Narrative Genre Research Articles

Genomics and genre Narrative in the Age of the Genome: Genetic Worlds Lara Choksey Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 232 pp.

A scholar probes subtle shifts in stories told through genes

Holistic vs. Analytic Scoring between Expository and Narrative Genres: Does the Assessment Type Matter?


 The unprecedented emphasis on EFL students' development of their writing skills has invited researchers and EFL instructors to look for the most effective methods of teaching writing and assessing it. Within this context, two main dominant assessment types have been used by EFL writing instructors: holistic and analytic scoring with ambiguous research findings about the use of each. Moreover, ambiguity has also been surrounding variability in raters' scoring across genre types. This study aims at uncovering the difference between using the two scoring schemes across two genres in EFL writing: expository and narrative. Two texts each representing a genre type from 10th grade EFL writers' compositions were presented to a sample of 90 in-service EFL teachers for holistic scoring. Two months later, the same texts were presented to the same teachers for analytic scoring in order to compare between the grades assigned in each round for arriving at results. Results suggest significant differences between the scores obtained according to the grading method. Also, narrative essays received higher scores in both assessment types. These results are discussed, and recommendations are derived.

Novellas for Diverting Jewish Urban Businessmen or Channels of Priestly Knowledge: Redefining Judean Short Stories of Hellenistic Times

The Jewish literary production of Hellenistic and early imperial times includes a substantial number of short narratives displaying novelistic features. Most of these texts are in Greek, with novelistic trends also appearing in Hebrew and Aramaic works (Esther, Daniel). While this stylistic shift is undeniable, the present article questions the social and cultural implications that a number of scholars seek to read into it. Because of their shared stylistic innovations, these works are often treated as a homogeneous group, regardless of whether or not they were eventually included in the biblical canon (the Septuagint), and contrasted with the traditional narrative genres represented in the Hebrew biblical corpus. The transition to the novelistic is further taken to indicate a shift in the social context in which these works were produced, and correlatively, in their social function. Thus, in contrast with the earlier narrative literature written by temple scribes, these early novels supposedly emerged in the urban environment, where they catered to the tastes of a wider segment of the Jewish population. Furthermore, it is alleged that like their Greek counterparts, the Jewish novels had no institutionalized social use but were performed or read purely for entertainment, explaining the prominent thematization of eroticism, chastity, and marriage.
 In contrast with this approach, it is argued that when it comes to works that were eventually canonized, the issue of the social environment in which they were produced and that of their social function need to be decoupled from style and tone. To bolster this stance, the discussion draws extensively on a comparison with the social context in which the contemporary Demotic literature was produced, which is archaeologically documented, and on a comparison with Demotic texts themselves in both form and content. As a starting point, it is noted that the model associating novelization and urbanization crystallized at a time when indigenous temples—not least the one in Jerusalem—were held as bastions of conservatism, and it was speculated that that Hellenization in Judea was promoted by new, secular elites. Since then, this assumption has been proven wrong. Both in Egypt and Judea, the indigenous elites who manned the royal administrations were fielded from among the local temple personnel, meaning that the temple literati were familiar with their own traditions and Greek literature alike.
 On this basis, it is argued that the novelization of the works was first and foremost a matter of the reception of Greek literature by temple literati. Given that most if not all the narrative texts were aimed for oral performance, those were eager to borrow any literary devices that would make the stories livelier. In terms of their social function, however, these novelized works were no different from pre-Hellenistic narrative genres. Like their Demotic counterparts, biblical narratives provided a tool for exploring virtually all the aspects of knowledge that were of interest to their authors and audience, including the nature of the relationship between human beings and deity, history, law, prophecy, political, social, and religious matters. Their diverting tone assisted in the inculcation knowledge. In this way, the reappraisal of the biblical narratives as serious literature proposed in this article goes much further than simply stressing their connections with sapiential literature.

A expressão de singularidades em gêneros narrativos análise da classificação de fanfictions

The objective was to understand how fanfiction narrative genres are classified in repositories, describing the users perceptions and motivations to accomplishthe indexing. The research is descriptive and exploratory, with the Intensive Direct Observation method in virtual groups of fans who write and consume fanfictions;the data supported a qualitative analysis of the fanfictions narrative genres used in theirindexingin digital repositories. The analysis demonstrated that many of narrative genres used in the repositories express concern with the representation of gender, sexual and physical aspects. Furthermore, natural language words, neologisms and other foreignwords are re-semantized to represent narrative genres. It was concluded that narrative genres are used to classify the stories, to express singularities andtogive representation to demands of marginalized groups of the publishing market.

