Religion, Mythology, and Folklore

Contains over 500 articles Ranging over foodways and folksongs, quiltmaking and computer lore, Pecos Bill, Butch Cassidy, and Elvis sightings, more than 500 articles spotlight folk literature, music, and crafts; sports and holidays; tall tales and legendary figures; genres and forms; scholarly approaches and theories; regions and ethnic groups; performers and collectors; writers and scholars; religious beliefs and practices.

Are there any legends about cats? Is Cinderella an English story? What is a Mumming Play? The subject of folklore covers an extremely wide field, with connections to virtually every aspect of life. It ranges from the bizarre to the seemingly mundane. Similarly, folklore is as much a featureof the modern technological age as the ancient world, of every part of the country, both urban and rural, and of every age group and occupation.Containing 1,250 entries, from dragons to Mother Goose, May Day to Michaelmas, this reference work is an absorbing and entertaining guide to English folklore. Aimed at a broad general readership, the dictionary provides an authoritative reference source on such legendary characters as The Sandman,Jack the Giant Killer, and Robin Hood, and gives entertaining and informative explanations of a wide range of subjects in folklore, from nosebleeds and wishbones to cats and hot cross buns.

Written by an international team of acclaimed folklorists, this reference text provides a cross-cultural survey of the major types and methods of inquiry in folklore.

This anthology of folk and fairy tales brings together 52 stories from a range of historical and geographic traditions. Sections group tales together by theme or juxtapose variations of individual tales, inviting comparison and analysis across cultures and genres.

If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, evolved, and spread--or why so many people cannot resist its appeal, no matter how it changes or what form it takes. In this book, renowned fairy-tale expert Jack Zipes presents a provocative new theory about why fairy tales were created and retold--and why they became such an indelible and infinitely adaptable part of cultures around the world.

The range of fairy tales stretches across great distances and time; their history is entangled with folklore and myth, and their inspiration draws on ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and fantasy, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over a long writing life, and she explores here a multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen.

An encyclopedia featuring myths, legends and irrational beliefs passed down through generations in 175 countries worldwide.

he volume defines and classifies different types of folklore and provides a wide range of examples and texts. It looks at the critical and scholarly response to Arab folklore and the place of Arab folklore in contemporary culture. Included are references to numerous print and electronic works for further reading.

Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism have been major influences on Chinese folklore tales. Events of legend and history, romance and human nature, explanations of nature and landscape, and themes of the supernatural; these are some of the explorations of Chinese myths, legends and fables.

The classic folk tales of Scotland were passed down from storyteller to storyteller, and from the first sentence they were designed to hold the attention of the listener or reader as though a spell had been cast over them, transporting them to a magical realm where mermaids and men, selkies and sailors, ogres and princesses mingle and are miraculously transformed..

Soils and national characters differ; but fairy tales are the same in plot and incidents, if not in treatment. The majority of the tales in this volume have been known in the West in some form or other, and the problem arises how to account for their simultaneous existence in farthest West and East.

Trolls lurk under bridges waiting to eat children, threaten hobbits in Middle-Earth, and invade the dungeons of Hogwarts. Often they are depicted as stupid, slow, and ugly creatures, but they also appear as comforting characters in some children’s stories or as plastic dolls with bright, fuzzy hair. Today, the name of this fantastic being from Scandinavia has found a wider reach: it is the word for the homeless in California and slang for the antagonizing and sometimes cruel people on the Internet. But how did trolls go from folktales to the World Wide Web? To explain why trolls still hold our interest, John Lindow goes back to their first appearances in Scandinavian folklore, where they were beings in nature living beside a preindustrial society of small-scale farming and fishing.