1. Folktales What is a folktale? Characteristics of folktales
Trickster Tales

2. Development of folktales
Stories that began with oral storytelling, passed down through the ages
Explore the fears of the culture
Universal truths that tells what happens to people who do not obey the group traditions

3. Characteristics of Folktales
simple and straightforward
includes magic or supernatural powers
characters represent human qualities such as good, evil, wisdom, foolishness, laziness
problems and conflicts are clear
ending usually happy or satisfying
good usually rewarded, evil punished

4. Characters Characters are usually static Hero and/or heroine are young
Hero is honorable, courageous, unselfish, and caring
Heroine is fair, kind charitable, and caring
Often involve animals with human characteristics

5. Plot characteristics often include:
Groupings of three characters, tasks, and/or events
Good and evil characters who are everyday people or animals and have a problem to solve
Magical beings and /or objects
Spells, enchantments, or magical transformations
Phrases are repeated. For example: “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…”.
Happy endings or satisfying endings

6. Trickster Tales The protagonist (or trickster) is clever and devious
Causes problems for another
Usually unpunished
Different cultures have specific tricksters

7. Tricksters from Different Cultures

8. “Sketches,” or what we have come to call short stories
WASHINGTON IRVING
( )
“Sketches,” or what we have come to call short stories
Distinctly American settings and characters
Preserved in writing the early folktales of the Dutch settlers in the Adirondacks of New York state
Examples: “Rip Van Winkle,” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and “The Devil and Tom Walker”

9. Joel Chandler Harris
Gathered the dialect tales he had heard in his childhood told by slaves
Trickster tales in which the enslaved secretly outwit their masters
!ntroduced Americans to the basic patterns and rhythms of southern African-American speech.