Pavle Popović (1868-1939), professor of literature at Belgrade university, was among the first who used the classification of genres corresponding to Aarne’s classification in the “Overview of Serbian literature” (1909). Clasical scholar and religion scholar Veselin Čajkanović (1881-1946) used Aarne’s 1910 index in two anthologies of folk tales (1927, 1929). In the period spanning over a number of decades (starting before the beginning of World War II) ethnomusicologist Ljubica Janković (1894-1974) worked on “the systematic and alphabetized sheet index of motifs, themes, and cycles,” but it remained unpublished and unfinished. As she said it herself, it was only as late as 1954 that she became acquainted with Thompson’s index, when she received it from Thompson himself; the following year she received the Motif-Index, too. Her work, only partially based on the AaTh system, is founded on extensive material, but it makes no clear distinction between motifs, types, characters, and “cycles.” Since epic poetry was under the research spotlight, Branislav Krstić (1889-1966) compiled a motif index of the Balkan Slavs’ songs based on Thompson’s index (published in 1984, unfinished). After World War II in the whole territory of the Yugoslavia of that time it was intensively worked on indexation. In the Regional Museum in Sarajevo ethnologists Vlajko Palavestra and Radmila Fabijanić (1958, 1959) classified the material noted down from Serbian informants according to the AaTh index from 1928, and belief narratives according to the Motif-Index. In Zagreb Maja Bošković-Stulli (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore) worked on the material collected from the Serbs in Croatia, and she also indexed Vuk Karadžić’s tale collections. Nada Milošević-Djordjević (1934-2021), professor of folk literature at Belgrade University (otherwise responsible for the swerve of Serbian folkloristics towards structuralism), used and popularized the AaTh system in her papers at the same time. She indexed the prose materials from the Leskovac region (1988, the SASA edition). In 1992 Snežana Samardžija, professor of folk literature at Belgrade University defended her doctoral thesis (unpublished) on Serbian and Croat tale collections published iup to 1900 which included an index too as a separate segment (4020 tales from 89 tale collections). As part of the edition of folk works published in old periodicals (The Institute for Literature, Matica srpska) in the 1990s and early 2000s, the material from the 19th century journals ("Letopis Matice srpske", "Šumadinče" and "Šumadinka", "Danica", and "Vila") was indexed. Some tale collections (Marković, Zlatković) have been indexed in undergraduate or master theses at the Faculty of Philology. Marina Mladenović Mitrović (Institute for Literature and Arts, Belgrade) worked on the Ethnographic collection of the SASA Archives till 1914 in her thesis (2024). With regard to national minorities, Judit Rafai (Pedagogical faculty, Subotica) defended her thesis on the tale index of the Hungarians from Vojvodina (2007).
Some types have been written about in monographs. In her doctoral thesis (1971) Nada Milošević-Djordjević wrote about a number of international motifs in domestic material. Zoja Karanović examined the buried treasure belief narrative in her thesis (published,1989). Nemanja Radulović examined types 930, 930A, 931, 934 and the “contaminations,” such as the Usud [Fate] type in his thesis (2010). Danijela Popović Nikolić wrote about the grateful dead type (2021).
longer version (in Serbian)
Nemanja Radulović - Arne-Tompsonov indeks u srpskoj folkloristici
Some types have been written about in monographs. In her doctoral thesis (1971) Nada Milošević-Djordjević wrote about a number of international motifs in domestic material. Zoja Karanović examined the buried treasure belief narrative in her thesis (published,1989). Nemanja Radulović examined types 930, 930A, 931, 934 and the “contaminations,” such as the Usud [Fate] type in his thesis (2010). Danijela Popović Nikolić wrote about the grateful dead type (2021).
longer version (in Serbian)
Nemanja Radulović - Arne-Tompsonov indeks u srpskoj folkloristici