Genres

Genre - formal-thematic type of text which serves as a basic criteria of discerning particular units and complex pieces. The following genres have been defined:
  • anecdotal biblical [bib] - a narrative which reiterates or explains a biblical account, most often with the intrusion of some entity to the story;
  • anecdotal rabbinic[rab] - a narrative which concerns the personal rabbinic encounters with the demons;
  • pragmatic advice [prag] - covers all the down-to-earth details concerning the relationships between humans and demons and boils down to the specific dos and don’ts such as do not wander alone and devoid of any source of light at night or do not sleep alone in an empty house;
  • statement [stat] - presents some general traits of a given entity and although the examples can be quite complex in terms of their contents and involve a detailed visual description or a flamboyant simile, they take a form of simple statements or assertions.
In order to maintain coherence in classification the below genre choice algorithm has been followed.

Unit - isolated part of text which is coherent in regards with its genre and at the same time remains as large as possible to accommodate this coherence. One unit occupies one verse in the database and is the basic measurement-unit.
Piece - thematically coherent fragment composed of two or more units. In the database the units constituting a piece are marked in a hue of blue.

For the older versions of this tab see the following files: