Einfache Formen: Legende, Sage, Mythe, Rätsel, Spruch, Kasus, Memorabile, Märchen, Witz

Even 50 years after the publication of the first edition, the basic concept of this book is still valid namely to establish the determining contours of fundamental narrative forms, which the author understands as morphological archetypes - in the Goethean sense. With mainly anonymous authors, they occupy an intermediate position between "popular" and "literary" writing, as evidenced by the fact that they are an object of research for both ethnologists and literary scholars.