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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Origins and development
Characteristics of folk literature
Techniques of folk literature
Regional and ethnic manifestations
Major forms of folk literature
Study, collection, and preservation
Folktale
The oral fictional tale, from whatever ultimate origin, is practically universal both in time and place.
Certain peoples tell very simple stories and others tales of great complexity, but the basic pattern of
tale-teller and audience is found everywhere and as far back as can be learned. Differing
fromlegend or tradition, which is usually believed, the oral fictional tale gives the storyteller absolute
freedom as to credibility so long as he stays within the limits of local taboos and tells tales that
please.
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A folktale travels with great ease from one storyteller to another. Since a particular story is
characterized by its basic pattern and by narrative motifs rather than by its verbal form, it passes
language boundaries without difficulty. The spread of a folktale is determined rather by large culture
areas, such as North American Indian, Eurasian, Central and Southern African, Oceanic, or South
American. And with recent increasing human mobility many tales, especially of Eurasian origin, have
disregarded even these culture boundaries and have gone with new settlers to other continents.
In many preliterate cultures folktales are hardly to be distinguished from myths, since, especially in
tales of tricksters and heroes, they presuppose a background of belief about tribal origins and the
relation of men and gods. Conscious fictions, however, enter even into such stories. Animals abound
here whether in their natural form or anthropomorphized so that they seem sometimes men and
sometimes beasts. Adventure stories, exaggerations, marvels of all kinds such as other world
journeys, and narratives of marriage or sexual adventure, usually between human beings and
animals, are common. Much rarer, contrary to the views of earlier students, are explanatory stories.
Tales of this description are especially characteristic of Africa, Oceania, and the South American
Indians.
In much of the world, especially Europe and Asia, the folktale deals with a greater variety of
incidents than just described. In the course of time folktale scholars have given most attention to this
area and have classified these stories so that the vast collections of them in manuscripts or books
can be referred to with exactness.
All readers of such collections as those of Grimm will easily recall examples of tales of speaking
animals. These may be old, Aesops fables or parts of the medieval Reynard epic, but most of them
are based on some ancient oral tradition. Such animal stories are especially numerous in eastern
Europe. But better-known perhaps are the ordinary folktales that deal with humans and their
adventures. For these tales, usually laid in a highly imaginative time and placea never-never
landand filled with unrealistic and often supernatural creatures, there exists no good English word,
so that usually scholars use the German term Mrchen. Here belong The Dragon Slayer, The
Danced-Out Shoes, the Swan-Maiden tales, Cupid and Psyche, Snow White, Cinderella,
Faithful John, Hansel and Gretel, and the like. Here also belong certain stories with religious or
romantic motivation and tales of robbers and thievesPeter at the Gate of Heaven, The Clever
Peasant Daughter, Rhampsinitus. A major division of this classification of tales deals with jests
and anecdotes. Examples are the many stories of numskulls, of clever rascals, and tall tales filled
with exaggerations or lies. Finally come formula tales like The House that Jack Built.
Among jokes and anecdotes a number are risqu or actually obscene. The indexes of the
classification have included only those occurring in the published regional surveys. These surveys,
and the books and manuscripts on which they have been based, have been subject to severe editing
in order to avoid social or even legal offense. Some of the older anthropologists thought to avoid the
eyes of the nonscholar by writing such tales in Latin, but generations since have been much less
squeamish. Folk stories now appear in print covering the gamut of the erotictales of seduction,
realistic descriptions of normal or abnormal sexual activity, and scatological stories of great
indecency.
This index of tale types fits the region for which it was planned and is constantly being improved and
expanded, but it was never designed to cover the world. The Eurasian types are usually
recognizable in any part of the globe, and for them this type index is valuable. But for use with
stories on a worldwide basis something less formal is needed, a classification of the possible or
likely narrative motifs, minute or extended, and wherever found. Such a motif index has in fact
proved useful outside of the Eurasian area, wherever comparative studies are undertaken, for
parallels or analogues in simple motifs occur even in far distant places, often presenting extremely
puzzling problems.
By use of such indexes and from the labours of many scholars, much material for examination of the
folktale is available. These studies have been pursued since the 18th century, though until about
1900 most of them were premature attempts to answer the general question of where folktales come
from. Eventually it became clear that no satisfactory solution is available but that every tale has its
own history and can be studied only with laborious attention to detail.
In contrast to a literary story, with its standard text and author living in a definite time and place, the
folktale is anonymous. Its originators have long been forgotten and it exists in many versions, all
equally valid. Instead of being fixed like a literary document, it is in continual flux. But, with hundreds
of versions of a particular tale available for study, it is possible to establish certain norms of plot
structure and to point with some assurance to the varieties of subtypes that give clues to its life
history. Such an analytic study of these hundreds of versions usually results in some hypothesis
about the original form of the plot and the passage the tale has taken through time and space. In this
way some 30 or 40 of the more complicated stories have been studied.
