Polyphemus: a Palaeolithic Tale? Julien d’Huy To cite this version: Julien d’Huy. Polyphemus: a Palaeolithic Tale?. The Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter, Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of Helsinki 2015, pp.43-64. halshs-01170837 HAL Id: halshs-01170837 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01170837 Submitted on 6 Jul 2015 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Heusler, Andreas, & Wilhelm Ranisch (ed.). 1903. Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pálsson (trans.). 1966. Eddica Minora. Dortmund: Druck und Verlag von King Harald’s Saga: Harald Hardradi of Norway: Fr. Wilh. Ruhfus. From Snorri Sturluson’s. Heimskringla. Jón Helgason. 1953. “Norges og Islands digtning”. In Harmondsworth: Penguin. Litteraturhistorie B: Norge og Island. Ed. Sigurður Nordal, Sigurðr, et al. (eds.). 1944. Flateyjarbók I. Nordal. Nordisk kultur 8. Stockholm: Albert Akraness: Flateyjarútgáfan. Bonniers Förlag. Pp. 3–179. Rowe, Elizabeth Ashman. 2002. “Sǫrla þáttr: The Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923–1944. Notationes Norrœnæ: Literary Adaptation of Myth and Legend”. Saga- Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning I– Book 26: 38–66. XXVIII. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. Stavnem, Rolf (ed.). 2012. “Rekstefja”. In Poetry from Lund: Gleerup. the Kings’ Sagas I:2. Ed. Diana Whaley. Skaldic Leslie, Helen F. 2012 [2013]. The Prose Contexts of Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Eddic Poetry: Primarily in the Fornaldarsǫgur. Turnhout: Brepols. Pp. 893–939. Dissertation for the degree of philosophiae doctor Sveinbjörn Egilsson (ed.). 1825–1837. “Haralds saga (PhD). Norway: University of Bergen. Hardráda”. In Fornmanna sögur eptir gömlum Lexicon Poeticum: Antiquæ Linguæ Septentrionalis – handritum útgefnar að tilhlutun hins norræna Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog. fornfræða félags VI. Copenhagen: Popp. 1931. Ed. Sveinbjörn Egilsson & Finnur Jónsson. Townend, Matthew (ed.). 2009. “Haraldsstikki”. In In Copenhagen: Møllers. Gade 2009b: 807–808. Polyphemus: A Palaeolithic Tale? Julien d’Huy, Institute of the African World (IMAF), Paris I Sorbonne Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of 56 variants of European and North American examples of the so-called Polyphemus tale (international tale type ATU 1137) using phylogenetic software according to 190 traits. Discussion addresses a number of points of comparative methodology while considering the historical implications of a relationship between different versions of this tale type recorded in diverse cultures. Les objets qui posent à l’ethnologue un motif’s history and geographical spread. They problème de classification sont certes moins also tried to reconstruct the ideal primeval nombreux que ceux soumis à l’attention des form of the tale (Urmärchen) from which all naturalistes. L’ethnologue n’en a que plus de the attested versions ultimately originated. raisons de chercher des enseignements peut- Despite an initial enthusiasm, the être, des stimulations certainement, auprès de reconstructive ambitions of the Finnish disciplines qui travaillent sur les mêmes School have been strongly criticized. This problèmes à une échelle incomparablement method was conceptualized long before the plus grande et avec des méthodes plus development of computer-assisted methods, rigoureuses. (Lévi-Strauss 2002: 311.) which may hold some potential for The objects that pose a problem of revitalizing this type of research. The present classification to the ethnologist are certainly article considers the potential use and value of less numerous than those brought to the applying modern phylogenetic tools for the attention of the naturalists. The ethnologist study of myths and folktales. also has all the more reasons to look perhaps for lessons, certainly for stimulation, from The Biological Model disciplines that work on the same problems A great advance in biology occurred when on an incomparably larger scale and with researchers realized that the lineage of more rigorous methods. (My translation.) organisms could be represented with a The Finnish School of comparative folklore branching diagram or ‘tree’. This structure research has an empirical and positivistic visualizes the inferred evolutionary approach to using the so-called Historical- relationships among various biological Geographic Method and its variations, which species based upon similarities and was recently discussed by Frog in an earlier differences in their physical or genetic