What is Folk Literature?
MA, English Literature (University College London)
Date Published: 10.06.2024,
Last Updated: 10.06.2024
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Introducing folk literature
The history of folk literature is rich, vast, and varied. It encompasses the entirety of human history, and includes the very first stories humans told each other to make sense of the world around them. As part of folklore, which may be understood as “the knowledge of the people,” folk literature usually refers to the narratives and stories of a particular group, culture, or tradition that has been passed down the generations. Folk literature was not originally written down — instead, it was an oral form of literature which developed with each retelling. In this way, folk literature formed (and continues to form) a living part of a community’s culture, tradition, and identity. Although folk literature may be written down at a later date, it’s original oral nature remains key:
Almost from the beginning, the most accepted characteristic of folklore—whether conceived of as knowledge, thought, or art—has been its transmission by oral means. In order for an item to qualify as folklore, the prime prerequisite is that it have been in oral circulation and passed from one person to another without the aid of any written texts. […] The basic assumption is that this particular form of transmission introduces some distinct qualities into the materials that would be lost otherwise. (Dan Ben-Amos, Folklore Concepts, 2020)
Dan Ben-Amos
Almost from the beginning, the most accepted characteristic of folklore—whether conceived of as knowledge, thought, or art—has been its transmission by oral means. In order for an item to qualify as folklore, the prime prerequisite is that it have been in oral circulation and passed from one person to another without the aid of any written texts. […] The basic assumption is that this particular form of transmission introduces some distinct qualities into the materials that would be lost otherwise. (Dan Ben-Amos, Folklore Concepts, 2020)
Folk literature has appeared in many different narrative forms throughout history — from poems and songs, to prose, verse, and even proverbs. Many of the world’s famous myths, legends, and fairy tales can trace their origin to folk literature. Traditional folk tales such as “Cinderella” and “Little Red Riding Hood,” for example, have become famous mainstays of our collective imagination.
Folk literature is part of the wider category of cultural expression known as folklore, which includes everything from folk rituals to traditional dances and customs. We may instinctively think that, in the modern world, folklore no longer has a dominant place in culture. But, as Martha C. Sims and Martine Stephens argue, folklore is closely entangled with our lives in ways we might not expect:
Folklore is many things, and it's almost impossible to define succinctly. […] Yes, folklore is folk songs and legends. It's also quilts, Boy Scout badges, high school marching band initiations, jokes, online avatars, chain letters, nicknames, holiday food, and many other things you might or might not expect. Folklore exists in cities, suburbs, and rural villages; in families, work groups, and residents of college dormitories. Folklore is present in many kinds of informal communication, whether verbal (oral and written texts), customary (behaviors and rituals), or material (physical objects). It exists in the physical world and in virtual settings online. It involves values, traditions, and ways of thinking and behaving. It's about art. It's about people and the way people learn. It helps us learn who we are and how to derive meaning from the world around us. (Living Folklore, 2011)
Martha C. Sims and Martine Stephens
Folklore is many things, and it's almost impossible to define succinctly. […] Yes, folklore is folk songs and legends. It's also quilts, Boy Scout badges, high school marching band initiations, jokes, online avatars, chain letters, nicknames, holiday food, and many other things you might or might not expect. Folklore exists in cities, suburbs, and rural villages; in families, work groups, and residents of college dormitories. Folklore is present in many kinds of informal communication, whether verbal (oral and written texts), customary (behaviors and rituals), or material (physical objects). It exists in the physical world and in virtual settings online. It involves values, traditions, and ways of thinking and behaving. It's about art. It's about people and the way people learn. It helps us learn who we are and how to derive meaning from the world around us. (Living Folklore, 2011)
Sims and Stephens argue that folklore is not “primitive,” or the sole preserve of cultures from the past, but a living, breathing, and essential part of all our lives: “folklore is a way of understanding people and the wide range of creative ways we express who we are and what we value and believe” (2011).
Amid the vast body of folklore that exists, then, folk literature refers to its specifically verbal and narrative aspects — stories, myths, legends, fables, poems, songs, and more. In the following guide, we will pick out some key examples of folk literature, and explore its continued relevance in today’s world.
