About Story Study

As part of my graduate studies at Kean University in New Jersey, I am researching fairy literature and folklore in order to produce a fantasy fiction manuscript which explores and celebrates the motifs we so enjoy in storytelling today.  The biggest challenge to my research is that resources seem few and far between–not at all rare, but scattered across print and digital mediums, and tucked away in larger, general archives such as the Library of Congress.

Story Study would be an ambitious attempt at cataloging everything fairy and folktale into one massive database, much like what has been accomplished with the fairy tale section of Amalia, the German-based encyclopedia.  Included in the archive would be digitized artwork, manuscripts, essays, poems, and much more–including a detailed collection of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification index that stratifies tales by type, theme and motif.  Other future possibilities may be biographical accounts of important persons in the field.  My short term goal is to maintain a place to compile my research, but I aspire to make this into a hub of fairy and folk literature resources that is both intuitive and creative.