Traditional
Literature
Ashlynd Kyle
Lillian Dominguez
Types of traditional
Literature
Folktale
Fable
Myths
Epic and Legendary Heroes Bible
Definition
• All forms of narrative, written or oral, which have
come to be handed down through the years.
• Seen to come from the people of culture rather
than a specific person
o Exceptions: Aesop, Homer, and other ancient tellers or writers of tales
Origin
• Traditional Literature forms the foundation of
understandings of life as expressed in modern
literature
• Monogenesis
o Grimm Brothers theory
• Polygenesis
Value
• Teachers find it a valuable way to introducing world
cultures and geographical regions
• Appeals to the children’s sense of justice and their
moral judgment
• Kindle their imagination
• Helps them cope with their dreams and inner
turmoil
• Our speech and language reflect many
contributions
• Groundwork
Folktales
• Defined as “all forms of narrative, written or oral,
which have come to be handed down through the
years.”
o Epics, Ballads, Legends, and Folk Songs as well as Myths and Fables
Types of Folktales
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Cumulative Tales
o
o
There is an increasing repetition of the details building up to a quick climax
Children loves these tales
o
Stories that explain
o
o
Animals act and talk like human beings
Talking animals appear in folktales in all cultures
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Magic and the supernatural
Creatures
Involves Romance and Adventure
Long Quest Tales
Ends with …
Part of the appeal
Represents Glorious Fulfillment of human desires
o
o
Few
Some Basis in Fact
Pourquoi Tales
Beast Tales
Wonder Tales or “Fairy Tales”
Realistic Tales
Folktales Pictures
Characteristics of
Folktales
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Plot Structures
Characterization
Style
Themes
Motifs
Characteristics of Folk
Literature Cont.
• Examples of Motifs
o
o
o
o
o
o
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Magical Powers
Transformations
Magical Object
Wishes
Trickery
Power of Naming
Enchanted Sleep
• Variants
Evaluating Folktales
• Is there some mention or citation of the original source
for this tale?
• Is the plot simple and direct?
• Is the language lively and engaging and in keeping with
the oral tradition?
• Does a theme emerge?
• What is the story’s message or moral?
• Do illustrations add to and extend the story?
• Are illustrations and details true to the culture
represented?
• Does the story represent cultural norms, or is written to
conform to Western mores?
• Pg. 233
Folktales of the World
• Every Culture has produced folklore
• Provide Insight
• Help Children discover the universal qualities of
humankind
• Pay Attention to the Following Slides will come in
handy
British Folktales
• First Folktales there most children hear in the United
States
• Joseph Jacobs
• Examples
o “The Old Woman and Her Pig”
o “The Three Bears”
o “The Three Little Pigs”
• Some Of the British Folktales has a realism element
• Wonderfully Exotic Characters
• Region has developed fewer complicated wonder
tales that abound in French and Russian folklore
German Folktales
• Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
o Household Stories
o Grimm Fairy Tales
• Enlivened by elves, dwarfs, and devils rather than
fairies of other cultures
• Villain in the few beast stories is a wolf
• Some can be grim, dark, and forbidding
o “Hansel and Gretel”
• Plots are exciting, fast-moving, and a little
frightening
• Evil beings hold the good beings until the magical
enchantments is broken by love and kindness
Scandinavian
Folktales
• Most are from one single Norwegian collection titled
East o’the Sun and West o’the Moon
o “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”
• Reflect the harsh elements of the northern climate
• Animal helpmates assist heroes in overcoming
giants or wicked trolls
• Heroes
• Evil Spell
• Characterized by many trolls, magical objects, and
enchantments
• Often humorous, exciting, fast-moving
French Folktales
• Earliest to be recorded and most sophisticated and
adult
• Charles Perrault
o Little book with no name
• Was it written by Perrault or son Pierre
• Has an elegant style of the “literary tale”
• “Sleeping Beauty”
• Best Known French wonder tale
o “Beauty and the Beast”
• Usually tales of the rich not poor
• Most have all the trappings of traditional fairy tale
Russian Folktales
• Feature universal patterns of tasks and trials, tricks,
and transformations
• Often longer and complicated than other countries
• Same characters appear in different guises and
one story will often braid into another
• “The Tale of the Firebird”
Jewish Folktales
• Has poignancy, wit, and ironic humor unmatched in
any other folklore
• Many been persevered by the writing of Isaac
Bashevis Singer
• “Zlateh the Goat” based on his own childhood
memories and tradition
Folktales from the Middle
East
• Birthplace of many of our Western stories, but these
tales are not as well know in the United States.
