folk literature
Stories people share
Folk literature is the body of stories, songs, proverbs, and poems passed down orally through generations within a community—fairy tales, myths, legends, ballads, riddles.
Unlike written literature with known authors, folk literature emerges anonymously from collective tradition: Grimm's fairy tales were collected from German folk literature.
The term covers both the oral traditions themselves and written collections that preserve them.
- fablesDidactic animal stories
- legendsTraditional stories or icons
- balladsNarrative verse set to music
- mythsTraditional untrue narratives
- tall talesFantastical exaggerated stories
riddles · nursery rhymes · bedtime stories · oral tradition · storytelling · morality tales · proverbs · supernatural beings · Celtic legends · Anansi · Native American myths · creation myths · old wives tales · cultural preservation · heroic journeys · Brothers Grimm · parables · animal fables
- storiesstory, tale, tales, myth, legend
- folklorefairy tales, fairytales, fairy tale, legends, legend
- folk literatureoral histories, broadside ballads, nursery rhymes, tall tales, trickster tales
- Chinese textshistorical documents, historical archives, official documents, historical texts, oracle bone script
- Punjabi heritageGuru Granth Sahib, var
- Turkish Literaturemasnavi, court poetry, religious verse, Snow, classical verse
folk literatureliterary fiction
Prose emphasizing craft and depth
belles-lettres · published works · professional writing · original composition · intellectual property
folk literatureclassical literature
Foundational Western texts
canonical works · literary canon · experimental fiction · modernist literature
folk, folklore, literature, folksy, folktale, folktales, folksong, folksiness, folksongs