Folklore

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  Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale

  Explores the historical rise of the literary fairy tale as genre in the late seventeenth century. In his examinations of key classical fairy tales, Zipes traces their unique metamorphoses in history with stunning discoveries that reveal their ideological relationship to domination and oppression. Tales such as Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and Rumplestiltskin have become part of our everyday culture and shapers of our identities. In this lively work, Jack Zipes explores the historical rise of the literary fairy tale as genre in the late seventeenth century and examines the ideological relationship of classic fairy ...Read More

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  Sense of Place: American Regional Cultures

  Despite the homogenization of American life, areas of strong regional consciousness still persist in the United States, and there is a growing interest in regionalism among the public and among academics. In response to that interest ten folklorists here describe and interpret a variety of American regional cultures in the twentieth century. Their book is the first to deal specifically with regional culture and the first to employ the perspective of folklore in the study of regional identity and consciousness.

  The authors range widely over the United States, from the Eastern Shore to the Pacific Northwest, from the Southern Mountains ...Read More

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  The World's Eye

  Greek vases and Peruvian bottles, Chinese bronzes and African masks, Tel Brak idols and Egyptian tomb paintings—artifacts ancient and modern reveal man’s universal fascination with the eye and his awe before its mysterious powers. In this wide-ranging and richly illustrated essay Albert M. Potts considers the special properties the human mind has ascribed to the eye over the millenia and seeks out its peculiar significance as symbol.

  Amulets against the Evil Eye persist today in nearly every part of the world. Almost as pervasive is the conception of the Good Eye, itself used as a protective amulet. The Eye of ...Read More

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  The Harvest and the Reapers: Oral Traditions of Kentucky

  The oral tradition of Kentucky is one of the most rich and interesting in the nation and has attracted a number of outstanding men and women—scholars and writers, teachers and singers—who have devoted their energies to Kentucky’s folk and their ways. Some have collected examples of the state’s unique speech patterns and word usages. Others have recorded local place names and the legends that surround them, or the yarns and tall tales transmitted from one generation to the next. Musicians have sought the authentic mountain folk songs, both old and new, and gifted writers have woven details of their Kentucky ...Read More

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  Uncle Bud Long: The Birth of a Kentucky Folk Legend

  According to the scant historical records available, Uncle Bud Long, his daughter Janey, and her son Frankie lived near Clark’s Landing, Kentucky, for about twenty years early in this century. Mr. Clarke has collected the tales of the Longs’ strange ways from old-time residents of the community, both those who knew the Longs and those who inherited the stories by word of mouth. Here he skillfully weaves them into a loose narrative and, in addition, analyzes the ways in which the anecdotes have been transmuted in the process of retelling.

  This analysis of the stories of Uncle Bud reveals much ...Read More

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  Green Hills of Magic: West Virginia Folktales from Europe

  In the early years of this century, miners from nearly every country in Europe and Asia Minor migrated to West Virginia to seek employment in its great collieries. With them they brought many folktales and legends of then homelands. Ruth Ann Musick has collected some of the best and most representative of these stories—never before published in book form—in The Green Hills of Magic. In many instances, these tales were first related in family circles in the native languages of the tellers, later to be translated by their younger English-speaking descendants. Entertaining in themselves, the stories are also excellent examples ...Read More

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  The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales

  West Virginia boasts an unusually rich heritage of ghost tales. Originally West Virginians told these hundred stories not for idle amusement but to report supernatural experiences that defied ordinary human explanation. From jealous rivals and ghostly children to murdered kinsmen and omens of death, these tales reflect the inner lives—the hopes, beliefs, and fears—of a people. Like all folklore, these tales reveal much of the history of the region: its isolation and violence, the passions and bloodshed of the Civil War era, the hardships of miners and railroad laborers, and the lingering vitality of Old World traditions.

  The variety of ...Read More