11/01/2021 Legend - Wikipedia

Legend
A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring
human actions perceived or believed both by teller and listeners to
have taken place within human history. Narratives in this genre may
demonstrate human values, and possess certain qualities that give
the tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive
participants, includes no happenings that are outside the realm of
"possibility," but may include miracles. Legends may be transformed
over time, in order to keep them fresh, vital, and realistic. Many
legends operate within the realm of uncertainty, never being entirely
believed by the participants, but also never being resolutely
doubted.[1]

The Brothers Grimm defined legend as "folktale historically

grounded".[2] A modern folklorist's professional definition of legend
was proposed by Timothy R. Tangherlini in 1990:[3]

Legend, typically, is a short (mono-) episodic, traditional,

highly ecotypified[4] historicized narrative performed in a
conversational mode, reflecting on a psychological level a
In this 1891 painting of Lady Godiva
symbolic representation of folk belief and collective
by Jules Joseph Lefebvre, the
experiences and serving as a reaffirmation of commonly authentic historical person is fully
held values of the group to whose tradition it belongs. submerged in the legend, presented
in an anachronistic high medieval
setting.

Contents
Etymology and origin
Christian legenda
Related concepts
Urban legend
See also
References

Etymology and origin

Legend is a loanword from Old French that entered English usage circa 1340. The Old French noun
legende derives from the Medieval Latin legenda.[5] In its early English-language usage, the word
indicated a narrative of an event. The word legendary was originally a noun (introduced in the 1510s)
meaning a collection or corpus of legends.[6][7] This word changed to legendry, and legendary became
the adjectival form.[6]

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By 1613, English-speaking Protestants began to use the word when they

wished to imply that an event (especially the story of any saint not
acknowledged in John Foxe's Actes and Monuments) was fictitious. Thus,
legend gained its modern connotations of "undocumented" and "spurious",
which distinguish it from the meaning of chronicle.[8]

In 1866, Jacob Grimm described the fairy tale as "poetic, legend historic."[9]
Early scholars such as Karl Wehrhan[10] Friedrich Ranke[11] and Will Erich
Peuckert[12] followed Grimm's example in focussing solely on the literary
narrative, an approach that was enriched particularly after the 1960s,[13] by
addressing questions of performance and the anthropological and
psychological insights provided in considering legends' social context.
Questions of categorising legends, in hopes of compiling a content-based
series of categories on the line of the Aarne–Thompson folktale index, Holger Danske, a legendary
provoked a search for a broader new synthesis. character

In an early attempt at defining some basic questions operative in

examining folk tales, Friedrich Ranke in 1925[15] characterised the
folk legend as "a popular narrative with an objectively untrue
imaginary content" a dismissive position that was subsequently
largely abandoned.[16]

Compared to the highly structured folktale, legend is comparatively

amorphous, Helmut de Boor noted in 1928.[17] The narrative content
of legend is in realistic mode, rather than the wry irony of
folktale;[18] Wilhelm Heiske[19] remarked on the similarity of motifs Lapu-Lapu, a historical figure in
in legend and folktale and concluded that, in spite of its realistic early 16th century Philippines, has
mode, legend is not more historical than folktale. been associated with numerous
legends since around the 17th
In Einleitung in der Geschichtswissenschaft (1928), Ernst Bernheim century. Among these include his
asserted that a legend is simply a longstanding rumour.[20] Gordon relationship with ally Datu Mangal
Allport credited the staying-power of some rumours to the persistent and the forces of nature which
cultural state-of-mind that they embody and capsulise;[21] thus backed Lapu-Lapu in the historical
"Urban legends" are a feature of rumour.[22] When Willian Jansen Battle of Mactan.[14]
suggested that legends that disappear quickly were "short-term
legends" and the persistent ones be termed "long-term legends", the
distinction between legend and rumour was effectively obliterated, Tangherlini concluded.[23]

Christian legenda
In the narrow Christian sense, legenda ("things to be read [on a certain day, in church]") were
hagiographical accounts, often collected in a legendary. Because saints' lives are often included in many
miracle stories, legend, in a wider sense, came to refer to any story that is set in a historical context but
that contains supernatural, divine or fantastic elements.[24]

Related concepts
Hippolyte Delehaye distinguished legend from myth: "The legend, on the other hand, has, of necessity,
some historical or topographical connection. It refers imaginary events to some real personage, or it
localizes romantic stories in some definite spot."[25]
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From the moment a legend is retold as fiction, its authentic

legendary qualities begin to fade and recede: in The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow, Washington Irving transformed a local Hudson River Valley
legend into a literary anecdote with "Gothic" overtones, which
actually tended to diminish its character as genuine legend.[26]

Stories that exceed the boundaries of "realism" are called "fables".

For example, the talking animal formula of Aesop identifies his brief
stories as fables, not legends. The parable of the Prodigal Son would
be a legend if it were told as having actually happened to a specific Giants Mata and Grifone, celebrated
son of a historical father. If it included a donkey that gave sage in the streets of Messina, Italy, the
advice to the Prodigal Son it would be a fable. second week of August, according
to a legend are founders of the
Legend may be transmitted orally, passed on person-to-person, or, Sicilian city.
in the original sense, through written text. Jacob de Voragine's
Legenda Aurea or "The Golden Legend" comprises a series of vitae
or instructive biographical narratives, tied to the liturgical calendar
of the Roman Catholic Church. They are presented as lives of the
saints, but the profusion of miraculous happenings and above all
their uncritical context are characteristics of hagiography. The
Legenda was intended to inspire extemporized homilies and
sermons appropriate to the saint of the day.[27]

Urban legend
Urban legends are a modern genre of folklore that is rooted in local The mediaeval legend of Genevieve
popular culture, usually comprising fictional stories that are often of Brabant connected her to Treves.
presented as true, with macabre or humorous elements. These
legends can be used for entertainment purposes, as well as semi-
serious explanations for seemingly-mysterious events, such as
disappearances and strange objects.

