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Folklore, Myth, & Legend Subject Guide

illustration of a woman surrounded by fairies
"A Midsummer's Night," Yoshitaka Amano, Fairies, 2012.

Story Collections

  • Andersen, Hans Christian; edited by Lily Owens. The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, Avenel Books, 1981. | Internet Archive; you can also find all of his stories in this index.
  • Anonymous; translated by Seamus Heaney. Beowulf, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. | Internet Archive
  • Anonymous; translated by R. Campbell Thompson. The Epic of Gilgamesh, 1928. | Internet Sacred Text Archive
  • Anonymous; translated by Lady Charlotte Guest. Mabinogion, 1845. | Project Gutenberg
  • Anonymous; translated by Henry Adam Bellows. The Poetic Edda, Princeton University Press, 1936. | PDF
  • Bulfinch, Thomas. The Age of Fable, 1855. | Project Gutenburg
  • de France, Marie; translated by Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby. The Lais of Marie de France, Penguin, 1999. | Internet Archive
  • Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume A: The Middle Ages, W.W. Norton, 2012 | Internet Archive - links to 9th ed.
  • Grimm, Jacob & Wilhelm; edited by Maria Tatar. The Annotated Brothers Grimm, W.W. Norton, 2004. | Internet Archive
  • Grimm, Jacob & Wilhelm; translated and edited by Jack Zipes. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Bantam, 1987. | Internet Archive
  • Hamilton, Edith. Mythology, 1942. | Internet Archive
  • Homer; translated by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers. The Complete Works of Homer, Random House, 1950. | Internet Archive
  • Malory, Thomas. Le Morte d'Arthur, Project Gutenberg, 1998. | Project Gutenberg
  • Schwartz, Alvin. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Scholastic, 1981 | Internet Archive (Yes, this is technically a children's book. But the series collects a lot of classic American urban legends and folktales and is actually a great starting point for getting an idea of post-colonial American legends).
  • Sturluson, Snorri; Translated by Jesse L. Byock. The Prose Edda, Penguin, 2005. | PDF
  • Tatar, Maria, ed.. The Classic Fairy Tales, W.W. Norton, 2017 | Internet Archive

Generally speaking, a "folktale" is any story that was originally transmitted through some form of oral storytelling tradition, specifically those which have lasted through generations in some form or another. Fairy tales, myths, legends, and urban legends all fall under this umbrella. Most of what's here will primarily relate to European folklore because that's what I've had the chance to learn about so far, but I'm eager to learn more about folklore from all regions of the world and will add new collections and sources as I continue reading and learning.

Helpful Websites

American Folklore Society
USA-based organization that promotes folklore studies & researchers. Their resources page includes some neat lists of things like open access folklore projects, podcasts, etc.
ATU Index.
A complete list of all of the tale types as classified by the Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) Index.
Folklinks
An index of places where you can read various kinds of folktales online.
The Folklore Society
London-based organization dedicated to promoting folklore studies. Their site has all sorts of interesting resources and examples of how folkloristics can be applied to broader concerns.
World of Tales
Contains a comprehensive collection of folktales and classic children's stories.
painting of a woman on a boat in a lake with a crescent moon behind her
N.C. Wyeth, 1882-1945.

History & Scholarly Study

  • Norenzayan, Ara, Scott Atran, Jason Faulkner, and Mark Schaller. Memory and Mystery: The Cultural Selection of Minimally Counterintuitive Narratives, Cognitive Science, vol. 30, no. 3, 2006, pp. 531-553. | Wiley Online Library (Free Access)
  • Rogers, Patrick D. Germanic Mythology and Christian Story in the Grimms' Fairy Tales, thesis, Georgetown University, 2016. | PDF
  • Roots, Jaime W. "Making Mythology: The Role of Ancient Faith in Crafting a Unifying Narrative in Teutonic Mythology and Children's and Household Tales", Rocky Mountain Review, vol. 74, no. 2, 2020, pp. 174-198 | JSTOR
  • Stubbersfield, Joseph M, Jamshid J. Tehrani, and Emma G. Flynn. "Serial Killers, Spiders, and Cybersex: Social and Survival Information Bias in the Transmission of Urban Legends." British Journal of Psychology, vol. 106, no. 2, May 2015, pp. 288-307. | PDF

My Tbr

  • Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman's Workbook by Paula Gunn Allen
  • Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture by Bill Ellis
  • Off With Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood by Maria Tatar