volume of this journal (2013b). The scholars characteristics. Each node from which of this school tried to collect all variants of a branches of the tree stem represents a tale, to analyse the diffusion and frequency of speciation event in which a lineage splits into each of its individual traits, and to trace each two or more descendant lineages (i.e. 43 Table 1. Equivalence of elements and features in the comparison of genetic systems and of myths / folktales. Genetic Systems Myths / Folktales Discrete heritable units (e.g. the four nucleotides, Discrete heritable units (e.g. mythemes, codons, genes and individual phenotypes) motifs, tale-types) Mechanisms of replication by transcription and Teaching, learning and imitation reproduction Slow rate of evolution Fast or slow rate of evolution Parent–offspring, occasionally clonal Parent–offspring, intergenerational transmission, teaching, writing (more recent) Mutation (e.g. slippage, point mutation and Innovation (e.g. variation, innovation, mobile DNA) mistakes) Natural selection of traits (individuals with certain Social selection of traits (e.g. societal trends variants of the trait may survive and reproduce and conformist traditions) more than individuals with other variants) Allopatric or sympatric speciation Geographical or social separation Hybridization Mixture of two or more myths or tales Horizontal transmission defined to be the Extralineal borrowing or imposition movement of genetic material between bacteria or within the genome other than by descent in which information travels through the generations as the cell divides (e.g. viruses, transposons) Geographic cline Mythological transformations Fossils Ancient texts Extinction Disappearance branches). Biological and mythological with the aid of the biological method” (van entities have many traits in common, as Gennep 1909: 84). summarized in Table 1. The most important Initial published attempts using of these is the fact that both are formed by phylogenetic software to study mythology and discrete heritable units which evolve folktales may date back to 2001. Jun’ichi Oda progressively with time. The more two related applied an alignment program used for species or two myths diverge, geographically genome informatics to Propp’s “sequence of and temporally, the more distant their genetic functions” concerning 45 fairy tales. Propp’s relationship probably is. Observing these sequence was reduced using the Greimas parallels, software developed for assessing model to 16 functions, each of which was in genetic relationships and relatedness can turn coded as a given amino acid (e.g. fairy potentially be applied to assess corresponding tale 1 = ACDEF; fairy tale 2 = ACFDEF; relationships between examples of myths and fairy tale 3 = ADPHW, etc.). The use of a folktales. program could then arrange the sequences of Applying the biological model to myths functions to identify regions of similarity that and tales is not new. According to Carl may be a consequence of functional, Wilhelm von Sydow (who himself was structural, or evolutionary relationships following a long tradition: see Hafstein 2005), between the sequences in the same way it folktales are like biological beings (von worked for amino acids in a genome. This Sydow 1927; 1948 [1965]: 238–239): they approach presents some difficulty owing to tend to adapt to their environment and they limits of the genome model: the researcher evolve by means of natural selection. This can only work with only a limited number of explains why so many individual variants of functions (only 20 types of amino acids exist) tales differ from the abstract tale-types with and results were limited to only very short which they are identified. As early as 1909, lines of code for each sequence (from 4 to 12 Arnold van Gennep stated that folkloric functions / amino acids). Under such elements should be studied “comparatively, circumstances, it is highly possible that convergent evolution could produce apparent 44 similarity between functions that are relations of variants of a tale or tales in a evolutionarily unrelated. More research would database of mythology appear interpretable as be necessary to arrive at any certainty that is reflecting its historical spread through the impossible to obtain with this method. An world, it becomes possible to consider additional problem is that the results depend whether this correlates with reconstructions of on the specific order of sequences, in which human migrations that might be responsible case a variation in a conventional plot for that spread (d’Huy