This article first outlines the long history of folklore collection in China, and then describes the disciplinary development in the 20th century. In Section 3, it presents the current situation in terms of disciplinary infrastructure, development, c...
American Folklore consists of traditional knowledge and cultural practices engaged by inhabitants of the United States below Canada and above Mexico. American folklorists were influenced by nineteenth-century European humanistic scholarship that iden...
What happens to a Norwegian traditional folktale when told by a Large Language Model (LLM)? As machine-generated text becomes increasingly omnipresent, the need to understand such texts through analysis using literary scholarship and seeing them thro...
North America is steeped in legends of cryptids, (mostly) unseen creatures woven into the fabric of its folklore. From legends told by early explorers to contemporary legends told today, these enigmatic beings shape societal perceptions and reflect c...
Examples of how Spiritism merged with local beliefs have been the subject of research in religious studies, ethnology, and folkloristics. Serbian Spiritism can also be viewed as such, but its history is an under-researched topic. We examine the syncr...
We propose a generative model of the legend. The model is elaborated based on two case studies, the first of contemporary storytelling related to vaccination on parenting blogs, and the second of historical storytelling related to witchcraft and folk...
Folklore and sociolinguistics exist in a symbiotic relationship; more than that, at points—in the ethnography of communication and in ethnopoetics, for example—they overlap and become indistinguishable. As part of a reaction to the formal rigor and s...
Born out of the convergence of intellectual traditions and owning a borrowing capacity analogous to the one that engenders creole languages, the study of folklore, or folkloristics, claims the right to adapt and remodel political, psychological, and...
The basic principle of folklore is constant—unveiling the hidden riches within the ordinary things of everyday life: a fine contribution to, and coordination with, the humanities. Examples are the study of the oral/orality; life stories of the obscur...
As Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp already set out in his monograph Theory and History of Folklore (1984), folktales, and in particular fairy tales, could preserve the remnants of myths and rites from very ancient stages of human civilisation, dati...
A striking difference between the folk-narrative genres of legend and folktale is how the human characters respond to supernatural, otherworldly, or uncanny beings such as ghosts, gods, dwarves, giants, trolls, talking animals, witches, and fairies....
In Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, both coastal and sub-mountainous parts of Colchis underwent rapid urbanization. In the 12th century, the processes of decline began: Large settlements were replaced by small farmsteads with light wooden bu...
The present study deals with some changes identifiable on the level of folk religion, i.e., of the religious expression of ordinary people. Its premises are that folk religion is a subsegment of religion, fulfilling specific functions which official...
In the magical girl anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica, middle-school girls receive the power and responsibility to fight witches in exchange for making a wish. The series has connections to many different genres and narrative traditions within t...
The historical use of medicinal plants is of special interest because the use of plants for healing is a rapidly changing, highly culture-specific and often need-specific practice, which also depends on the availability of resources and knowledge. To...
In the Netherlands, there was always a clear distinction between Protestant and Catholic folklore. That is visible in witchcraft accusations, but it is also visible in ghost lore. This lore is here reconstructed applying a not always used source, to...
This article explores the voices of sailors across time, focusing on how song and prayer animate the nautical cult of St. Nicholas of Myra from the Middle Ages to the present. Drawing on hagiography, poetry, and music, it examines how medieval source...
Turn-of-twentieth-century Sámi concepts of spirits of the dead are presented along with accounts of those exceptional individuals able to see, hear, interact with, and sometimes control them, particularly persons termed noaideslág&aacut...
Four major stages in the development of interest in folklore in the Arab World may be designated. A neglected (or suppressed) facet of Arab life is the centrality of the khâl. An examination of the impact this familial character has on the soci...
Slavic folk culture is a fusion of Christian and of pre-Christian, pagan beliefs based on magic. This article is devoted specifically to ancient pre-Christian ideas about death and posthumous existence and the associated magical rituals and prohibiti...