The rise of folklore studies
In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, folklore steadily increased in popularity, with those who studied it becoming known as folklorists. In Folklore: The Basics, Simon J. Bronner outlines the philosophical background to this shift:
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, “traditionary lore” identified with folk song, poetry, and narrative (such as the famous fairy tales of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood, published by Giambattista Basile in 1636 and Charles Perrault in France in 1697) became important to European “Romantic nationalist” philosophers such as German writer Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) who in his theory of Volksgeist (literally “spirit of the people” in German) made claims for national identity, harmony with nature, and spiritual existence growing out of the rootedness and artistry of peasant folk culture […]. (2016)
Simon J. Bronner
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, “traditionary lore” identified with folk song, poetry, and narrative (such as the famous fairy tales of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood, published by Giambattista Basile in 1636 and Charles Perrault in France in 1697) became important to European “Romantic nationalist” philosophers such as German writer Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) who in his theory of Volksgeist (literally “spirit of the people” in German) made claims for national identity, harmony with nature, and spiritual existence growing out of the rootedness and artistry of peasant folk culture […]. (2016)
With modern industrialization increasingly encroaching upon traditional, pastoral ways of life, the response of Romanticism was a renewed focus on nature, spirituality, community, and folklore:
The Romantic movement brought with it admiration for the people who worked on the land and a respect for the vernacular language they spoke. It also brought a love of nature and its beneficence, of the indigenous, of the folk and their spoken stories. (Gioia Timpanelli, “Stories and Storytelling, Italian and Italian American,” in The Italian American Heritage, 2021)
Edited by Pellegrino D'Acierno
The Romantic movement brought with it admiration for the people who worked on the land and a respect for the vernacular language they spoke. It also brought a love of nature and its beneficence, of the indigenous, of the folk and their spoken stories. (Gioia Timpanelli, “Stories and Storytelling, Italian and Italian American,” in The Italian American Heritage, 2021)
The preservation of folk tales was a key part of this mission, and the Brothers Grimm were inspired to “produce volumes on German folktales based upon the collecting of an array of artistic material (beliefs, verses, and legends as well as fairy tales) as told by Das Volk or the common people (peasants and artisans who constitute the core of German peoplehood)” (Bronner, 2016). As Timpanelli explains,
The old ways were losing ground, and so it is no wonder that there was a great interest in collecting the old folktales before the oral tradition disappeared forever with the deaths of the last tellers. (2021)
Folk tales such as those collected by the Grimms would become hugely influential in the years that followed — and, crucially, these tales were now imbued with authentic folk voices:
They were made by people who had themselves heard the stories and had been forever impressed by them. Previously the tales had been turned into literary retellings. Now men and women believed that the ancestors’ simple tales were worthy to stand on the page starkly as they were told. For the first time, we had the words of the folk. (Timpanelli, 2021)
As the nineteenth century developed, the influence of folklore (as well as its academic study) continued to grow. Figures such as William Thoms, the writer and editor, were crucial here. As Bronner outlines,
Thoms and others concerned about the rupture with the pastoral past caused by the upsurge of industrialism, the status of spirituality and artistry with the rage for scientism […], and the expansion of empires over diverse cultures in the nineteenth century, proposed folklore as a concept as well as a rubric to address tradition-centered communities and imaginative expressions that appeared to defy the wave of modernism washing over industrializing countries of Europe. (2016)
Simon J. Bronner
Thoms and others concerned about the rupture with the pastoral past caused by the upsurge of industrialism, the status of spirituality and artistry with the rage for scientism […], and the expansion of empires over diverse cultures in the nineteenth century, proposed folklore as a concept as well as a rubric to address tradition-centered communities and imaginative expressions that appeared to defy the wave of modernism washing over industrializing countries of Europe. (2016)
Thoms popularized the term “folklore” itself, and spearheaded the folklore movement in Britain. Bronner explains that,
In response to Thoms’s call in 1846, Athenaeum established a “department of folklore”, and during the 1850s books using “folklore” in their titles began to appear. By 1876, Thoms and others were using the term “Folk-Lorists” to refer to students of the subject. In 1878, Thoms was among notable public intellectuals such as Andrew Lang, Max Müller, and George Laurence Gomme who organized the Folklore Society in London. [...] In 1888, the American Folklore Society was established on the model of the British organization, and three years later an international cast of folklorists descended upon London for the second International Folk-Lore Congress, thus institutionalizing the term that encapsulated the broad subject area of traditional knowledge and practices as “folklore” [...]. (2016)
As the nineteenth century progressed, folklore studies continued to spread around the world.
