Legends

Legends - explanation

Purpose

To provide information about the way particular people lived, and what they believed. Legends also help us to reflect on our own lives because they often deal with issues that are cross-cultural and relevant today. 

Plot and Character

There are a great many similarities between myths and legends and some stories are categorized in both these sub-classes of traditional tales. Although legends often include mythical beings and supernatural events, their narrative spine is more closely connected to the real world of human history.
The events in legends tend to seem more likely and less fictionalized than those in myths. 

Legends are usually based on real characters and events, even though these have been richly embellished and exaggerated over time. This gives the narrative an exciting quality because all the events seem to be within the realm of possibility even when the plot has become so widely adapted or updated that it is completely fictional. 

The plot of a legend usually focuses on an individual character, a cultural hero or a person respected and remembered  but there are also legends about places, objects and legendary animals.

Structure and Style

The Structure is usually episodic, as in the phases of a journey over several years or the stages of a great battle. Some legends tell the entire life story of their hero as a series of linked episodes, each one a story in its own right, as in the King Arthur stories and the sagas of German-speaking and Northern European countries. 

Common structures include:

• chronological episodes;
• journey stories;
• sequential stories;
• Life stories and community histories.

Like myths, legends sometimes use a more literary style than fairy tales or fables.
For example:

• rich, evocative vocabulary
• memorable language use
• use of rhythm and repetition techniques
• formulaic openings and endings
• Imagery: simile, metaphor and symbolism. 

Theme

Legends employ many of the typical themes of traditional stories:

• good and evil
• friend and foe
• magic
• the supernatural
• rich and poor/rags to riches/riches to rags
• wise and foolish
• strong and weak
• just and unjust
• a quest or search
• a journey
• Trials and forfeits.

Legends, like myths, reveal information about the way people lived, what they believed, what was important to them, what they valued and what they were afraid of. 

They also convey meaning about the way we live our lives that make them relevant and interesting across cultures and time. This makes them worth repeating through generations and publishing as new versions or adaptations for twenty-first century readers. Brand new legends continue to be developed as part of contemporary literary and oral storytelling cultures.