The deep forest and broad savannah, the campsites, kraals, and villages—from this immense area south of the Sahara Desert the distinguished American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams has selected ninety-five tales that suggest both the diversity and the interconnectedness of the people who live there. The storytellers weave imaginative myths of creation and tales of epic deeds, chilling ghost stories, and ribald tales of mischief and magic in the animal and human realms. Abrahams renders these ...

Folklore emphasizes those bodies of North American and European scholarship that have influenced each other most profoundly since the discipline's inception. The entries provide an introduction that facilitates the pursuit of more specialized topics and other bodies of scholarship. Topics range from such traditional subjects as ''festival'' and ''folktale'' to cutting-edge entries such as ''computer-mediated folklore'' and ''postmodernism.'' In most cases, a longer, more comprehensive essay format for entries has been favoured over shorter entries ...

With great reverence for the Bible, Dundes offers a new and exciting way to resolve some of the mysteries and contradictions that evolved during the Bible's prewritten legacy and that persists today. Using his expert knowledge of folklore, Dundes unearths and contracts multiple versions of nearly every major biblical event, including the creation of women, the flood, the ten commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, and the inscription on the Cross. Read ...

Alan Dundes, in this casebook of an anti-Semitic legend, demonstrates the power of folklore to influence thought and history. According to the blood libel legend, Jews murdered Christian infants to obtain blood to make matzah. Dundes has gathered here the work of leading scholars who examine the varied sources and elaborations of the legend. Collectively, their essays constitute a forceful statement against this false accusation. The legend is traced from the murder of William of ...

In Italian, it's referred to as "malocchio." In Spanish, it's "el ojo." And in Farsi, it's "bla band." In many cultures, primitive or sophisticated, the "evil eye" is considered to be a gaze that can harm or bewitch. This classic text on the subject, first published more than a century ago, recounts the many afflictions said to result from that stare, from the days of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, up to the late ...

Read Online : THIS CONTENT IS SHOWN ONLY TO AUTHORIZED MEMBERS. IT IS HIDDEN FROM EVERYONE ELSE. The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries The Classic Study of Leprechauns, Pixies, and Other Fairy Spirits - W.Y. Evans Wentz, Terrance McKenna END OF HIDDEN CONTENT ...

The essays of Alan Dundes virtually created the meaning of folklore as an American academic discipline. Yet many of them went quickly out of print after their initial publication in far-flung journals. Brought together for the first time in this volume compiled and edited by Simon Bronner, the selection surveys Dundes's major ideas and emphases, and is introduced by Bronner with a thorough analysis of Dundes's long career, his interpretations, and his inestimable contribution to ...