«Ермак взял Сибирь»: о жанровой полипотентности художественного образа в аспекте поэтики заглавия

In Russian literature and folklore, the image of Ermak Timofeevich appeared to be remarkably responsive to all literary genera and many literary genres. A real surge of interest in him seen in modern Russian literature was associated primarily with the release of the Volume IX of “History of the Russian State” by N. M. Karamzin, under the pen of whom the genre of historical narratives became a kind of “blessing” for subsequent polypotency of this image. By combining in itself two equivalent forces, aspiration to objectivity in narrating historical events and the need to create a multidimensional literary image, the genre of historical narratives aroused the activity of various generic roots in reproduction of a historical figure image, which has determined a wide range of its different incarnations. The genre polypotency of Ermak’s image is informed by his specific traits as the image that comprises world-constructing and lawmaking beginnings, drawing him together with “a cultural hero,” who opens up new opportunities to the world and establishes these opportunities as essentials for further existence. “Taking” of Siberia by Ermak became a prototype for its various genre incarnations. The polypotency of this image manifested itself, in its most concentrated form, in poetics of titles of the works about Ermak.

«...Всё не только самая правда, но еще как бы лучше её» (тайна единства этического и эстетического в творческом сознании Пушкина и Гоголя)

The article provides a comparative analysis of the reflections of Pushkin and Gogol on the nature of the relationship between ethical and aesthetic principles in the creative process. Based on the late lyric poetry of Pushkin, Gogol’s epistolary legacy of the early 1840s and a historical and literary excursion in «Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends», both rapprochements and fundamental differences in the positions of the two authors are revealed. Gogol’s judgments about the mystery of Pushkin’s personality and about «The Captain’s Daughter» as «the best Russian work in a narrative genre» can be considered as the basis for further multidirectional interpretations of the spiritual phenomenon of Pushkin in Russian criticism and literary criticism.

МУЗЫКАЛЬНЫЕ ЛЕЙТМОТИВЫ НАУЧНОГО ТВОРЧЕСТВА Е.С. НОВИК: ОТРАЖЕНИЕ МУЗЫКАЛЬНЫХ ТРАДИЦИЙ НАРОДОВ СИБИРИ В РАБОТАХ ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЯ

This article is dedicated to the discussion on the articles by E.S. Novik, publsihed in 1980–1990s, which reflect the themes of musical cutlure and musical folklore of the indigenous peoples of Siberia . In the article «On the typology of genres of non-fairytale prose of Siberia and theFar East» she touches upon the significant role of singing in the narrative: singing in narrative genres is a sign of a sacred message. In the article «Archaic beliefs in the light of interpersonal communication» the scholar points out the important role of the sound/voice for performing the sacred practices, and then comes to a conclusion about the sacred nature of a musical talent, consindering singers and musicians as the mediators between the worlds of people and spirits. The ideas about the magical nature of the singing and storytelling talents, supported by the examples from the Siberian folklore, are developed further in the article «The magical function of folklore narratives in the traditional culture of the peoples of Siberia: pragmatic structure and perlocutionary effect of the narrative text». In the article «The verbal component of the hunting and fishing rituals (based on materials of the Siberian traditions)» one can find plenty of data on the intonational diversity of the ritualistic formulae, as well as the solid number of the notes, concerning the distinguishment of the different types of intonation, which might be useful for musicologists. In the article «Semiotic functions of the voice in Siberian peoples’ folklore and beliefs» the researcher is concentrated on the archaic folklore strata – interpretation and imitation of the sounds of nature, beliefs, related to the voice of a human and «the voices» of the mythological charachters. The ideas of Novikova on the musical folklore of the indigenous peoples of Siberia not only are still topical, but furthermore, their significance has increased at the present stage, due to the geocultural research of the Arctic region.

