ABSTRACT
Folkloristic research in the past quarter-century has placed great emphasis on exploring the “biology” of folklore phenomena. The desire to know the transmissional processes requires a study of the persons of transmitter and receiver and of the communication arising between them—that is, the manifestation of folklore and the occasions of its performance. Focusing on the personalities of the storytellers in folk narrative research has a tradition of about 100 years and—at least in Hungary—has been regarded as a compulsory task for more than 50 years. The refined methods of folk narrative research, communication-centered research, the application of performance theory, and so on, have been present continuously since the early 1970s in the scholarly publications.
