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23-723: The Gesta Treverorum ( Deeds of the Trevians ) is a collection of histories, legends , wars , records of the Archbishops of Trier (Trèves), writings of the Popes , and other records that were collected by the monks of the St. Matthias' Abbey in Trier . It was begun in the 12th century and was continued until 1794 when the Archbishopric of Trier came to an end. An edition was published as an eight-volume set in

46-456: A content-based series of categories on the line of the Aarne–Thompson folktale index, provoked a search for a broader new synthesis. In an early attempt at defining some basic questions operative in examining folk tales, Friedrich Ranke  [ de ] in 1925 characterised the folk legend as "a popular narrative with an objectively untrue imaginary content", a dismissive position that

69-421: A legend is simply a longstanding rumour . Gordon Allport credited the staying-power of some rumours to the persistent cultural state-of-mind that they embody and capsulise; thus " Urban legends " are a feature of rumour. When Willian Hugh Jansen suggested that legends that disappear quickly were "short-term legends" and the persistent ones be termed "long-term legends", the distinction between legend and rumour

92-499: A modern genre of folklore that is rooted in local popular culture , usually comprising fictional stories that are often presented as true, with macabre or humorous elements. These legends can be used for entertainment purposes, as well as semi-serious explanations for seemingly-mysterious events, such as disappearances and strange objects. The term "urban legend," as generally used by folklorists, has appeared in print since at least 1968. Jan Harold Brunvand , professor of English at

115-461: A more narrative-based or mythological form over time, an example being the oral traditions of the African Great Lakes . Hippolyte Delehaye distinguished legend from myth : "The legend , on the other hand, has, of necessity, some historical or topographical connection. It refers imaginary events to some real personage, or it localizes romantic stories in some definite spot." From

138-483: A series of vitae or instructive biographical narratives, tied to the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church . They are presented as lives of the saints, but the profusion of miraculous happenings and above all their uncritical context are characteristics of hagiography . The Legenda was intended to inspire extemporized homilies and sermons appropriate to the saint of the day. Urban legends are

161-422: A widely used grammar of Middle High German , but throughout his career occupied himself with the philology of Old Norse as well as of German. He wrote above all about heroic literature. After leaving Switzerland he began work on a complete history of German literature, originally intended as a short handbook for student use; it became a multi-volume work of which he wrote only the first three volumes, dealing with

184-464: Is a loanword from Old French that entered English usage c.  1340 . The Old French noun legende derives from the Medieval Latin legenda . In its early English-language usage, the word indicated a narrative of an event. The word legendary was originally a noun (introduced in the 1510s) meaning a collection or corpus of legends. This word changed to legendry , and legendary became

207-742: The Anschluß also to Austria to lecture on Germanentum . He sent a paper to Thomas Mann advocating a Germanic religion based on 'kinship and law'. Neighbours complained about his entertaining large numbers of young Germans at his home who were not all students, flying the swastika, and driving an ostentatious red and orange car paid for by the German embassy. In 1944 he was awarded the War Merit Cross , apparently for his services racially vetting Germans invited to speak in Switzerland. A file containing his reports on

230-634: The University of Bern . After World War II, he became professor of German Language and Literature at Marburg (1945–49), and then held the chair in Older German Language and Literature and Old Norse at the Free University of Berlin until 1958/59, when he retired. De Boor was a very productive scholar. He revised Karl Bartsch 's standard edition of the Nibelungenlied and co-wrote

253-668: The University of Utah , introduced the term to the general public in a series of popular books published beginning in 1981. Brunvand used his collection of legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings (1981) to make two points: first, that legends and folklore do not occur exclusively in so-called primitive or traditional societies, and second, that one could learn much about urban and modern culture by studying such tales. Helmut de Boor Helmut de Boor (born 24 March 1891 in Bonn , died 4 August 1976 in Berlin)

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276-483: The fairy tale as "poetic, legend historic." Early scholars such as Karl Wehrhan  [ de ] Friedrich Ranke and Will Erich Peuckert followed Grimm's example in focussing solely on the literary narrative, an approach that was enriched particularly after the 1960s, by addressing questions of performance and the anthropological and psychological insights provided in considering legends' social context. Questions of categorising legends, in hopes of compiling

