The Three Bears
Four Interpretations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2768372 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alan C Elms (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1977 |
| Volume | 90 |
| Issue | 357 |
| Pages | 257 |
| Publication date | 1977-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American Folklore (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8715 • E-ISSN: 1535-1882 |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/539519 |
| OpenAlex | W2327647776 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
THREE BEARS IS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR FAIRY TALES in the English language. The Index to Fairy Tales lists approximately eighty publications of the tale in collections between the late 1800's and 1972.' Hammel located eighty-four publications of the tale, many of them not included in the Index to Fairy Tales.2 Neither source includes such mass-market publications of the tale as the Big Golden Books edition of Three Bedtime Stories.3 Furthermore, the story is so well known by adults and so frequently requested by children that it is often told rather than read-a measure of popularity shared by few other tales in contemporary Western culture. The tale's popularity is all the more striking in that its content shows little similarity to that of other Indo-European folk or fairy tales. It does not resemble any of the standard tale-types, and includes no indexed folktale motifs.4 It includes so few of the typical folktale elements identified by Propp that a standard morphological analysis of the tale would be virtually meaningless.5
Genealogy · Linguistics · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.09 |
| Citation span | 1979 - 2016 (38) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |