What do you think?
Rate this book
Legend and Belief: Dialectics of a Folklore Genre
Legend and Belief
Dialectics of a Folklore Genre
Linda Dégh
An acclaimed folklorist asks "What is legend?"
Legend and Belief is a descriptive and analytical study of the legend, the most prolific and characteristic form of folklore in contemporary Western civilization. Not that the legend does not have ancient roots; like the tale, the joke, the ballad, the proverb, and mummery, it was also a part of an archaic preindustrial tradition. But the legend―as old as conversation and debate, and similarly questioning the human condition―was able to survive technological innovations. It has remained contemporaneous, whereas many other genres succumbed to their own anachronism. The legend's concerns are universal and eternal, touching on the most sensitive areas of our existence. That is why stories about supernatural encounters, possessions, divine and infernal miracles, evil spirits, monsters, and prophetic dreams, as well as horror stories about insane and criminal agencies, inundate the urban/industrial world. Industrial advancement does not change the basic fragility of human life, while commercialization and the consumer orientation of the mass media have helped legends travel faster and farther. Legends are not only communicated orally, face-to-face, but also appear in the press, on radio and TV, on countless internet websites, and by e-mail to keep alive new waves of the "culture of fear."
Linda Dégh, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Folklore at Indiana University, is a folklorist/ethnologist whose speciality is the analysis of personally observed creative processes of narration in both traditional and modern communities of Europe and North America. Her numerous publications include Four People in the Tobacco Belt; Folktales and Society; American Folklore and the Mass Media; and Narratives in Society.
June 2001
496 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append.
cloth0-253-33929-4$49.95 s / £38.00
Dialectics of a Folklore Genre
Linda Dégh
An acclaimed folklorist asks "What is legend?"
Legend and Belief is a descriptive and analytical study of the legend, the most prolific and characteristic form of folklore in contemporary Western civilization. Not that the legend does not have ancient roots; like the tale, the joke, the ballad, the proverb, and mummery, it was also a part of an archaic preindustrial tradition. But the legend―as old as conversation and debate, and similarly questioning the human condition―was able to survive technological innovations. It has remained contemporaneous, whereas many other genres succumbed to their own anachronism. The legend's concerns are universal and eternal, touching on the most sensitive areas of our existence. That is why stories about supernatural encounters, possessions, divine and infernal miracles, evil spirits, monsters, and prophetic dreams, as well as horror stories about insane and criminal agencies, inundate the urban/industrial world. Industrial advancement does not change the basic fragility of human life, while commercialization and the consumer orientation of the mass media have helped legends travel faster and farther. Legends are not only communicated orally, face-to-face, but also appear in the press, on radio and TV, on countless internet websites, and by e-mail to keep alive new waves of the "culture of fear."
Linda Dégh, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Folklore at Indiana University, is a folklorist/ethnologist whose speciality is the analysis of personally observed creative processes of narration in both traditional and modern communities of Europe and North America. Her numerous publications include Four People in the Tobacco Belt; Folktales and Society; American Folklore and the Mass Media; and Narratives in Society.
June 2001
496 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append.
cloth0-253-33929-4$49.95 s / £38.00
496 pages, Hardcover
First published November 15, 2001
41 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 12, 2022
"Legend, as an ideology-sensitive genre par excellence, is a readily available instrument in modern society, in which it plays a leading role in the development and maintenance of a 'culture of fear.' The legend, even if it is not founded on reality, can create reality."
"The legend is a legend once it entertains debate about belief. Short or long, complete or rudimentary, local or global, supernatural, horrible, mysterious, or grotesque, about one's own or someone else's experience, the sounding of contrary opinions is what makes a legend a legend."
Linda Dégh's monograph, published in 2001, came on the heels of two larger movements within the field of folklore: the broadening of fieldwork outside of its traditionally rural contexts, and the use of non-oral sources. Consequently, these two trends had led to innovation within Dégh's own subfield of legend studies, showing legends to be an even more pervasive mode of folklore than had been conventionally recognized. Although she herself is not responsible for the popularization of the term "urban legend" (something more attributable to Brunvand), she proves to be one of the more insightful voices on the genre. She takes on the topic of legends in written media of varying sorts from physical mail in the form of chain letters to early online message boards. In the latter, she prefigures the study of internet folklore, which would come be a genre of its own. As indicated in the title, belief is another central thread that runs throughout the book. While she, rightfully as a folklorist, takes an agnostic position on the reality of most beliefs surveyed here, Dégh frequently returns to this matter of the perceived reality of such legends and its impact on folkloric transmission and preservation. Thus, she brings in a more human and sociological element to the study of such legends in contrast to other folklorists that remain myopically focused only on the collection of oral data.
