Some old written sources mention Georgian folk tales, including translations of the Bible from 5th-7th centuries and the original Georgian hagiographies and secular literature of the Middle Ages. The term zghapari, the Georgian word for fairytale, translates “lie” and “fictitious story”. “It was but it was nothing” – so reads the traditional beginning of Georgian fairytales. Zghapari connoting “a fictitious story” is used in Georgian hagiographic literature with the negative meaning in contrast to the factual report. This tendency of the negative meaning of zghapari continues through the Middle Ages until to the seventeenth century. The Georgian writer and lexicographer Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani (1658-1725) defines the term zghapari as a fictitious lie, handed down in the form of a story. The other Georgian terms for the oral prose genres are ambavi and araki, meaning “a story”. The negative connotations of zghapari through the Middle Ages stems from theological differences between Christianity and paganism.
Virsaladze, Elene: Zghapari (Fairytale), in: Kartuli Khalkhuri Poeturi Shemokmedeba (Georgian folk poetry), 1969, p. 366-369.
Illustration:
Lado Gudiashvili
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