This book, first published in 1994, sets ‘repertoire against raconteur’ in order to explore one of the world’s largest collections of folk literature. The author’s findings, and his creative and synthetic methodologies, enhance greatly our understanding of the world of the legend, and especially the basic question of ‘Who tells what to whom in the form of a legend and why?’ This work is an in-depth exploration of rural Denmark, and provides us with an excellent vantage point from which to understand legends in their cultural contexts and within the lives of their tellers.

This book, first published in 1994, sets ‘repertoire against raconteur’ in order to explore one of the world’s largest collections of folk literature. The author’s findings, and his creative and synthetic methodologies, enhance greatly our understanding of the world of the legend, and especially the basic question of ‘Who tells what to whom in the form of a legend and why?’ This work is an in-depth exploration of rural Denmark, and provides us with an excellent vantage point from which to understand legends in their cultural contexts and within the lives of their tellers.

Although Brazilian scholars have collected and studied folklore since the second half of the nineteenth century, their work has gone largely unnoticed by folklorists working in other parts of the world. With the exception of anthropologists who occasionally study the folk literature of indigenous peoples in Brazil, few foreigners are familiar with, or even aware of, the kinds of folklore studies that have been undertaken in that country. This work, first published in 1994, aims to characterize the nature of Brazilian narrative studies and trends; to discuss and assess the roots of the apparent preoccupations, approaches and objectives of traditional narrative scholarship in Brazil; to examine Brazilian folklore scholarship in light of Euro-American research; and to point out the results and accomplishments of Brazilian research while simultaneously indicating possibilities for new directions in research.

" . . . Dundes has produced a work which will be useful to both students and teachers who wish to broaden their understanding of modern folklore." —Center for Southern Folklore Magazine "It is impossible ever to remain unimpressed with [Dundes'] excursuses, however much one may be in disagreement (or not) with his conclusions." —Forum for Modern Language Studies Often controversial, Alan Dundes's scholarship is always provocative, perceptive, and intelligent. His concern here is to assess the material folklorists have so painstakingly amassed and classified, to interpret folklore, and to use folklore to increase our understanding of human nature and culture.

This book presents current discussions on the concept of genre. It introduces innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to contemporary and historical genres, their roles in cultural discourse, how they change, and their relations to each other. The reader is guided into the discussion surrounding this key concept and its history through a general introduction, followed by eighteen chapters that represent a variety of discursive practices as well as analytic methods from several scholarly traditions. This volume will have wide appeal to several academic audiences within the humanities, both in Finland and abroad, and will especially be of interest to scholars of folklore, language and cultural expression.

Jason Marc Harris's ambitious book argues that the tensions between folk metaphysics and Enlightenment values produce the literary fantastic. Demonstrating that a negotiation with folklore was central to the canon of British literature, he explicates the complicated rhetoric associated with folkloric fiction. His analysis includes a wide range of writers, including James Barrie, William Carleton, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Sheridan Le Fanu, Neil Gunn, George MacDonald, William Sharp, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Hogg. These authors, Harris suggests, used folklore to articulate profound cultural ambivalence towards issues of class, domesticity, education, gender, imperialism, nationalism, race, politics, religion, and metaphysics. Harris's analysis of the function of folk metaphysics in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narratives reveals the ideological agendas of the appropriation of folklore and the artistic potential of superstition in both folkloric and literary contexts of the supernatural.