The “Innocent Persecuted Heroine” Tale in Southern Kurdish Folk Literature

The tales of the type “Innocent Persecuted or Unfortunate Heroine” have long been recognised as one of the most characteristic genres of female storytelling worldwide. However, scholarly accounts on the diffusion of this kind of fairy tales in the oral traditions of the Iranian cultural area are few and mostly based on Persian language materials (cf. Elwell-Sutton 1969). This contribution aims to complement and elaborate on previous observations on the form, symbolic dimensions and traditional contexts of performing this peculiar group of narratives (including ATU 311, 327A, 403, 408, 480, 706C, 707 and 510A/B) through the comparative evaluation and analysis of a folktale corpus collected in Southern Kurdish-speaking regions of western Iran and eastern Iraq.