Legend

[4] 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:[5] Legend, typically, is a short (mono-) episodic, traditional, highly ecotypified[6] 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 is a loanword from Old French that entered English usage c. 1340.

[8] 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.

"[11] Early scholars such as Karl Wehrhan [de][12] Friedrich Ranke[13] and Will Erich Peuckert[14] followed Grimm's example in focussing solely on the literary narrative, an approach that was enriched particularly after the 1960s,[15] 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 a content-based series of categories on the line of the Aarne–Thompson folktale index, provoked a search for a broader new synthesis.

Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea or "The Golden Legend" comprises a series of vitae or instructive biographical narratives, tied to the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church.

[29] Urban legends are 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.

[30] Jan Harold Brunvand, professor of English at the University of Utah, introduced the term to the general public in a series of popular books published beginning in 1981.