Myth-Folklore 2019

The topic I have chosen for my final project is  Tigers The stories I am most interested in are The Brahmin Girl Who Married a Tiger , The Hungry Tigress , The Cat and the Tiger , and The Tiger of Chao-Cheng . In The Brahmin Girl Who Married a Tiger, an Indian tale,  a shape-shifting tiger changes into the form of a beautiful brahmin boy and wins the heart of a brahmin girl. The tiger eventually shows the girl his true form once they are married and on their way to his home in the woods. She is frightened but has a son with him, which turns out to also be a tiger. She uses a crow to send a message to her brothers who come to rescue her, tricking the tiger into being scared of them by using an ant, donkey, tree, and tub to convince the beast that they are huge, dangerous creatures. After the tiger runs off, afraid, the girl kills her tiger son and cooks it to give to her brothers and returns home with them. The tiger realizes her deceit and is distraught upon finding his so...

The four topics I am considering are Tigers, the Brothers Grimm (with a focus on the role of gold in their stories), Italian Tales (with a focus on the role of animals in these tales), and Tibetan Folktales (with a focus on felines, both large and small, in these tales). Tigers : The stories I am most interested in are The Brahmin Girl Who Married a Tiger, The Hungry Tigress, The Cat and the Tiger, and The Tiger of Chao-Cheng. I am interested in seeing how the tiger is portrayed in different cultures and time period, specifically how these portrayals may differ from each other or complicate the general idea of the tiger playing the role of villain in stories. I'm sure most will portray the tiger in a negative light, but some may not, such as The Tiger of Chao-Cheng who is portrayed as loyal to the old woman. I know very little about tigers in stories, except for the evil tiger Shere Khan in the Jungle Book. I enjoy retelling stories from different characters' view points so...