traditional stories
Passed-down narratives
Traditional stories are narratives passed down through generations within a culture—myths, legends, folktales, and fables.
They typically existed in oral form before being written down, evolving with each retelling.
Traditional stories often convey moral lessons, explain natural phenomena, or preserve cultural values: Traditional stories from the Cherokee speak of how the earth was formed.
- once upon a timeTraditional narrative opening
- cautionary talesStories conveying warnings
- heroic deedsCourageous acts of valor
- epic poemsExtended heroic verse narratives
- creation mythsTraditional origin-of-everything tales
old wives tales · fairy tales · ancestral wisdom · communal memory · trickster tales · allegories · moral lessons · oral traditions · handed down · village elders · origin stories · folk heroes · parables · teaching stories · cosmogony · ghost stories · oral historians · proverbs
- Aboriginal CultureDreamtime, songlines, corroboree, dreaming, totems
- children's storiesfairy tales, animal stories, folk tales, picture books, classic tales
- folklorefairy tales, fairytales, folktales, folk tales, folk tale
- Inuit vocabularybody parts, numerals, greetings, action words, verb forms
- Guugu Yimithirrclan names, place names
- languagesEnglish, Arabic, Chinese, German, French
traditional storiesmodern fiction
Recent imaginative prose works
contemporary literature · original works · breaking news · experimental fiction · current events
traditional storieshistorical records
Preserved accounts of the past
nonfiction · journalism · primary sources · eyewitness testimony · scientific data