Legend and Belief ─ Dialectics of a Folklore Genre

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, or mummery, it was part of an archaic, preindustrial tradition. But the legends - as old as conversation and debate about problems of the human condition - has been able to survive the technological innovations of our time. Legend has remained contemporaneous, while many other genres succumbed to their own anachronism. The legend's concerns are universal and eternal, touching upon the most sensitive areas of our existence. This is why stories about supernatural encounters, possessions, divine and infernal miracles, evil spirits, monsters, and prophetic dreams, as well as horror stories about the criminally insane, continue to proliferate in the urban/industrial world. Industrial advancement has not changed the basic fragility of human life, and the commercialization and consumer orientation of the mass media has actually helped legends travel faster and farther. Legends are communicated not only orally, face to face, but also in the press, on radio and television, on countless Web sites, and by e-mail, perpetuating new waves of the "culture of fear."

Linda Degh, 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 Lives: People in the Tobacco Belt, Folktales and Society, American Folklore and the Mass Media, and Narratives in Society.