Key examples of folk literature
From the Norse sagas and the Indian Panchatantra tales, to figures such as Baba Yaga and Sun Wukong (the Monkey King), there is a rich tradition of folk literature from all across the world. Due to folk literature’s all-encompassing nature, we will just pick out a few examples to focus on here.
The Pentamerone
The Pentamerone (1634–36), subtitled The Tale of Tales, is a collection of fairy tales brought together by the Italian poet Giambattista Basile. The tales are derived from Neapolitan oral literature, originating in Southern Italy. Basile’s collection had a profound influence on writers such as the Brothers Grimm, who would go on to adapt many of the tales.
Timpanelli explains that The Pentamerone “includes the first European versions of Cinderella, Puss-in-Boots, the Babes in the Woods”, and that Basile’s faithfulness to his tales’ folk origins is central to their appeal:
Although Basile’s literary retelling uses ornate epithets and elaborate metaphors, his commentaries do not obscure the simple force of the original folk stories. […] The Pentameron is filled with real woods and murky waters, vile acts and gruesome deeds. Here are the universal stories of love, adventure, greed, retribution, and sorrow told according to the manners and mores of the day. […] While grounded in place and language, its genius rests in the universality of Basile’s faithful telling of the tales. (2021)
The Pentamerone’s continued influence today is exemplified by the 2015 film adaptation Tale of Tales (directed by Matteo Garrone). In the trailer here, we can see its treatment of three tales: “The Enchanted Doe,” “The Flayed Old Lady,” and “The Flea”:
The Brothers Grimm
As we have already touched on above, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are the most famous names associated with folk literature. The folk tales they collected have gone on to have an enduring cultural influence, and have been adapted numerous times — perhaps most famously by the Walt Disney Company, with animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hand et al., 1937) and Sleeping Beauty (Geronimi et al., 1959). The Grimms were not the first to engage in the preservation of folk tales, but their tales are notable for the degree to which the original folk voices shine through:
Previous European anthologies of vernacular literature, including Bishop Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry of 1765 and Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Alte Deutsche Lieder (The Boy’s Magic Horn: Old German Songs, of 1805–1808) had folk verses that were modified by the editors. The Grimms claimed to render stories and songs faithfully as people told and sang them. They were not the first to refer to German Märchen, popularly known as fairy tales, but they innovatively included notes that described the connection of the stories to folk beliefs, myths, proverbs, games, and legends and listed international analogues, toward the goal of showing possible origins, development, and diffusion of the material […]. (Bronner, 2016)
Just some of the many well-known tales included in the Grimm brothers’ collections include:
- Hansel and Gretel
- Rapunzel
- Puss in Boots
- Snow White
- Little Red Riding Hood
- Cinderella
- The Frog Prince
All of these tales can be found in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, which collects all 156 stories from the 1812 and 1815 volumes.