• Arabian Nights
• “Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp”
• Hodja Stories
• Indicative of a rich source on which children’s
literature has yet to draw fully from.
Folktales from Asia
Examples:
o “Yen-Shen” – China
o “Momotaro or the Story of a Peach” - Japan
o “The Brave Little Parrot” – India
• Familiar Theme: Caring for others above oneself
• Japanese Folktales contain:
o Miniature people
o Oni (monster)
o Theme of gentleness toward animals and other people
o Value of hard work
o Respect for elderly
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Familiar Character: Rabbit
Jataka (birth) stories found in India
Later Beast Tales were drawn to form the Panchatantra
Folktales from Africa
• Storytelling is a highly developed art
• Aural cadence not found in other stories of the
world
• Come oral tradition and frequently written in the
storyteller’s voice
• Style
o
o
o
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Short sentences
Frequent use of parallel constructions
Repetition
Dialogue
• Example of Africa Literature
o “Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears”
Africa Continued
• Many may be described as
o Being about personified animals
o Pourquoi stories
• Play on words is a favored form of humor
• Will present a dilemma and then the storyteller will
invite the audience will try to guess the conclusion
• Oral tradition has ben maintained
• Children will learn something new
Folktales of Canada and
the United States
• Examples of Folktales:
• “Johnny Appleseed”
• Folktales that came over with the immigrants that
took on an unmistakable flavor
• Indigenous to the place are Native American
Folktales
• Also tall tales that developed from the pioneer spirit
America Folktales
Continued
• It can be sorted into four categories:
o 1. Native American, Eskimo, and Inuit tales that were originally there.
o 2. Tales that came from other countries, primarily from West Africa, and were
changed in the process to form the basis of African American folktales
o 3. Tales that came primarily from Europe and were modified into new variants
o 4. Tall tales, legends, and other Americana that developed here
• Authors continue to Americanize European folktales
• African American Folktales:
o Slaves who came over here who added layers to beast tales to add a new
meaning about the relationship between the slaves and their masters (Uncle
Remus)
• Tall Tales
o Contain a glorious mixture of the humor, bravado, and pioneer spirit needed
to tame the wilderness
o Exaggerated Tales
o Heroes: Johnny Appleseed and John Henry
Native American
Folktales
• Example:
o “They Dance in the Sky”
• Many Native Americans tales can be categorized as
myths as they include creation myths and sacred
legends
• When originally told there were loosely planned not
highly structured as European fairy tales
• Storytelling is ceremonial importance in various tribal
groups
• Nature myths or pourquoi stories
• Contain a trickster
• Heroes can be found in many stories
• Survival themes are constant
Folktales from Mexico, the Caribbean, and
Central and South America
• Example of Mexico Folktale
o “The Legend of the Poinsettia”
• Example of Caribbean Folktale
o “Cendrillon: A Caribbean Cinderella”
• Have roots in many cultures that has inhabited this vast
region
• African Caribbean tradition has contributed many stories
to the Mainland African Americans
• There is a couple Mexican folktales has a connection to
Catholicism
• Pourquoi stories are common in Central and South
America
• Water is a common motif in
South American folktales.
Activity
• It’s a matching game
• You as a table will match a popular folktale to its
origin
• The tales were discussed in the previous slides for
origin
• Example:
United States
The Three Little Pigs
British
Johnny Appleseed
Fables
• Usually associated with Aesop
• The first written fables appeared in Greek Literature
two centuries before Aesop’s birth and in India and
Egypt before Greece
• Other sources were the Jataka tales
• Panchatantra
• These two have moralistic verses intersperse
throughout
• Jean De La Fontaine who is a third source
Characteristics of Fables
• Brief, didactic tales in which animals, or occasionally the
elements, speak as human beings
o Example is the well-known race between the hare and the tortoise
• Humans do appear in a few fables like “The Boy who
cried Wolf”
• Impersonal characters with no lively personalities
• Animals represent aspects of human nature
• Seldom have more than three characters
• Plot based on a single incident
• Meant to instruct
• Either contain an implicit or an explicit moral
• Appear to be simple but they are complex as they
convey an abstract idea in relatively few words
Editions
• Younger children might appreciate some fables but
can not be able to extract a moral until about 2nd
or 3rd grade
• Older children would like it as they can compare
treatments of several of these fables.
Myths
• Evolved as primitive peoples searched their
imaginations and related events to force as they
sought for explanations of the earth, sky, and
human behavior
• Moved through the concept of one power to a
complex system of which gods and goddess
represent virtues as love to worshipping of gods
• Deals with human relationships with the gods,
relationships among the gods, way people accept
or fulfill their destiny, people’s struggles with good
and evil forces inside themselves and outside
themselves
Myths Continued
• Contain action, suspense, and basic conflicts
• Each story is usually short
• Can be enjoyed by itself without deep knowledge
of general mythology
Types of Myths
• Creation (origin)
o Every culture that has a story about how the world began, how the sun and
moon got into the sky.
o Explanation for the beginnings of things
o Example “When God Made the Dakotas”
• Nature
o Stories that explain seasonal changes, animal characteristics, earth formations,
constellations, and the movements of the sun and earth
o Example Greek story of Demeter and Persephone
• Hero
o Found in many cultures
o Do not attempt to explain anything at all
o Hero is given a task to complete may or may not receive help from the gods
depend on whether or not they like the hero with monsters as a challenge
o He or she accepts all dangerous assignments and accomplishes the quest or
die in one glorious adventure
Greek Mythology
• To distinguish between Greek and Roman names of the Gods
look at page 266
• Gathered by poet Hesiod sometime during the 8th century
B.C.
• Roman version came out in Metamorphoses in 1st century B.C
• Composed of many stories of gods and goddesses, heroes,
and monsters
• Greeks were first to see gods in their own image
• As their culture became sophisticated and complex their
stories did as well
• Gods can do as much as regular human but on an higher
scale
• Includes the creation story with the sun and moon as first gods
the page 267 goes on to describe some more about the
history like how Zeus became the head god
Norse Mythology
• Took their mythology from their land and its people
of origins
• Land was cold and there was a struggle against the
elements
• Therefore it seems logical that Norse mythology is fill
with gods who had to fight huge frost giants
• The gods would fight because they knew that they
and their home on Asgard would be destroyed and
forgotten
• It did come true as Christianity all but extinguished
talk about the old gods expect in Iceland
Epic and Legendary Heroes
What is an Epic?
An epic is a long narrative or a cycle of stories
clustering around the actions of a single hero.
The epic hero is a cultural or national hero
embodying all the ideal characteristics of
greatness in his time.
The epics express the highest moral values of a
society.
Value Of Genre To
Children
A knowledge of the epics gives children an
understanding of a particular culture; but more
importantly, it provides them with models of
greatness through the ages.
Epics
Epic of Gilgamesh
The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Ramayana
Heroes of the Middle
Ages
Beowulf
King Arthur
Robin Hood
The Bible as Literature
Definition of the Bible as
Literature
The Bible is a religious text, but it is also a
work of literature.
The Bible includes many literary qualities
such as it’s narrative genres, its stylistic forms,
and its poetry and prose.
You can read the Bible as if it were a novel.
The Bible includes many different books and
stories.
Value of Genre to
Children
All children deserve to know the spiritual and
religious beliefs that have shaped the world in
which they live.
Whatever our religious persuasion or
nonpersuasion, children should not be denied
their right to knowledge of the traditional literature
of the Bible.
Children cannot fully understand other literature
unless they are familiar with the outstanding
characters, incidents, poems, proverbs, and
parables of this literature of the Western world of
thought.
The Bible as Literature
The Bible is a written record of people’s
continuing search to understand themselves and
their relationships with others and their creator.
Makes little sense to tell children the story of Jack
the Giant Killer but to deny them the stories about
David and Goliath.
Wanderings of Odysseus, but not those of Moses.
Collections of Bible
Stories
• When a school staff agrees that children should
have an opportunity to hear or read some of the
great stories from the Bible, it faces the task of
selecting material.
• These stories can be humorous and include
different variations of Bible stories.
Single Bible Stories
There have been picture books made based on
individual stories from the Bible, which is especially
useful to introduce children to this literature.
Ex. Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon have illustrated a
full-length picture book around the well-known
Bible versus from Ecclesiastes in To Everything
There Is a Season.
•
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
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1. There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
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2. a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
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3. a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
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4. a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
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5. a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
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6. a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
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7. a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
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8. a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.