It is primarily modern American legends that are brought forth as examples throughout the book, though Dégh's underlying theories are intended to be applicable to legends of all time periods and cultures. Some of the most familiar legends, now firmly ensconced within popular culture and mass media, such as "The Hook" and "The Boyfriend's Death" are presented as examples. She also touches upon the interaction between mass media and legends, as is seen in the example of the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s. Dégh highlights how such legends are always thoroughly embedded within the cultural contexts and landscapes in which they are found. "The Hook" legend, after all, has conventionally been read as an admonishment against teenage sexuality, deriving from the repressed culture of the American 1950s. The widespread legendry of the "Satanic Panic" similarly occurred during a time of religious revivalism and paranoia about social others in the United States. Dégh gives a detailed examination of these aspects of American legends (along with many more) and their effects, pointing also to other influential contexts, such as the legend narrators themselves, recipients, and the nature of folkloric transmission.
The final chapter, then, briefly ruminates on some of the larger implication of legends within culture. Dégh highlights the impact of this with examples of folklore by ostension, as witnessed with the "copycat" phenomena of serial killers and school shootings. The process of transmission of such ideas, after all, is broadly similar to that of legends within various forms of media. The book overall serves to provide a wide introduction to the academic study of what has been popularly known as urban legends, further dealing with matters within the overarching field of folklore. One of the more important portions is the first hundred or so pages, wrangling with the definitional matters of both folklore and legend. Although a solid and fool-proof definition of either (as with all abstract concepts in the humanities) is impossible, through this process of struggling towards a working definition, we gain a better appreciation of such cultural phenomena.
"The legend is a legend once it entertains debate about belief. Short or long, complete or rudimentary, local or global, supernatural, horrible, mysterious, or grotesque, about one's own or someone else's experience, the sounding of contrary opinions is what makes a legend a legend."
Linda Dégh's monograph, published in 2001, came on the heels of two larger movements within the field of folklore: the broadening of fieldwork outside of its traditionally rural contexts, and the use of non-oral sources. Consequently, these two trends had led to innovation within Dégh's own subfield of legend studies, showing legends to be an even more pervasive mode of folklore than had been conventionally recognized. Although she herself is not responsible for the popularization of the term "urban legend" (something more attributable to Brunvand), she proves to be one of the more insightful voices on the genre. She takes on the topic of legends in written media of varying sorts from physical mail in the form of chain letters to early online message boards. In the latter, she prefigures the study of internet folklore, which would come be a genre of its own. As indicated in the title, belief is another central thread that runs throughout the book. While she, rightfully as a folklorist, takes an agnostic position on the reality of most beliefs surveyed here, Dégh frequently returns to this matter of the perceived reality of such legends and its impact on folkloric transmission and preservation. Thus, she brings in a more human and sociological element to the study of such legends in contrast to other folklorists that remain myopically focused only on the collection of oral data.
It is primarily modern American legends that are brought forth as examples throughout the book, though Dégh's underlying theories are intended to be applicable to legends of all time periods and cultures. Some of the most familiar legends, now firmly ensconced within popular culture and mass media, such as "The Hook" and "The Boyfriend's Death" are presented as examples. She also touches upon the interaction between mass media and legends, as is seen in the example of the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s. Dégh highlights how such legends are always thoroughly embedded within the cultural contexts and landscapes in which they are found. "The Hook" legend, after all, has conventionally been read as an admonishment against teenage sexuality, deriving from the repressed culture of the American 1950s. The widespread legendry of the "Satanic Panic" similarly occurred during a time of religious revivalism and paranoia about social others in the United States. Dégh gives a detailed examination of these aspects of American legends (along with many more) and their effects, pointing also to other influential contexts, such as the legend narrators themselves, recipients, and the nature of folkloric transmission.
The final chapter, then, briefly ruminates on some of the larger implication of legends within culture. Dégh highlights the impact of this with examples of folklore by ostension, as witnessed with the "copycat" phenomena of serial killers and school shootings. The process of transmission of such ideas, after all, is broadly similar to that of legends within various forms of media. The book overall serves to provide a wide introduction to the academic study of what has been popularly known as urban legends, further dealing with matters within the overarching field of folklore. One of the more important portions is the first hundred or so pages, wrangling with the definitional matters of both folklore and legend. Although a solid and fool-proof definition of either (as with all abstract concepts in the humanities) is impossible, through this process of struggling towards a working definition, we gain a better appreciation of such cultural phenomena.
Displaying 1 of 1 review