Concept

Legend

Overview

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 tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive participants, may include miracles. Legends may be transformed over time to keep them fresh and vital.

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 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 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.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Legend is discussed.

This leads to further differences. The hero of the redemption legend is conscious of his mission from the very beginning; in the case of the saint, conversion to a new faith not infrequently forms the starting-point of the legend. Common to the two forms, however, is the fact that suffering precedes the final triumph. The traits that we have mentioned constitute the essential difference between these forms of the…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
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“All those false miracles by which you shake the credit due to real ones, the numberless absurd legends with which you clog the truths of the Gospel, serve only to extinguish the pure flame of religion in our hearts.” There are too many persons, who, desirous of being instructed, but not having the time for acquiring instruction, say: “The teachers of my religion have deceived me, therefore there is no religion: it…
Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII. Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration.
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As the coin was not so perfectly struck, part of the Greek legend is thereby apparently lost; from whence, and the evident want of a word there, we may conclude, that the Parthian legend, for Parthian by the explication here laid down it appears to be, on the correspondent part of the reverse, must have met with the same fate. What that Parthian term was, I cannot take upon me to say; but the whole legend was…
Various, Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.
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It would be the work of minstrels, priests, and poets, as the national spirit grew conscious of itself, to shape all these materials into a definite body of tradition. This is the rule of development—first scattered stories, then the union of these into a _national_ legend. The growth of later national legends, which we are able to trace, historically, has generally come about in this fashion. To take the best known…
Homer, The Odyssey of Homer
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This division of the world into two domains, the one containing all that is sacred, the other all that is profane, is the distinctive trait of religious thought; the beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends are either representations or systems of representations which express the nature of sacred things, the virtues and powers which are attributed to them, or their relations with each other and with profane things. But…
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
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Legend

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Legend

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition