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- Dictionaryfolk tale
noun
- 1. a story originating in popular culture, typically passed on by word of mouth.
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A folk tale is a story that parents have passed on to their children through speech over many years. Learn more about the meaning, origin, and types of folk tales with examples from literature and Wikipedia.
- English (US)
FOLK TALE meaning: 1. a story that parents have passed on to...
- Polski
folk tale definicja: 1. a story that parents have passed on...
- Portuguese Translation
folk tale translate: história popular. Learn more in the...
- Translate to Mandarin Chinese
FOLK TALE translate: 民间传说，民间故事. Learn more in the Cambridge...
- Traditional
FOLK TALE translate: 民間傳說，民間故事. Learn more in the Cambridge...
- Pronunciation in English
folk tale pronunciation. How to say folk tale. Listen to the...
- Folk Music
FOLK MUSIC definition: 1. traditional music from a...
- Folk Rock
FOLK ROCK definition: 1. music that is a mixture of...
- English (US)
Folktales are stories in the oral tradition, or tales that people tell each other out loud, rather than stories in written form. They're closely related to many storytelling traditions, including fables, myths, and fairy tales.
A folktale is a story made up and handed down by the common people, often with no known author or origin. Learn more about the word history, examples, and synonyms of folktale from Merriam-Webster dictionary.
A folktale is a traditional story that people of a particular region or group repeat among themselves. Learn more about the meaning, pronunciation, and usage of folktale with examples from the Cambridge English Corpus.
- Overview
- Folktale
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
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 from legend 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.
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, Aesop’s 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 place—a never-never land—and filled with unrealistic and often supernatural creatures, there exists no good English word, so that usually scholars use the German term Märchen. 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 thieves—“Peter 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 risqué 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 erotic—tales of seduction, realistic descriptions of normal or abnormal sexual activity, and scatological stories of great indecency.
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 from legend 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.
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, Aesop’s 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 place—a never-never land—and filled with unrealistic and often supernatural creatures, there exists no good English word, so that usually scholars use the German term Märchen. 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 thieves—“Peter 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 risqué 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 erotic—tales of seduction, realistic descriptions of normal or abnormal sexual activity, and scatological stories of great indecency.
A folktale is an oral fictional tale that can travel across cultures and languages. Learn about the different types, motifs, and origins of folktales from various regions and periods.
- Stith Thompson
A folktale is a traditional story that people of a particular region or group repeat among themselves. Learn more about the meaning, pronunciation and usage of folktale with examples from literature and sources on the web.
A folk tale is a story or legend that originates among a people and becomes part of an oral tradition. The Free Dictionary provides various definitions, synonyms, translations and related words for folk tale.
