Focusing on the folk tale as a set of multi-significant symbols, social practices, aesthetic rules, and personal choices and emotions, this book examines some of the most dynamic narrative patterns that run through the daily life and oral communication of Greek rural communities during the transitional 20th century, when changes in the economic, social, and cultural mechanisms of social formation also altered narrative habits.

The research centers on a body of fairy tale variations that were recorded during a long-term field study in two villages of Rhodes – Afandou and Archangelos – compared to similar oral narratives collected from other areas (Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaly, the Sporades, the Cyclades, Crete, as well as from refugee populations of Asia Minor).

With an emphasis on the folkloristic theory of genres, the historical-geographical method, the study of the social and representational contexts of storytelling, and the comparative analysis of themes, motifs, and stylistic elements of each fairy tale and each storyteller, within the broader Greek, European-Mediterranean, and international tradition, the author emphasizes that storytellers and listeners shared the belief that fairy tales, although clearly connected with entertainment and a world of imaginative fulfillment of desires, were primarily assessed in relation to their own lives, as a disguised system for negotiating social roles and behaviors.

In this regard, the psychological tensions and aesthetic contrasts of the folk tale comment on aspects of collective life, ranging from family relations and gender relations to social-class, economic, and moral issues.