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What are folklore tales?
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What are folktales & culture?
Why are folktales important?
Folktales can be used to help children study other cultural traditions, model positive character traits, learn about the consequences of decision making, and even develop stronger reading skills.
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- 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 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.
- Stith Thompson
Oct 22, 2019 · Contrary to myths, which are often sacred and have the origins of a people or the world as their core, folktales are a collection of fictional tales about people or animals. Superstitious beliefs make up a big portion of folklore.
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folk literature, the lore (traditional knowledge and beliefs) of cultures having no written language. It is transmitted by word of mouth and consists, as does written literature, of both prose and verse narratives, poems and songs, myths, dramas, rituals, proverbs, riddles, and the like.
- Stith Thompson
Nov 15, 2021 · How do folktales help people? Since folktales pass on beliefs and values. They provide people with a way to connect with their culture and to understand themselves. Folktales give a sense of a group of people’s history and experience. In fact, folktales help people to move forward through their own experiences and to relate their life to others.
Folklore lets people escape from repressions imposed upon them by society. Folklore validates culture, justifying its rituals and institutions to those who perform and observe them. Folklore is a pedagogic device which reinforces morals and values and builds wit. Folklore is a means of applying social pressure and exercising social control.
Get comfy, because we’re diving deep into the role of folklore in society, the fire it sparks in cultural identity, and why oral traditions are low-key powerful in today’s fast-paced, swipe-left world.
