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Reviewed by:
  • American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore ed. by Christopher R. Fee and Jeffrey B. Webb
  • Eric César Morales (bio)
American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore. Edited by Christopher R. Fee and Jeffrey B. Webb, ABC-CLIO, 2016, 3 volumes, 410 pp., 387 pp., 361 pp.

When Jan Harold Brunvand’s book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings, was published in 1981, it brought the study of legends into mainstream discourse because it was both accessible and analytical, enabling it to generate significant interest in popular culture. The book itself even made a cameo in the 1998 psychological slasher film Urban Legend, sitting on the desk of Professor Wexler, who, in the movie, taught “Intro to American Folklore.” Brunvand would later speak of how he would regularly receive letters with additional legends or different variants from people all around the country, even abroad. In going through the nearly five hundred entries that comprise the three volumes of American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales, I cannot help but to think of all those legends Brunvand must have received and how many of them found their way here. Yet, while exploring the legend scholarship is what piqued my interest in reviewing this title, the collection goes far beyond the study of urban legends—known as contemporary legends in folklore circles—expanding to include additional narrative genres, such as animal tales, culture heroes and villains, conspiracy theories, and folklore-influenced items of popular culture.

The introduction provides a straightforward and easily digestible breakdown of the title’s key terms that the general public has a passing, although often mistaken, familiarity with—folklore, myths, legends, and tall tales—and it speaks to the need of recognizing the diverse ethnic roots that formulate the corpus of American folklore. As such, the introduction serves as a solid primer to conceptualize the distinct meanings behind these terms, their significance, and how narratives from around the world have adapted to an American context. It would thus serve as a useful reading for a folklore section in a high school or freshman-level undergraduate English class—though due to its brevity (four pages) and lack of critical analysis, I would not recommend it for a semester-long course on introduction to folklore where each term should get far deeper consideration than what can be provided here.

The entries are arranged in alphabetical order, with a “Contents” section that lists all items in the front of each volume. Additionally, there is a “Guide to Related Topics” that categorizes culturally or thematically related entries, such as “Hispanic American Legends and Folklore,” “Native American Mythical Creatures,” “Historical Figures and Americana,” and “Conspiracy Theories.” This makes it easier to scan through the volumes for items that correspond with specific areas of interest. Following standard encyclopedic format, each of the entries provides an overview of the item, cross references as appropriate, and a “Further Reading” segment with helpful internet links where [End Page 123] appropriate. Also included are black-and-white photographs with informative captions, text boxes that summarize important characters or events, and examples of primary documents, such as the words to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” (816–17). The staggering diversity in entries makes this a valuable collection. Included are well-known contemporary legends (“Alligators in the Sewers”), traditions (“Jumping the Broom”), historical figures (“Amelia Earhart”), cryptozoological figures (“Bigfoot”), conspiracy theories (“Area 51”), and areas of academic inquiry (“Fakelore”), as well as tales that the larger country is not familiar with but should be (“Legend of the Pineapple” and “Orphan Boy the Farmer: A Hmong American Folktale”).

Of particular interest to readers of this journal might be the collection’s treatment of fairy tales (also known as Märchen), which is unfortunately not very extensive. This is understandable considering the broad source material and its larger focus on legends, but there are still, however, some noteworthy entries. For instance, the passage on Bruno Bettelheim provides insight into the history of the psychoanalytic study of fairy tales, and the section, “Folklore and Folktales,” provides a more nuanced understanding of how fairy tales fit into...

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