These geographic and historical investigations depend on the fact that the plot of the tale is complex
enough to admit of really analytic study. For simpler stories and anecdotes, scholars have had to be
content with less exact methods, usually resulting in nothing more than accounts of their distribution
and the known facts of their history.
Most of the attention of students of folktales during the 20th century was given to historical questions
and to preparing the apparatus for studying themcollecting, with ever improved techniques,
arranging and archiving materials from manuscripts or books, and indexing types and motifs, so as
to make collections even in remote or difficult idioms available to the serious investigator. But the
folktale also has given rise to studies that are not strictly historical.
The attempts during the 19th century to find hidden meanings in tales were generally based upon
the theory that they were broken-down myths and had lost their original meanings through linguistic
misunderstanding. The result was that this original meaning was always found to be some conflict
between weather or seasonal phenomena (winter, summer; clouds, sunshine; etc.). This type of
interpretation is now out of fashion and has given place sometimes to explanations based upon
ancient rituals or to some variety of psychoanalytic treatment. Though both of these possible
sources of folk literature merit examination, the resultant interpretations have usually been merely
astonishing to those acquainted with the actual history of the tales studied.
A much more fruitful approach to an investigation of folktales has been the studies of the tellers of
stories and their audiences. From these has come an appreciation of the way in which folk literature
is carried on in a tradition. A great deal more may be expected from such investigations, usually
based on an intimate knowledge of the living lore of a single people.
Structural studies, especially of the folktale, have been engaging the attention of more and more
scholars. Though particular plots may occur over large parts of the world, the form and literary style
of the narrative is likely to be traditional within certain historical or geographic limits. The direction
and strategy of these studies of structure are still unclear, but progress is being made.
Generally folktales are considered both by tellers and listeners as purely fictional. The line, however,
between belief and unbelief is vague and varies from culture to culture and even from person to
person, and even in the most sophisticated societies legends of strange things from the past or
present continue being told and are usually believed.
Stories about marvelous creatures are worldwide. Often these are merely mentioned or described
and the belief in their existence is taken for granted. Frequently, however, there are circumstantial
accounts of meetings with them, which result in adventures pleasant or distressing. With such
creatures it is sometimes hard to tell whether we are dealing with a fictional story such as that of
thedragon slayer of the typical European fairy tale or with a legend actually believed, such as that
of St. George and the dragon. Although people throughout the world believe these stories to varying
degrees, there exists everywhere a remarkable resemblance among these supernatural creatures.
The dragon, for example, in something of its characteristic serpent or crocodile form, is of great
importance in China as well as in Europe and is represented in both places as a guardian of great
treasure. Hardly less well known is the unicorn, and various combinations of man and beast such as
the centaur and the minotaur have been a part of the legends of the Old World and occasionally of
the New. Giant birds carrying men off in the claws, the phoenix reviving from its own ashes, flying
horses carrying men through the air, sirens, mermaids and mermen, and unbelievable creatures
resembling these appear in traditions all over the world. There are treasure animals of all kinds, not
only the goose that lays the golden egg but the cow that furnishes treasure from its ear. The horse
may warn the hero of danger or may determine which of two roads he should take. Important
building sites are said to have been determined by the actions of a wise animal. Speaking animals,
of course, figure prominently in all folk literature and even in such literary forms as the fable. Animals
may speak to each other on Christmas Eve, or they may have governments and elect kings or
celebrate weddings. These are only a few of the traditions current with a large part of humankind.
The relation between the animal and the human is very close in all folk literature. In the preliterate
cultures of the American Indians, the Pacific Islanders, or the Central Africans, the culture heroes
who are responsible for the good and the bad in the life of the tribe may upon one occasion appear
as animals and upon another as men. Such was true of the ancient gods of Egypt or Greece. The
question whether Coyote of the American Indian tribes is animal or human apparently makes no
difference to those who tell stories about him.
Aside from these semidivine creatures, now animal or bird or man as they wish, supernatural and ill-
defined creatures, much more difficult to visualize, are also common. Fairies or their counterparts
appear in the legends of a good part of the world. It is hard to define them, for in one place they will
appear in full human size, in another as little creatures inhabiting mounds or caves or living under
the roots of trees. In some countries they are benevolent creatures, helpful to men and women. They
reward human services but punish misdeeds. They marry or consort with human beings. In some
traditions they are malevolent creatures, and meetings with them always bring disaster or bad luck.
Almost every country has produced its own variety of helpful and harmful creatures. Stories of the
activity of witches and devils, or water spirits and the supernatural guardians of mountains or trees
vary in details from land to land, but many of the incidents related about them are easily transferred
from one to another. Stories of visits to quite other supernatural realms, fairyland, for example, may
be told in all their details in Russia or Greece. Giants are usually considered to be ogres of one kind
or another but they may also be considered the most stupid of all beings and may be the subjects of
hundreds of numskull anecdotes. Underground creatures like the dwarfs in Snow White are usually
helpful and kindly, but other underground creatures bring only disaster.
