Literature Glossary
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Folktale
Definition:
A folktale is a traditional story or legend that's common to a specific culture and often passed along orally (preferably around a crackling fire, if you ask us). Folktales often contain a lesson to be learned, and can take many forms, like fables, tall tales, and even ghost stories.
Since they're handed down from generation to generation, many folktales aren't set in a specific time and place. Other particulars are changeable, too. That way, whoever is telling the tale can add or change details to make the story more relevant to his or her culture.
For example, Stone Soup is a popular folktale that imparts a valuable lesson about cooperation. In it, hungry strangers trick some selfish townspeople into giving them food by pretending to make soup out of a stone. But since it's a folktale, it doesn't have to be a stone; the inedible object the starving strangers use to trick the locals changes based on where the tale is told. In Russia it's axe soup. In Scandinavia, it's nail soup. Straddle the border and you've got yourself one seriously dangerous broth.