Anansi
Originating in the folklore of West Africa (particularly among the Asante people), Anansi the trickster spider is a famous folklore figure whose meaning has developed and shifted over time. As Emily Zobel Marshall explains,
Anansi […] has woven an intricate web of tales across the African diaspora. Continually adapted to the needs of the society that tells his tales, Anansi has become symbolic of the traumas of enslavement and the resilience of the enslaved, the cultural fusions of the postcolonial Caribbean and the migrations of its people […]. (“This is not a fairy tale: Anansi and the web of narrative power,” in The Fairy Tale World, 2019)
Edited by Andrew Teverson
Anansi […] has woven an intricate web of tales across the African diaspora. Continually adapted to the needs of the society that tells his tales, Anansi has become symbolic of the traumas of enslavement and the resilience of the enslaved, the cultural fusions of the postcolonial Caribbean and the migrations of its people […]. (“This is not a fairy tale: Anansi and the web of narrative power,” in The Fairy Tale World, 2019)
Anansi is an anarchic figure — causing chaos for humans, but also for the Asante’s supreme being. Marshall argues that, because Anansi could “invert all biological and social rules”, the Anansi tales provided an important psychological outlet for the Asante people:
Because the Anansi tales portrayed a fantastical world in which the normal rules of society were turned on their head, they provided a medium through which the Asante could temporarily escape from their tightly structured social hierarchy. The tales provided a form of psychological release and as a result helped the Asante accept, rather than resist, the rules of their society. (Marshall, 2019)
Anansi still has currency as a folk figure to this day — even across cultural boundaries, as can be seen with Neil Gaiman’s popular fantasy novel Anansi Boys (2005). In the Caribbean, in particular, Marshall argues that
Contemporary Caribbean authors are now using Anansi stories for their own political and cultural purposes in response to what they see as the needs of the modern Caribbean. Moving away from sanitized versions of the stories found in the pages of European collections, late twentieth- and twenty-first-century Caribbean writers have begun “writing back” to these depictions of the trickster spider to reclaim narrative power and pitch Anansi as the embodiment of Caribbean cultural resilience, renewal, cross-cultural fertilisation and creativity. (2019)
For more detail on specific examples of folklore, see the further reading section at the end of this guide to start exploring Perlego’s rich coverage.
Folk literature today
As we have seen in our discussion of the examples above, a wealth of contemporary folklore adaptations and reinterpretations continue to be made. From Disney’s repeated adaptations of the Hua Mulan legend to the 2021 film adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 14th century), the examples go on and on. Folk horror, too, has seen a remarkable upsurge in popularity. But this is not the limit of folk literature’s contemporary impact:
folklore is not simply the historical behaviors of other cultures; folklore is alive, developing, and changing in our lifetimes. Every one of us experiences and shares folklore. (Sims and Stephens, 2011)
Martha C. Sims and Martine Stephens
folklore is not simply the historical behaviors of other cultures; folklore is alive, developing, and changing in our lifetimes. Every one of us experiences and shares folklore. (Sims and Stephens, 2011)
Folklore is in a continual state of flux, reflecting the unique experiences of new generations. Existing folklore continues to evolve, and new folklore continues to be born.
The impact of the internet on popular folklore, for example, is particularly striking. As Sims and Stephens argue, the internet has had a “profound impact on how people communicate, and new forms and adaptations of folklore have emerged as a result”:
Many people, of all ages, genders, and races, interact on the Internet regularly, reading, responding to, and creating a variety of digital texts. […] Verbal lore—narratives, especially jokes—may be what comes to mind most readily as the type of text shared on the Internet, but these texts may be verbal, behavioral, or material (visual jokes or digital artwork, for example). (2011)
If we follow this interpretation, then, it is easy to see how the internet — with all of its memes and shared narratives of all kinds — constitutes a rich repository of contemporary folk literature. “Creepypastas” are a clear example of this — modern-day folk horror legends which have developed over successive online retellings (just as previous legends would have been developed over successive fireside retellings):
Creepypasta is derived from the Internet slang copypasta, which in turn derives from the phrase copy/paste, serving as shorthand for any block of text that is repeatedly copied and pasted to various online forums. In the process, the narrative texts often undergo modification, annotation, and/or reinterpretation by new posters in a folkloric process of repetition and variation. Creepypasta is, in short, creepy copypasta. More specifically, it is an emergent genre of Internet folklore that involves the creation and dissemination of a particular style of creative horror stories and images. (Trevor J. Blank and Lynne S. McNeill, “Introduction: Fear Has No Face: Creepypasta as Digital Legendry,” in Slender Man Is Coming, 2018)
