Article: The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Article title: Such deep roots you have: How Little Red Riding Hood's
tale evolved
Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News
Nov. 13, 2013 at 5:52 PM ET

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/such-deep-roots-you-have-how-little-red-riding-hoods-2D11591047

[Begin excerpt]
Computer software that's traditionally used to trace evolutionary
trees helped a scientist untangle the origins of one of the world's
best-known stories — the tale of Little Red Riding Hood — but the end
of this story turned out to be anything but traditional.
[End excerpt]


Title: The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood
  Jamshid J. Tehrani mail
  Published: Nov 13, 2013

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0078871

Abstract

[Begin excerpt]
Researchers have long been fascinated by the strong continuities
evident in the oral traditions associated with different cultures.
According to the ‘historic-geographic’ school, it is possible to
classify similar tales into “international types” and trace them back
to their original archetypes. However, critics argue that folktale
traditions are fundamentally fluid, and that most international types
are artificial constructs. Here, these issues are addressed using
phylogenetic methods that were originally developed to reconstruct
evolutionary relationships among biological species, and which have
been recently applied to a range of cultural phenomena. The study
focuses on one of the most debated international types in the
literature: ATU 333, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.
[End excerpt]

Garson

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