Abstract: Folk tales are a repository of cultural memory of a society that holds philosophy, morality, and wisdom through symbols and fantasy. In this way, folk tales play with language through imagination and fantasy to pursue popular wisdom, initiatory customs, mysteries, and traditions. In order to discover and enjoy folk wisdom, we need to go through the morphology and cross the history of magic folk tales. With this motivation, this essay tries to highlight the philosophical traces in folk literature as the repository of the memory of societies through the imagination (fantasia) of folk tales and myths. The power of imagination is considered across the theories of Vico and Kant, with the respective differences that characterize them.
We point out that myths and folk culture are the most ancient forms of philosophical wisdom that appeared in ancient times and established legend and narration from which contemporary societies are built and which legitimized a social and political establishment. Myths and folk tales hold the popular truth of one society. They are philosophy through fantasy, and in this way, this article builds on Propp’s intention to develop his studies into philosophical research based on magic folk tales as a sequential step of a kind of archeo-philosophical study.
Keywords: philosophy of culture, memory, imagination, folk culture, archeo-philosophy
Magini, Riccardo. “Folk and Fairy Tales as Philosophy through Fantasy: an interpretation of memory, imagination, and culture” Sofia Philosophical Review Vol. XVI, No. 2 (2023): pp.92-114. https://sphr-bg.org/16/137/534.html.