Edited by Trevor J. Blank and Lynne S. McNeill
Creepypasta is derived from the Internet slang copypasta, which in turn derives from the phrase copy/paste, serving as shorthand for any block of text that is repeatedly copied and pasted to various online forums. In the process, the narrative texts often undergo modification, annotation, and/or reinterpretation by new posters in a folkloric process of repetition and variation. Creepypasta is, in short, creepy copypasta. More specifically, it is an emergent genre of Internet folklore that involves the creation and dissemination of a particular style of creative horror stories and images. (Trevor J. Blank and Lynne S. McNeill, “Introduction: Fear Has No Face: Creepypasta as Digital Legendry,” in Slender Man Is Coming, 2018)
The “Slender Man” is one of the most famous and controversial creepypasta creations. This faceless, quietly malevolent, long-limbed entity has inspired stories, video games, and even movies, as well as real-world devotees (with tragic consequences). Jeffrey A. Tolbert argues that
As a self-conscious Internet construct whose backstory has been built up over several years by a massive community of online participants, Slender Man functions metadiscursively to reveal precisely those elements that are popularly conceived of as constituting monstrousness. In simplest terms, Slender Man is a distillation of the most frightening images and trends present in contemporary popular culture [...] and supernatural folklore. A potent symbol, Slender Man serves as a flexible rhetorical tool, used variously to critique popular trends, instill fear in audiences, and as a self-referential “in-joke” whose significance is intelligible only to those already familiar with the phenomenon. (“‘The Sort of Story That Has You Covering Your Mirrors’: The Case of Slender Man,” in Slender Man Is Coming, 2018)
With the rise of internet folklore, and the rich variety of other contemporary cultural expressions, it is perhaps clearer than ever that folk literature is an extensive, essential, and ever-changing aspect of human culture all across the world.
Further reading on Perlego
- The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Volume 1 (2002) translated by J. C. Mardrus and Powys Mathers
- Beowulf (2013) translated by John Lesslie Hall
- Tradition and Innovation in Folk Literature (2015) by Wolfgang Mieder
- Dynamics Of Folklore (1996) by Barre Toelken
- From Court to Forest (1999) by Nancy L. Canepa
- Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man (2014) by Shira Chess and Eric Newsom
What is folk literature in simple terms?
What is an example of folk literature?
What are the best books on folk literature?
Bibliography
Basile, G. (2000) Stories from the Pentamerone. Perlego. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1823121
Ben-Amos, D. (2020) Folklore Concepts. Edited by Henry Glassie and Elliot Oring. Indiana University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1638164
Blank, T. and McNeill, L. (eds.) (2018) Slender Man Is Coming. Utah State University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/2031401
Bronner, S. (2016) Folklore: The Basics. Routledge. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1561716
Timpanelli, G. (2021) “Stories and Storytelling, Italian and Italian American,” in D’Acierno, P. (ed.) The Italian American Heritage. Routledge. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/3055869
Gaiman, N. (2021) Anansi Boys. Headline.
Gardner, J. (2011) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. University of Chicago Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1853578
Grimm, J. and Grimm, W. (2014) The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Translated and edited by Jack Zipes. Princeton University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1116294
Sims, M. and Stephens, M. (2011) Living Folklore. 2nd edition. Utah State University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/2811156
Tolbert, J. A. (2018) “‘The Sort of Story That Has You Covering Your Mirrors’: The Case of Slender Man,” in Blank, T. and McNeill, L. (eds.) Slender Man Is Coming. Utah State University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/2031401
Marshall. E. Z. (2019) “This is not a fairy tale: Anansi and the web of narrative power,” in Teverson A. (ed.) The Fairy Tale World. Routledge. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1579035
McCormick, C. T. and Kennedy White, K. (eds.) (2010) Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art. ABC-CLIO. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/4203817
Filmography
The Green Knight (2021) Directed by David Lowery. DADC.
Mulan (2020) Directed by Niki Caro. Walt Disney.
Sleeping Beauty (1959) Directed by Clyde Geronimi et al. Walt Disney.
Slender Man (2018) Directed by Sylvain White. Screen Gems.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Directed by David Hand et al. Walt Disney.
Tale of Tales (2015) Directed by Matteo Garrone. Curzon Artificial Eye.
MA, English Literature (University College London)
Andy Cain has an MA in English Literature from University College London, and a BA in English and Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. His particular research interests include science fiction, fantasy, and the philosophy of art. For his MA dissertation, he explored the presence of the sublime in Shakespeare’s plays.