The widespread belief in the return of the dead has resulted in many stories of encounters
withghosts or of actual resurrection. These stories differ greatly in various parts of the world and are
much influenced by the current religious ideas. It is likely that in the whole world of traditional
literature the belief in ghosts has survived longest.
Traditions of historic characters have a tendency to repeat themselves from land to land and,
although they are told as facts, may form as definite patterns as any fictional folktale. Such stories as
Joseph and Potiphars wife or the exposure and ultimate return of the hero appear in many places.
The expected return of King Arthur from Avalon or of Barbarossa from his cavern are only two
examples of a widespread motif of this kind.
It is difficult and perhaps impossible to distinguish the explanatory legend from the myth. Tales
explaining the origins of customs or of the shape or nature of various animals and plants, of such
distant objects as the stars, or even of the world itself often ascribe such origins to the action of
some ancient animal or to some magic transformation. These are often connected with stories of the
gods or demigods and may even be a part of the religious beliefs of those who tell them.
Generally, legends and traditions of this kind are simple in their form and contain only a single motif
or at most two or three. The problem of proper classification for the purpose of studying these has
proved very difficult, for while the materials of these legends and traditions show many interesting
parallels and resemblances, they vary greatly from place to place. The relation of these stories to
actual history, to mythology, and to the fictional folktale is of much interest to students of folk
literature.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/212253/folk-tale


While common English usage often equates "myth" with "falsehood," scholars use the term
slightly differently. A myth is a traditional tale of deep cultural significance to a people in
terms of etiology, eschatology, ritual practice, or models of appropriate and inappropriate
behavior. The myth often (but not always) deals with gods, supernatural beings, or ancestral
heroes. The culture creating or retelling the myth may or may not believe that the myth
refers to literal or factual events, but it values the mythic narrative regardless of its historical
authenticity for its (conscious or unconscious) insights into the human condition or the
model it provides for cultural behavior. See also folklore,legend, mythography, mythos,
and mythology.

http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_M.html
14 March, 2014.
LEGEND (Latin, legendus, "that which ought to be read"): As J. A. Cuddon puts it, a
legend is "a story or narrative that which lies somewhere between myth and historical fact
and which, as a rule, is about a particular figure or person" (484). It is a traditional narrative
often focusing on a specific location or specific historical figure. Like the myth, a legend
often provides an etiological narrative, and it often fills in gaps in historical records. Unlike
myths, legends usually do not involve powerful gods or world-altering supernatural events--
though they can to a small degree. Famous examples of legends are the legend of Faust, the
Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, King Arthur, Skandarbeg, and Pecos Bill. Often real
historical figures like Salvatore Giuliano and Che Guevara attract legends in their wake.
Often tales that were originally myths about deities can devolve into legends, such as might
be the case with several Arthurian legends. On the other hand, narratives that start as
historical legends can also eventually turn into full-fledged cultural myths themselves, as
Alfred Lyall has demonstrated.





Fairy tales, myths, legends, and folklore are terms which may seem to mean the same thing: fanciful
tales. This conception is seemingly validated by the fact that the terms are often used
interchangeably. While it's true that the terms may refer to bodies of writing that are related at their
most basic level as stories, they each present a unique reader experience. Here's what they mean...
Myth
A myth is a traditional story, which may describe the origins of the world and/or of a people. A myth is
an attempt to explain mysteries, supernatural events, and cultural traditions. Sometimes sacred in
nature, a myth can involve gods or other creatures.And, a myth represents reality in dramatic ways.
Many cultures have their own versions of common myths, which contain archetypal images and
themes. Myth criticism is used to analyze these threads in literature.A prominent name in myth
criticism is Northrop Frye.
Read more about myth:
Mythology
Folklore/Folktale
Whereas myth has at its core the origins of a people, and is often sacred, folklore is a collection of
fictional tales about people and/or animals. Folktales describe how the main character copes with the
events of everyday life, and the tale may involve crisis or conflict. Superstitions and unfounded beliefs
are important elements in the folklore tradition. The study of folklore is called folkloristics.
Here are some additional resources:
Folklore Academic Programs
Folklore & Folk tales
Legend
A legend is a story purported to be historical in nature, but without substantiation. Prominent
examples include: King Arthur, Blackbeardand Robin Hood. Where evidence of the existence of actual
historical figures exists, figures like King Richardare legends due in large part to the many stories that
have been created about them.
Legend also refers to anything that inspires a body of stories, or anything of lasting importance or
fame. The story is handed down from earlier times, but will continue to evolve with time.