Folk Narratives

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Folk Narratives

• Definitions

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Definition of Folklore

• Folklore is the body of expressive culture,
  including tales, music, dance, legends, oral
  history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs,
  customs, and so forth within a particular
  population comprising the traditions (including
  oral traditions) of that culture, subculture, or
  group. It is also the set of practices through
  which those expressive genres are shared. The
  academic and usually ethnographic study of
  folklore is sometimes called folkloristics.

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Folklore as Narrative

• ?Anecdote?a short tale narrating an interesting
  or amusing biographical incident.
• Fairy tale?
• Fable?
• Ghost story?
• Joke?
• Legend?
• Myth

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Anecdote

• a short tale narrating an interesting or amusing
  biographical incident.

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Fable

• a succinct story, in prose or verse, that
  features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or
  forces of nature which are anthropomorphized
  (given human qualities), and that illustrates a
  moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be
  expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.
• A fable differs from a parable in that the latter
  excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and
  forces of nature as actors that assume speech and
  other powers of humankind.

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Ghost Story

• any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a
  ghost, or simply takes as a premise the
  possibility of ghosts or the belief of some
  character(s) in them.
• In that sense The Tale of Genji contains ghost
  stories, and Shakespeare's Hamlet is a ghost
  story.

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Fairy Tale

• fictional story that may feature folkloric
  characters (such as fairies, goblins, elves,
  trolls, witches, giantsprincesses , and talking
  animals) and enchantments,

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Joke

• a short story or ironic depiction of a situation
  communicated with the intent of being humorous.
• Your first assignment will be to solve the oil
  crisis.

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Legend

• a story, that is probably about someone that did
  exist but has been twisted to seem more
  interesting and fascinating. This story is passed
  down generation to generation. Most legends are
  pourquoi stories.

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A pourquoi story

• also known as an origin story is a fictional
  narrative that explains why something is the way
  it is, for example why a snake has no legs, or
  why a tiger has stripes.
• Many legends and folk tales are pourquoi stories.

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Myth

• refers to a body of folklore/myths/legends that a
  particular culture believes to be true and that
  often use the supernatural to interpret natural
  events and to explain the nature of the universe
  and humanity