The Authority of Written and Oral Sources of Knowledge in Ludolf of Sudheim’s De itinere Terre Sancte

After the German priest Ludolf of Sudheim returned from the Holy Land in 1341, he wrote an account of his travels that is far more complex than scholars have assumed. Ludolf expanded the genre of pilgrimage narrative in the way he draws on written sources, such as Hethum’s Flos historiarum Terre Orientis and William of Boldensele’s Liber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus, while blending into his narrative oral sources of knowledge picked up from his personal contacts while traveling. Pilgrimage literature has often been denigrated by scholars for being repetitive, impersonal, and lacking originality. Yet if scholars were to adopt a less historiographically presentist approach to pilgrimage writing that is more open to the values and strategies of narratives like De itinere Terre Sancte, research could meaningfully focus on what might be called the “mental library” of pilgrim-authors — the full range of written and oral resources at their disposal in the complex processes of knowledge production in pilgrimage narrative.

Древняя история и новая публицистика: о поисках нарратива в Советской историографии сталинского времени

The article discusses the features of the genesis and functioning of a special type of historical narrative in Soviet scholarship, which gained particular strength in the 1930s and gradually exhausted by the late 1940s. For convenience of characterization, the author focuses on Soviet works about ancient history and analyzes the main attitudes of their authors (“old” Marxists, scholars who coverted to Marxism, and the Soviet generation of historians), and the reasons and features of their appeal to the genre of historical and journalistic narratives about the past eras. This type of narrative is therefore associated with the formation and flowering of the Stalinist regime. The changes of the 1930s are all the more remarkable as we can compare the style of historians who wrote before and after this time. Using the examples of A. Tyumenev or B. Bogaevsky, the reader can see how respectful and loyal attitude to foreign scholarship was replaced by loud criticism of the limitations of “bourgeois” historians, in whose works Soviet historians certainly found features of “reactionary”. On the example of the books by N.I. Nedelsky and A.V. Mishulin, the author shows how historians who did not engage in scholarship before the revolution took the same path. In conclusion, the author gives the general characteristics of the genre, as well as an explanation of why it was doomed to gradual self-exhaustion, not only because it depended on external (political) but also because it was influenced by internal reasons.

The Experience of Employing the Slave Narrative Genre in Describing the History of the Caucasus

The genre of the slave narrative is unique, and is essential to African-American culture. Yet, up to now, personally written stories describing the journey to freedom traveled by “heroic slaves”, writings that could well qualify as nonfiction, have received little attention outside of the US and UK. This makes all the more interesting the attempt by prominent Russian historian A. A. Cherkasov to employ the slave narrative genre in describing the history of the Caucasus, undertaken in his collection of documents “Circassian Slave Narratives”. This review of the collection attempts to analyze the phenomenon of the slave narrative and determine the degree to which it could be transposed to Russia. It is shown that while a portion of the documents published by A. A. Cherkasov, specifically interviews with slaves who escaped from Russia to Circassia, do seem to fit in with the slave narrative genre in theme, most of the Russian-Circassian slave narratives are completely different from classic slave narratives in content and style. These are not publicistic memoirs written for abolitionist purposes but documentation maintained to keep records of fugitives. In the end, the author of the article draws the conclusion that it is impossible to have an exact analogue of the slave narrative for Russian history as the figure of the heroic slave is not something that is typical for Russian history. Accordingly, despite the fact that fugitive slaves’ testimonies were widely written down at the time, as was the case in Circassia, the outcome was a completely different type of writing typologically. However, if the slave narrative is viewed in a broad sense, as an aggregate of first-hand slave accounts that can help provide the reader with a comprehensive documentary picture of the life of actual slaves, “Circassian Slave Narratives” may well be considered a worthy representative of the genre. A. A. Cherkasov provides 180 interviews with slaves and over 1,000 thematically contiguous record-keeping documents, which offer a unique insight into Circassian slavery specifically. Consequently, while it is hardly possible to use the classic slave narrative in describing Russian history, there may be considerable potential in its creative reconceptualization, as has been well substantiated by A. A. Cherkasov.

An Immigrant Novel Revisited: Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation

The article explores the genre of immigrant narrative, comparing two early-twentieth century novels written by the Jewish-American writers Mary Antin and Anzia Yezierska with a contemporary novel penned by the Chinese-American author Jean Kwok. Taking adaptation theory (Sanders 2006 and Hutcheon 2006) as a starting point, I examine how Kwok’s novel adapts, revises, and reimagines a familiar pattern across time and cultures in order to make it representative of Chinese Americans. The analysis draws attention to experiences of Chinese immigrant women, their class membership and socio-economic status.

