Translating a worldview in the longue durée: The Tale of “The Bear’s Son”

Translation is usually understood as the practice of rendering a text written in one language into another, a process that also requires taking into consideration the cultural similarities and differences entrenched in each language. In this chapter a set of European folktales, referred to collectively as the tale of “The Bear’s Son,” are analysed, focusing on the way that the interpretative framework utilised by storytellers and their audiences has changed over time. The chapter enters a terrain that has been little explored, engaging with and addressing not only the question of the role played by folktales in projecting cultural mindsets, but also their role in constructing, maintaining, and ultimately deconstructing a worldview that appears to have been grounded initially in the belief that humans descended from bears.