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Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. [1] This includes oral traditions such as tales, myths, legends, [a] proverbs, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. [3][4] This also includes material culture, such as traditional building styles common to the group.
American folklore encompasses the folklore that has evolved in the present-day United States mostly since the European colonization of the Americas. It also contains folklore that dates back to the Pre-Columbian era. Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales, stories, tall tales, and ...
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the veracity of a myth is not a defining criterion. [1]
A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. [1] Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the ...
Legend, typically, is a short (mono-) episodic, traditional, highly ecotypified [6] historicized narrative performed in a conversational mode, reflecting on a psychological level a symbolic representation of folk belief and collective experiences and serving as a reaffirmation of commonly held values of the group to whose tradition it belongs.
Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) [1] is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, [note 1] gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves.
In folklore, a will-o'-the-wisp, will-o'-wisp, or ignis fatuus (Latin for 'foolish flame'; [1] pl. ignes fatui), is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. The phenomenon is known in much of European folklore by a variety of names, including jack-o'-lantern, friar's lantern, and hinkypunk ...
Stories unique to the Great Plains feature buffalo, which provided the Plains peoples with food, clothing, housing and utensils. In some myths they are benign, in others fearsome and malevolent. [12] The Sun is an important deity; [13] [14] other supernatural characters include Morning Star [13] [8] [14] and the Thunderbirds. [15] [12] [16]