On the Skin: Mary Prince and the Narration of Black Feeling in the Early Nineteenth Century

Mary Prince's The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself, transcribed and edited by white abolitionists in England in 1831, was an early entry into the slave narrative genre, the first for an enslaved Black woman in the Americas. This article argues that Prince unsettles dominant critical practices in nineteenth-century literary studies and Black studies in her unsentimental description of laboring and subjected Black skin. Her History, written the same year that Nat Turner's Rebellion took place in the United States and just two years before a decree of emancipation across the British Caribbean and the entire British empire, speaks of Black skin as vulnerable and permeable, but also as emotionally and morally intelligent. In doing so, her narrative makes a claim to a racial characteristic of Black feeling as different from, and superior to, white feeling. For Prince the form of the slave narrative becomes, rather than constraining and disciplining, a platform for articulating embodied Black knowledge and epistemological expertise.

Digital Storytelling in Exploring Ideational Meanings of Narrative Genre (SFL Genre-Based Approach)

Digital Storytelling in Exploring Ideational Meanings of Narrative Genre (SFL Genre-Based Approach)

НЕПОВТОРИМЫЕ СКАЗОЧНИКИ: С. ПРОКОФЬЕВ И Н. МЕТНЕР

This year marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of S. S. Prokofiev and the 70th anniversary of the death of N. K. Medtner. The article provides a socio-cultural background to the similar circumstances of the lives of these two great musicians. Both were forced to leave Russia during the October events, learning all the difficulties of emigration. Their joint tour in the USSR in 1927 was for Medtner a last meeting with his beloved Moscow, where he had studied and taught at the Conservatory, while Prokofiev's emigration ended with his return home. The author wonders what brought together such different personalities as Sergey Prokofiev and Nikolay Medtner. The composers were united, among other things, by a special interest in narrative genres derived from folk epic poetry. However, each musician interpreted them differently — while the composer of "Tales of an Old Grandmother" was more interested in the representational aspect, Medtner wrote works with a more psychological depth.

The In-Between-Ness of the Life Narrative—Negotiating Disciplinary Boundaries in Selected Zimbabwean Political Life Narratives

Political life narratives have emerged in Zimbabwe and elsewhere to contest, rebut, or corroborate versions of official history on nationalist trajectories from the liberation struggles and thereafter. This development has excited new critical attention on such narratives that before were despised by historians who did not accept autobiography in general as a serious field of study that could contribute to knowledge. This discussion focuses on selected political life narratives of Zimbabwean nationalists, arguing that the life narrative is a useful entry point in understanding not only individual identities, but the history, culture, and politics of Zimbabwe. It argues that the existence of the life narrative genre in a particular culture is an important signifier of the dynamic processes of both individual and group identity conception in that society, and therefore it must be read alongside other disciplines such as history.