The term "urban legend," as used by folklorists, has appeared in

print since at least 1968.[28] Jan Harold Brunvand, professor of
English at the University of Utah, introduced the term to the general
public in a series of popular books published beginning in 1981.
Brunvand used his collection of legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker:
American Urban Legends & Their Meanings (1981) to make two The tale of the White Lady who
points: first, that legends and folklore do not occur exclusively in so- haunts Union Cemetery is a variant
called primitive or traditional societies, and second, that one could of the Vanishing hitchhiker legend.
learn much about urban and modern culture by studying such tales.

See also
The Matter of Britain, Arthurian legend
Legendary saga
Lists of legendary creatures

References
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1. Georges, Robert; Owens, Michael (1995). Folkloristics. United

States of America: Indiana University Press. p. 7. ISBN 0-253-
32934-5.
2. Norbert Krapf, Beneath the Cherry Sapling: Legends from
Franconia (New York: Fordham University Press) 1988, devotes
his opening section to distinguishing the genre of legend from
other narrative forms, such as fairy tale; he "reiterates the
Grimms' definition of legend as a folktale historically grounded",
according to Hans Sebald's review in German Studies Review
13.2 (May 1990), p 312.
Bahay na Pula in the Philippines is
3. Tangherlini, "'It Happened Not Too Far from Here...': A Survey of
believed to be haunted by all those
Legend Theory and Characterization" Western Folklore 49.4
who were murdered and raped by
(October 1990:371–390) p. 385.
the Japanese army within the
4. That is to say, specifically located in place and time. property during World War II.
5. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "legend"
6. Harper, Douglas. "legendary" (https://www.etymonline.com/?term
=legendary). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 10 June
2013.
7. "legendry" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legendr
y). Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
8. Patrick Collinson. Elizabethans, "Truth and Legend: The Veracity
of John Foxe's Book of Martyrs" 2003:151–77, balances the
authentic records and rhetorical presentation of Foxe's Acts and
Monuments, itself a mighty force of Protestant legend-making.
Sherry L. Reames, The Legenda Aurea: a reexamination of its
paradoxical history, 1985, examines the "Renaissance verdict"
on the Legenda, and its wider influence in skeptical approaches
to Catholic hagiography in general.
9. Das Märchen ist poetischer, die Sage, historischer, quoted at the
commencement of Tangherlini's survey of legend scholarship
(Tangherlini 1990:371)
10. Wehrhan Die Sage (Leipzig) 1908.
11. Ranke, "Grundfragen der Volkssagen Forshung", in Leander
Petzoldt (ed.), Vergleichende Sagenforschung 1971:1–20, noted
by Tangherlini 1990.
12. Peuckert , Sagen (Munich: E Schmidt) 1965.
13. This was stimulated in part, Tangherlini suggests, by the 1962
congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative
Research.
14. "Lapu-Lapu in Folk Tradition" by Resil B. Mojares, University of
San Carlos
15. Ranke, "Grundfragen der Volkssagenforschung", Niederdeutsche
Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 3 (1925, reprinted 1969)

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16. Charles L. Perdue Jt., reviewing Linda Dégh and Andrew

Vászony's essay "The crack on the red goblet or truth and the
modern legend" in Richard M. Dorson, ed. Folklore in the Modern
World, (The Hague: Mouton)1978, in The Journal of American
Folklore 93 No. 369 (July–September 1980:367), remarked on
Ranke's definition, criticised in the essay, as a "dead issue". A
more recent examination of the balance between oral
performance and literal truth at work in legends forms Gillian
Bennett's chapter "Legend: Performance and Truth" in Gillian
Bennett and Paul Smith, eds. Contemporary Legend (Garland)
1996:17–40.
17. de Boor, "Märchenforschung", Zeitschrift für Deutschkunde 42
1928:563–81.
18. Lutz Röhrich, Märchen und Wirklichkeit: Eine volkskundliche
Untersuchung (Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag) 1956:9–26.
19. Heiske, "Das Märchen ist poetischer, die Sage, historischer:
Versuch einer Kritik", Deutschunterricht14 1962:69–75..
20. Bernheim, Einleitung in der Geschichtswissenschaft(Berlin: de
Gruyter) 1928.
21. Allport, The Psychology of Rumor (New York: Holt, Rinehart)
1947:164.
22. Bengt af Klintberg, "Folksägner i dag" Fataburen 1976:269–96.
23. Jansen, "Legend: oral tradition in the modern experience",
Folklore Today, A Festschrift for William Dorson (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press) 1972:265–72, noted in Tangherlini
1990:375.
24. Literary or Profane Legends (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/0
9121a.htm). Catholic Encyclopedia
25. Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction
to Hagiography (1907) (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/del
ehaye-legends.html), Chapter I: Preliminary Definitions
26. Encyclopaedia Britannica (2006). "Fable". Britannica Concise
Encyclopedia. Chicago, Illinois: Encyclopedia Britannica. p. 652.
ISBN 9781593392932.
27. Timothy R. Tangherlini, "'It Happened Not Too Far from Here...':
A Survey of Legend Theory and Characterization" Western
Folklore 49.4 (October 1990:371–390). A condensed survey with
extensive bibliography.
28. Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed. 1989, entry for "urban legend,"
citing R. M. Dorson in T. P. Coffin, Our Living Traditions, xiv. 166
(1968). See also William B. Edgerton, The Ghost in Search of
Help for a Dying Man, Journal of the Folklore Institute, Vol. 5, No.
1. pp. 31, 38, 41 (1968).

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