Legend And Belief: Dialectics of a Folklore Genre - Tapa dura

Though urban legends have become trendy, the legend itself is not a new genre in American and European folklore. Degh (Degh) (emer., folklore, Indiana Univ.) has spent a lifetime gathering contemporary legends, reflecting on how they function in culture, and analyzing what they reveal about people and society. Neither a legend collection nor a recycling of old articles, this book in its early chapters defines and describes legends and situates legend studies in folklore and ethnology. Later chapters discuss legends as texts, legend tellers and networks, and the social and physical contexts in which legends flourish. These chapters touch on legend scares about AIDS needles in coin boxes, razors in apples, LSD on tickets, and satanism at Proctor and Gamble, and on legend-inspired personalities such as legend trippers, exorcists, the Columbine shooters, and leaders of suicide cults. The final chapter analyzes particular legends and legend complexes in detail. Even libraries that hold excellent books of legends and legend essays will want to own this definitive study, the crowning achievement of a scholar who understands that folklore can be not nice but dangerous and that we neglect it at our peril. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.June 2002 -- W. B. McCarthy * Pennsylvania State University *

Legend and Belief is a descriptive and analytical study of the legend, the most prolific and characteristic form of folklore in contemporary Western civilization.