Introduction: Narrative Entanglements and Discursive Entrapments

Narrative Entanglements and Discursive Entrapments JoAnn Conrad (bio) The space available to our movement is a constricted space. —Iris Marion Young, "Throwing Like a Girl," 143 This special issue of Narrative Culture examines the intersection of narrative genres and gender through the theme of abduction/containment/sequestering and otherwise disappearing of women. The originary moment of this special issue occurred at the International Society for Folk Narrative Research interim conference in Ragusa in 2018 with a remarkable convergence of papers. Their common thread of containment, explored in different genres and different contexts, offered the potential for new perspectives on gender, genre, and the field of folklore and its role in the relationship of the two. This collection of articles also comes about as the raw edge of pervasive and relentless gender inequality has come to the foreground of public discourse. The #MeToo movement, begun in 2006, achieved broader public awareness in 2017 with a social media campaign that challenged the (master) narrative about women's experience of sexual microaggressions and abuse. #MeToo reopened the issue of sexual abuse and violence against women, a phenomenon socially and politically tolerated in and by powerful men, if not perpetrated by them. The high-profile court cases associated with #MeToo led to a fuller social recognition of systemic gender inequality and the aggressions against women's bodies that are conditions of that inequality. [End Page 7] In Ragusa and after, we felt that perhaps the field of folkloristics could also be experiencing such a moment—one that could challenge well-worn disciplinary presumptions and practices, particularly with relation to gender ideologies. Prisoner of Her Sex In this issue, we see containment as the active, pervasive, and persistent corporeal, social, sexual, political, psychological, and cultural constraints imposed on women that work to our diminishment, dissolution, and delimiting, which are repeated in daily injustices and representations that are so ubiquitous as to be unremarkable if not invisible. Narratives of containment, and their omnipresent underlying threats of violence both textual and physical, work to assert and normalize patriarchal privilege. In the operations of such a gender ideology, "'woman' has been discursively constructed (condemned) as inferior yet also threatening to man, thus in perpetual need of containment and control and subjected (condemned) to particular disciplinary techniques" (King 30). The data is indisputable: in Europe, 1 in 3 women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15; 50 women die every week from male domestic violence; and every second woman has faced sexual harassment (European Women's Lobby). Globally, the World Health Organization has identified femicide (the "intentional murder of women because they are women"; WHO "Understanding," emphasis added) as a growing threat, increasing in some regions disproportionately to general homicide rates (Borgen Project). In the United States, femicide has been called an invisible epidemic, and yet "because it's normalized we don't see it as a crisis" (quoting Jodie Roure in Anguiano; see also Yancy). Often the mutilation and disfigurement of the women's bodies goes well beyond the level of injury required to bring about death, revealing the deep-seated misogyny at the heart of the motive: "Sadism is the point" (Nazario). It is culture that facilitates femicide by normalizing and thus perpetuating violence against women. The prison of gender (female) has been constructed by the systematic physical and textual violence that inscribes social oppression onto the body of woman "shaped by histories and practices of containment and control" (Bordo 21). She is a prisoner because of and in her sex. The "mastery" of the female body, its punishment and containment, serves as an emphatic affirmation of (male) power and dominance. The forms and means of containment expand beyond the cave, the cell, and the cellar to encompass [End Page 8] motifs not typically associated with the act of containment: the family, marriage (the happy ending), beauty, fashion, self-disfigurement, and the female body itself all are forms of imprisonment. In an impossible double bind, woman is trapped in her body, and her body is trapped in "woman." Seen through this lens, fashion and adornment—think of the unbearable weight of a gown of the moon and the stars, corsets, or disfiguring...

СОЦИАЛЬНАЯ УТОПИЯ КАК НОВЫЙ ЖАНР ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ В КИТАЕ В ПЕРВОЙ ЧЕТВЕРТИ ХХ В

This article is devoted to the analysis of the evolution of the genre system in Chinese literature in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The purpose of the study is to trace the transformation of the creative manner of the writers of the period under study. Subject - novels of the famous Chinese writers, not translated into Russian. The comparative-historical method was used to analyze the subject matter and stylistics of the works of narrative genres. The article concludes that at the beginning of the twentieth century, Chinese writers used new genre forms - the socially utopian novel and stories. In their writings, Chinese writers reflected the current problems of the life of the country. The traditional genre of the novel underwent changes: the number of chapters and acting characters was reduced, and a patriotic theme emerged. Social prose was not highly artistic, but it paved the way for the birth of modern Chinese literature. The results of the study fill a gap in the history of China in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Strengthening the teaching of the narrative genre: story and fable in primary school children in the Department of Magdalena – Colombia. A commitment to the use of ICT Games and BayesianLogisticRegression.

The low quality and relevance at all educational levels remain a problem present in education in Colombia, limiting the training and development of skills for work and for life. The above is evidenced in the results of the country in standardized tests. Colombia occupies one of the last places the two most recognized international tests (TIMMS and PISA); In fact, it is considered that ―at the international level, one of the benchmarks for measuring scientific competences is the PISA tests, which assess the knowledge, skills, and scientific attitudes of 15-year-old students in different countries. In 2006, PISA tests were applied to young Colombians. While it is true that the test results show the motivation of young Colombians to project in the scientific field (those evaluated had high scores in the subcompetence of identification of scientific phenomena), the country lags in other competences that are more related Direct with innovation processes, such as explaining scientific events and using scientific evidence. This article resulted from the research project: ―Strengthening of citizen and democratic culture in CT + I through the iep supported in ICT in the Department of Magdalena financed by SIGR funds - General System of Royalties.

