1. Bellringer 9/15
What does the term “story telling” mean to you? What words or ideas come to mind?
Describe how storytelling surfaces in your life. Give a specific example.

2. Folktales, Myths, and Legends

3. Defining Folklore
Folk – derived from a Germanic noun “folka” meaning “people”
Lore - all traditions about a particular subject that have been accumulated over time through experience
Folklore: stories, music, dance, lessons, and customs that contain the traditions of a particular group.

4. It’s Everywhere
Folklore is all around us influencing the way we do everything in our lives from what we name our children to the games we teach them to play.
People have been changing and adding to folklore for generations

5. Folktales Stories that are: pure fiction
have no particular location in time or place.
Usually no known author

6. The Oral Tradition
Passed by word of mouth from one person to the next, one generation to the next. Never told the same twice

7. Oral Tradition Continued
Folktales, myths, and legends represent the wishes, hopes, and fears of many people rather than the concerns of one writer.
They deal with universal human dilemmas that span across different ages, culture, and geography.

8. History of oral folktales
The oldest documentation of folktales as oral tradition is 202 AD in China.
The purpose of these tales was to teach lessons to warriors and other adults.
The next major shift was in France in the 1700s. People began to write the oral folktales down, but they were still for adults.

9. History Continued…
In Germany around 1800’s, the Brothers Grimm collected folktales and modified them for a younger audience (children).

10. History Continued…
Dutch writer Hans Christian Anderson also published a collection of folktales and fairytales for children in 1835.
These tales were still quite bloody and violent.
They were meant to serve as a warning for children on what would happen if they didn’t behave.

11. History Continued…
The next major shift occurred in the 1940’s with Walt Disney.
Disney took these same tales and sanitized them into the ‘classic’ tales that we know today.
He took out the violence and darker aspects of the stories.
Examples: Little Mermaid, Cinderella

12. Folktales Recap All folktales have the following in common:
No author
Fictional
No specific setting
Passed on by word of mouth
Types of folktales:
Parables
Fables
Fairytales
Tall Tales
Urban (modern) lore

13. Folktales: Parables and Fables
A brief story that teaches a moral or religious lesson.
Characters are everyday people.
Realistic story that seems probable and takes place in familiar setting of life.
Fables:
The shortest of folktales.
Features animals, mythic creatures, and plants as characters with human qualities.
Teaches a moral lesson.

14. Examples Fable Parable The Boy who Cried wolf Tortoise and the Hare:
“Tell the truth”
Fable
Tortoise and the Hare:
“Slow and steady wins the race.”

15. Folktales: Fairytales
Feature creatures like fairies, elves, goblins, gnomes, trolls, and dwarves.
Add the element of magic and fantasy to stories.
Often involve a far fetched plot.
Closest cousin to the short story.

16. Folktales: Tall Tales
American folktales: Borrows some elements of a legend
Bigger than life – over exaggerated.
Comes out of Old West.
Examples:
Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill

17. Folktales: Urban folklore
Modern Folklore: aren’t true but are passed on as though they are true.
Are sometimes repeated in news stories, and in recent years, by .
Prey on people’s fears
Ex: The Kidney Heist, Bloody Mary, Bigfoot, Sewer alligator.

18. Myths and Legends

19. Myths
Symbolic stories explaining how the world and human kind came to be.
Characters are usually gods or supernatural heroes.
Example: Baldur, Great Flood, creation stories.

20. Legends
Stories that are based on historical fact – have element of supernatural.
Characters are always saints, kings, heroes.
Always associated with a specific time or place.
Hero represents cultural values. Hero doesn’t always win in the end.
Ex: King Arthur, Robin Hood, Fountain of Youth

21. Recap Form Belief Time Place Attitude Character Folktale Fiction
Any time
Any place
Secular:
Moral Lessons
Humans or animals
Myth
Symbolic
Remote past
Different world: Other or earlier
Sacred
Nonhuman Often Gods or super-natural
Legend
Believed to be factual
Recent Past
Earth – world of today
Secular or Sacred
Humans: Kings, heroes, saints.