A Study of The Animal Stories in Thai Folktales

• Main Authors: Shen, Wei-Chun, 沈維淳
• Other Authors: Huang, Ya-Chun
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/38591904662455425667

碩士 === 國立臺東大學 === 兒童文學研究所 === 102 === Folktale is an important factor in shaping the society and the cultures, and the animal stories must be the most common type in the folktales that always appear in our lives. Besides Taiwan, we are familiar with Chinese, Japanese or Western cultures, and their folktales and fairytales are also known to us. But when the other cultures in the world are mentioned, such as Southeast Asia, a “Reading Gap” definitely exists. Take Thailand for example, which is undoubtedly a beautiful country with distinguished cultures in the world; however, the importance of Thai folktales does not receive what it deserves in Taiwan. Therefore, in order to solve the problem as above, this thesis selected Thai folktales as the main topic, aimed at discussing and analyzing the animal stories of it, and furthermore, engaged in introducing Thai folktales and cultures to Taiwan. My study started from clarifying the context of the development of Thai folktales. In the second chapter, it depicted the world in Thai folktales from the perspective of history, religion, and customs. Then, I sorted out the Thai animal stories in the third chapter, classified the stories into three different categories. In the fourth chapter, I focused on the variety of animal images in stories, and picked up elephants, snakes, and birds as my case study. Finally, the fifth chapter took "Why do we need animal stories?" as the topic, and made a general discussion about the value of the animal stories in human society.