The Hybridization Of The Noir Genre As Expression Of Ethnic Heritage: Rafael Navarro’s Sonambulo

In his ongoing comic book series Sonambulo, versatile artist Rafael Navarro has been able to channel his Mexican American cultural heritage by creating a unique blend of narrative genres. In his work, Navarro exploits classic American film noir as a fundamental reference and hybridizes it with elements distinctive to a shared Chicanx heritage, such as lucha libre cinema, horror folktales, and border-crossing metaphors; the construction of an oneiric dimension helps bring the narrative together, marking it with a peculiar ambiance. Drawing heavily on a diverse range of film genres, as well as ethnocultural pivots, this comic book series carves out a definite space in the panorama of the Mexican American production of popular culture, adding a powerful voice to the expression of US ethnic minorities.

What Are Belief Narratives? An Introduction

What Are Belief Narratives? An Introduction Ülo Valk (bio) Fluctuating Folklore Folklore and its kindred concepts have gone through substantial transformations since the early history of folkloristics in the nineteenth century. From an object-centered approach—discussing folklore as a set of cultural survivals— attention has shifted to subjects—to people whose minds, behavior, and expressivity bring folklore to life. The subjective dimension also involves reflexivity—the researcher’s critical awareness of their role in the process of making folklore through fieldwork and theorizing its results. Instead of understanding folklore as a set of textual items, it is today discussed as practice and “a type of social action” (Bronner 3). Even the living conditions of folklore have changed as the internet and new media have become its common environment, leaving it “in a constant, exhausting state of flux” and making theoretical innovations indispensable (Blank 3). Yet some strands of thought have remained persistent in the history of the discipline, for example, the observation that folklore is not made from the same substance—not like the water we drink or the air we breathe—but is an array of expressive modes and crafts, their products and effects. Along with proposing the new term “folk-lore” in 1846, William J. Thoms offered a short list of its forms (Thoms 11). Scholars all over Europe started to record its genres, some [End Page 175] of which spread transculturally, whereas others remained local. Thus, Jakob Hurt (1839–1907) in Estonia talked about distinct “sorts” of folklore, such as old songs, old tales, proverbs, riddles, place names, customs, children’s games, jokes, folk beliefs, and superstitions (85–88). When Alan Dundes outlined folklore in his seminal anthology The Study of Folklore, his sample list took more than a half a page and was incomplete, as the author noted (3). Discovering more and more vernacular terms and inventing new analytical categories to develop more elaborate maps of the field of folklore has been a persistent tendency in scholarship. Accuracy and analytical pointedness has led to multilayered systems of classification that are perhaps most useful in archiving, modeling primary study books, and in the division of labor among folklorists who often specialize in certain genres. Yet anybody who has done fieldwork or participated in folklore performances knows that uniform classification systems hardly succeed—unless the lived reality is quite robustly compressed into solid, ready-made compartments. If one considers the subtle nuances of artistic forms and the multiplicity of expressive modalities that are evoked in performance, the hybridity of folklore seems overwhelming. Folklore is constantly fluctuating, breaking the boundaries of specific types; analytical categories dissolve if we try to apply them not as conceptual tools but as containers of items. Dan Ben-Amos has addressed the problem of incongruity between ethnic genres and analytical genre categories by outlining them as “two separate systems which should relate to each other as substantive matter to abstract models” (215). What about belief narrative as a category? Is it a supplement to analytical taxonomies, a new compartment for a certain kind of story? The concept leads us to the heart of live folklore as a domain of building, transmitting, and shaping knowledge: to epistemic claims, uncertainties, suppositions, arguments and counterarguments—all that is related to belief formation in folklore as discourse and communication. Belief and Narrative Genres Belief narrative can hardly be considered as a container in which to lump together various assorted genres or stories. Rather, as a concept it aims to break the limits of existing classification systems and grasp the transgeneric dimension of folklore. The classical taxonomy of William Bascom outlines the forms of folk prose, [End Page 176] consisting of myths, legends, and folktales. As he notes, one of the distinctive features that differentiates these three genres is their relationship to belief. Folktales, according to him “are prose narratives which are regarded as fiction” (Bascom 4; emphasis in original). Myths and legends, however, are prose narratives that “are regarded as true by the narrator and his audience” (Bascom 4; emphasis in original). Bascom outlined the three as cross-cultural categories and noted that as stories spread from one society to another, “a myth or legend may be...