Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index and its applications to chivalric literature

Abstract

This article reflects on Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index and some of the main applications of the system to chivalric literature, with special attention to its origins, its current computer adaptations and the scarce representation of works of the genre, despite its relationship with folk literature. However, various contributions have made up for this absence thanks to the indexing of English romances, French Arthurian texts, secular Germanic medieval works and Hispanic chivalric texts (books of chivalry, chivalric short stories and Spanish Arthurian works, Baladro del sabio Merlín). Thompson’s work becomes a necessary reference, although the digital humanities favour the creation of different tools for sorting and searching.