299-618: The talking animal formula of Aesop identifies his brief stories as fables and not legends. The parable of the Prodigal Son would be a legend if it were told as having actually happened to a specific son of a historical father. If it included a donkey that gave sage advice to the Prodigal Son it would be a fable. Legend may be transmitted orally, passed on person-to-person, or, in the original sense, through written text. Jacobus de Voragine 's Legenda Aurea or "The Golden Legend" comprises

322-436: The 19th century. A new 8-volume edition by Emil Zenz was published in the 1950s and 1960s. This German history article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Legend Many legends operate within the realm of uncertainty, never being entirely believed by the participants, but also never being resolutely doubted. Legends are sometimes distinguished from myths in that they concern human beings as

345-601: The Faroese ballads which relate to the Nibelungenlied , which he was later to edit. While working on his Habilitation, he was a tutor in Old Norse at Breslau. He then held academic positions in German Studies at the University of Gothenburg (1919–22), Old Norse at the University of Greifswald (1924–26), and Old Norse at Leipzig (1926–30). From 1930 to 1945, he was professor of German Language and Literature at

368-462: The adjectival form. By 1613, English-speaking Protestants began to use the word when they wished to imply that an event (especially the story of any saint not acknowledged in John Foxe 's Actes and Monuments ) was fictitious. Thus, legend gained its modern connotations of "undocumented" and " spurious ", which distinguish it from the meaning of chronicle . In 1866, Jacob Grimm described

391-679: The early Middle Ages and Middle High German poetry. De Boor became a member of the Nazi Party in 1937. He regarded Nazism as a natural reaction of the younger generation in Germany which had been most heavily affected by the aftermath of World War I. He was collegial with Jewish faculty at Bern and initially his closest friend there was Fritz Strich , a Jewish scholar, who however cut off contact with him in 1934 on suspicion that de Boor had told his daughter to boycott Strich's lectures on anti-semitic grounds. He travelled frequently to Germany and after

414-465: The main characters and do not necessarily have supernatural origins, and sometimes in that they have some sort of historical basis whereas myths generally do not. The Brothers Grimm defined legend as " folktale historically grounded". A by-product of the "concern with human beings" is the long list of legendary creatures , leaving no "resolute doubt" that legends are "historically grounded." A modern folklorist 's professional definition of legend

437-463: The moment a legend is retold as fiction, its authentic legendary qualities begin to fade and recede: in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow , Washington Irving transformed a local Hudson River Valley legend into a literary anecdote with "Gothic" overtones , which actually tended to diminish its character as genuine legend. Stories that exceed the boundaries of " realism " are called " fables ". For example,

460-737: Was a German medievalist. Helmut de Boor was the third child of the Byzantine studies scholar Carl Gotthard de Boor . He was educated in Breslau and attended the Universities of Freiburg , Marburg and Leipzig . He earned his doctorate from Leipzig in 1914 and following service in World War I, his Habilitation from the University of Breslau in 1919, in German studies , Old Norse and Philology . Both his dissertation and his Habilitationsschrift are on

483-501: Was effectively obliterated, Tangherlini concluded. In a narrow Christian sense, legenda ("things to be read [on a certain day, in church]") were hagiographical accounts, often collected in a legendary. Because saints' lives are often included in many miracle stories, legend , in a wider sense, came to refer to any story that is set in a historical context, but that contains supernatural , divine or fantastic elements. History preserved orally through many generations often takes on

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506-402: Was proposed by Timothy R. Tangherlini in 1990: Legend, typically, is a short (mono-) episodic, traditional, highly ecotypified historicized narrative performed in a conversational mode, reflecting on a psychological level a symbolic representation of folk belief and collective experiences and serving as a reaffirmation of commonly held values of the group to whose tradition it belongs. Legend

529-510: Was subsequently largely abandoned. Compared to the highly structured folktale, legend is comparatively amorphous, Helmut de Boor noted in 1928. The narrative content of legend is in realistic mode, rather than the wry irony of folktale; Wilhelm Heiske remarked on the similarity of motifs in legend and folktale and concluded that, in spite of its realistic mode , legend is not more historical than folktale. In Einleitung in der Geschichtswissenschaft (1928), Ernst Bernheim asserted that

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