A Postmortem on Subordinates’ Response to Authority in Folk Tales

Forming a type of pop culture, tales have a high capacity for implicit criticism of power and sharing political themes; hence an investigation of folk tales can reveal important parts of subordinates’ political action which in the pre-modern age was conducted with a great deal of secrecy and camouflage. Of special significance is finding an answer to the questions how common political behavior was reflected in the tales and how it was camouflaged for the eyes of the master of power. Our assumption is that the masses responded to authority on a number of levels. On the first level, they recognized the power, legitimacy, and status of the authority, yet on the second and in their hidden narrative they negated various dimensions of ruling elites’ official narrative. They also tried to talk to the authority and implicitly threaten, reproach, or appeal for justice against the master of power. This study is based on James Scott’s theory of  hidden  transcripts  whose main theme is analysis of the masses’ silent and hidden resistance to authority without resort to violent actions.