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English 114: Great Myths and Legends

A guide to resources for Professor Moore's Class

Welcome!

Welcome to the library guide for English 114: Great Myths and Legends!

Use the links in the table of contents to find definitions, topic overviews, books, articles, web resources, research advice, and more. Throughout the guide, you'll find links and call numbers for the resources we have in our library. Anywhere you see the icon, hover your mouse over it to find out more information about that source.

Also, all of the images scattered around the pages are links you can follow to learn more about them! If you don't find what you are looking for or need help navigating this guide, please use the Ask a GWC Librarian box on this page for library contact information. Good luck with your research!

Unicorns (Legend--Sea Calm)

Arthur B. Davies, Unicorns (Legend--Sea Calm), ca. 1906. Oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Introduction

Folklore is a basket term for “the rituals, songs, stories, legends, and popular practices handed down orally from one person to another, rather than through written transmission.”¹

People have told fictional stories as a form of entertainment for millennia, and though generally performed and passed on orally, evidence of such tales appear in some of the earliest written records from the ancient Sumerian and Egyptian cultures.  Greek tales, such as Homer’s Odyssey, were performed for centuries before being written down. Asian folktales date at least to the beginning of the first millennium BCE, if not much earlier, and exhibit influences from Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and earlier traditions.

Please see the Definitions Page for a full breakdown of the different types of folklore you will encounter.

Goldberg, Christine. “Folktale,” Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature, edited by Mary Ellen Brown and Bruce A. Rosenberg. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1998.

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