Roman folklore is the
folklore
Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...
of
ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...
, including genres such as
myth
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...
(
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans, and is a form of Roman folklore. "Roman mythology" may also refer to the modern study of these representations, and to th ...
),
legend
A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess certain qualities that give the ...
,
joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, ...
,
charm
Charm or Charms may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* The Charms, an American garage rock band
* Otis Williams and the Charms, an American doo-wop group
* The Charm (Bubba Sparxxx album), ''The Charm'' (Bubba Sparxxx album), 2006
* Charm (Danny! ...
s,
fable
Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a parti ...
,
ghostlore
Ghostlore is an intricate web of Tradition, traditional beliefs and folklore surrounding ghosts and List of reportedly haunted locations, hauntings. Ghostlore has ingrained itself in the cultural fabric of societies worldwide. Defined by narrative ...
, and numerous others.
[For example, classicist William Hansen notes that "the Greeks and Romans had all the genres of oral narrative known to us, even ghost stories and ]urban legend
Urban legend (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not.
These legends can be e ...
s, but they also told all kinds that in most of the Western world no longer circulate orally, such as myths
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...
and fairytales." (Hansen 2019: xxv). Scholars have published various collections focused on ancient Rome's folklore.
[Examples include Busk (1877), Halliday (1927), Anderson (2006), and Hansen (2019).] Roman folklore is closely related to
Ancient Greek folklore and precedes
Italian folklore.
Notes
References
*Anderson, Graham. 2006. ''Greek and Roman Folklore: A Handbook''.
Greenwood press
Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG) was an educational and academic publisher (middle school through university level) which was part of ABC-Clio. Since 2021, ABC-Clio and its suite of imprints, including GPG, are collectively imprints of B ...
*
Busk, Rachel Hariette. 1877. ''Roman Legends: A Collection of the Fables and Folk-lore of Rome''. Estes and Lauriat.
*
Halliday, William Reginald. 1927. ''Greek and Roman Folklore''. G. C. Harrap.
*
Hansen, William. 2019. ''The Book of Greek and Roman Folktales, Legends, and Myths''.
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...
.
folklore
Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...
Folklore by country
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