FRES 1010: Freshman Seminar, Urban Legends

Instructor: Charles Doyle

Office: Park Hall 214 (daily 10:00)

E-Mail:  cdoyle@uga.edu

 

Urban legends, sometimes called modern legends or contemporary legends, are brief accounts of bizarre recent occurrences, told as if believed to be true.  Like other kinds of folklore, they are transmitted orally or (nowadays) over the Internet, though sometimes they get reported in the news media or on television talk shows as factual events.  They also get alluded to in (or even provide the plots of) motion pictures, TV dramas, and literary fiction.

 

For the past three or four decades, folklorists have been devoting much attention to the genre.  Many assumptions have been made and subsequently rejected, many defining characteristics posited and subsequently discounted.

 

The term legend suggest Abelief@Cbut how much belief, and what kind of belief?  The term also suggests Anarrative@ as the vehicle surrounding and transmitting the beliefCbut how much narrative?  And narrative in what range of possible styles and tones?  With what relationship (social, situational, rhetorical) between the teller and the listener? What about the word urban in the term urban legends?  It was initially used to suggest that the legends circulate among urbanized, up-to-date people (usually American, British, or European), in contrast to the kinds of folklore that have been stereotyped (falsely) as principally belonging to credulous peasant cultures or to rustic groups within more Asophisticated@ societies.  But rural (and suburban) Americans certainly tell and hear Aurban@ legends. What about the term modern legends?  Again, that term was adopted to differentiate them from narratives called Alegends@ belonging to older traditions:  medieval Asaints= legends,@ or ghost stories, or accounts of boisterous frontier heroes= exploits.  However, research soon revealed that many Amodern legends@ had analogs in the literature and folklore of much earlier timesCthat they were not, either in their plots or their Abeliefs,@ distinctively modern at all.

 

So, contemporary legends is nowadays the term preferred by many folklorists.  Contemporary signifies that the legends are being told currently and set in current times, without denying the considerable antiquity (as well as the international distribution) of some of them.  Most college-age Americans possess a repertory of contemporary legends that they could narrate under the right circumstances, and an intuitive ability to recognize new or unfamiliar narratives as belonging to the genre.

 

Brunvand (1993) has offered a rough grouping of contemporary legends, according to their subject matter, into these ten overlapping categories: Automobiles; Animals; Horrors; Accidents; Sex and Scandal; Crime; Business and Professions; Government; Celebrities; Academe.  Can you think of examples of contemporary legends that don=t fit into any of the categories?  Is subject matter the only criterion by which one could classify contemporary legends?

I hope the foregoing remarks will help you start thinking about contemporary legendsCabout what they are, and about what they do:  What societal and personal functions might they serve?  What values does their telling affirm and transmit (consciously or unconsciously)?  Obviously, contemporary legends are fun to tell and to hearCmaybe even to believeCbut what makes them fun (things aren=t just entertaining for no reason!)?

 

The expectation of this seminar is that each individual, while becoming acquainted with a considerable number and range of contemporary legends, will develop some skill in analyzing legends in terms of stylistic characteristics and the social and psychological Arealities@ that the legends (in their telling) express and reveal, while discerning relationships among legends.  Since the class is a seminar, students must accept the obligation to contribute their own knowledge and insights to the efforts of the group.  Class attendance is required; any more than two absences (two weeks of class!) will jeopardize your chance of receiving academic credit.  Also mandatory is the careful reading of this book:

 

&                     Jan Harold Brunvand, The Vanishing Hitchhiker

 

 

Weekly writing assignments:

@                At every class meeting, starting next week, each student must submit a small piece of (good) writingCabout 150-250 words on one of the following topics:

 

            [1] From your own recent or recollected observation or experience, present and analytically comment on an urban legend Atext@ that is in some way related to the current reading assignment or a previous reading assignment or classroom discussion; or  [2] Comment critically on some point or detail in the current reading assignment or in the preceding week=s classroom discussion.

 

 

 

Books on reserve:

 

 

Brunvand, The Study of American Folklore                               GR105.B7 1998

 

Brunvand, The Study of American Folklore                               GR105.B7 1986

 

Brunvand, The Choking Doberman                                                       GR105.B686 1984

 

Brunvand, The Mexican Pet                                                                              GR105.B686 1986

 

Brunvand, Curses, Broiled Again!                                                          GR105.B686 1989

 

Brunvand, The Baby Train                                                                                 GR105.B686 1993

 

Fine, Manufacturing Tales                                                                                 GR462.F56 1992

Turner, I Heard It through the Grape Vine                             GR111.A47T87 1993