Getting Started With Folklore & Folklore Studies: An Introductory Resource

We've all heard the phrase “That's just a myth”. And we’ve also no doubt heard phrases like it with myth swapped out for legend or fairy tale. These words are all often used as synonyms for fiction or falsehood in everyday English conversation. Yet scholars active in folklore studies use the terms quite differently. To folklorists, each is a different category of folk narrative. And to the categories of myth, legend, and fairytale - called genres by folklorists - we can add many more, including ballad, fable, and tall tale. We can also add genres rooted in belief - ritual, superstition, charm, and curse, among others - and we can add genres rooted in material culture and performance, like traditional foodways and traditional music, respectively. Each genre encompasses a wide variety of expressive culture, but folklorists understand that genres themselves can be imperfect methods of categorization and strive to understand the nuances of everything they study. In this resource, we take a quick dive into the formal study of folklore and provide a variety of resources and suggestions for those who want to pursue the topic further.