had been conceived. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were already familiar with the tales published in the Viennese and Dresden newspapers before 1822 and used them in compiling their own comparative notes. The author then presents reviews of the German-language press after the publication of Mährchen der Magyaren. In contrast to the negligible reception in Hungary, the reception of Mährchen der Magyaren was much more lively and multi-faceted in the Austro-German cultural milieu. In contrast to Hungarian readers, the reviewers were able to place Gaal’s work within a textual network and literary tradition and the conceptual framework for its genre categorisation was available. Unlike Hungarian readers, the reviewers perceived that Gaal did not standardise the narration of the tales, and this heterogeneous narrative mode was largely perceived positively. The critics did not consider it a fault that Gaal did not publish the tales from the oral tradition as a transcriber, documenter or translator, but rather sought to give them form in the scribal medium by his own artistic means.

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