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Hungarian Folktales: The Art of Zsuzsanna Palko. Collected, transcribed, annotated, and introduced by Linda Degh. Translated from the Hungarian by Vera Kalm. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. Originally published as The World Folktale Library, vol. 2 and Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 1736. Pp. xxiv + 382, preface by Carl Lindahl, foreword by Linda Degh, notes, translator's notes, selected bibliography, tale and motif index, plate. $20.00 paper)
Professor Linda Degh, a pioneer and world-renowned expert of modern tale collecting, rightfully considered her Kakasd tale collection the most important achievement of her distinguished scholarly career. In this, as well as in later research conducted in the United States, her emphasis has been on the text. Her basic commitment is to the text she never lets us forget about the text and its social surroundings. In this volume, too, her insightful, often brilliant interpretations rest on this premise. Mrs. Palko, the storyteller in the volume under review, is an old friend of the Hungarian-speaking reader who first met her reading Linda Degh's Kaksdi nepmesek (Folktales of Kakasd), published in Budapest in 1955 and 1960.
Mrs. Palko, a member...