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QuEST
A quest is a journey toward a specific mission or a goal. It serves as a plot device in mythology and fiction: a difficult journey towards a goal, often symbolic or allegorical. Tales of quests figure prominently in the folklore of every nation and ethnic culture. In literature, the object of a quest requires great exertion on the part of the hero, who must overcome many obstacles, typically including much travel. The aspect of travel allows the storyteller to showcase exotic locations and cultures (an objective of the narrative, not of the character). The object of a quest may also have supernatural properties, often leading the protagonist into other worlds and dimensions. The moral of a quest tale often centers on the changed character of the hero. Quest objects The hero normally aims to obtain something or someone by the quest, and with this object to return home. The object can be something new, that fulfills a lack in their life, or something that was stolen away f ...
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The Dancing Water, The Singing Apple, And The Speaking Bird
The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird is a Sicily, Sicilian fairy tale collected by Giuseppe Pitrè, and translated by Thomas Frederick Crane for his ''Italian Popular Tales''. Joseph Jacobs included a reconstruction of the story in his ''European Folk and Fairy Tales''. The original title is "", for which Crane gives a literal translation of "The Herb-gatherer's Daughters". The story is the prototypical example of Aarne–Thompson–Uther tale-type 707, to which it gives its name. Alternate names for the tale type are ''The Three Golden Sons'', ''The Three Golden Children'', ''The Bird of Truth'', , , or . According to folklorist Stith Thompson, the tale is "one of the eight or ten best known plots in the world". Synopsis The following is a summary of the tale as it was collected by Giuseppe Pitrè and translated by Thomas Frederick Crane. A king walking the streets heard three poor sisters talk. The oldest said that if she married the royal butler, s ...
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Holy Grail
The Holy Grail (, , , ) is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Various traditions describe the Holy Grail as a cup, dish, or stone with miraculous healing powers, sometimes providing eternal youth or sustenance in infinite abundance, often guarded in the custody of the Fisher King and located in the hidden Grail castle. By analogy, any elusive object or goal of great significance may be perceived as a "holy grail" by those seeking such. A mysterious "grail" (Old French: ''graal'' or ''greal''), wondrous but not unequivocally holy, first appears in '' Perceval, the Story of the Grail'', an unfinished chivalric romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. Chrétien's story inspired many continuations, translators and interpreters in the later-12th and early-13th centuries, including Wolfram von Eschenbach, who portrayed the Grail as a stone in ''Parzival''. The Christian, Celtic or possibly other origins of the Arthurian grail trope are ...
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Galahad
Galahad (), sometimes referred to as Galeas () or Galath (), among other versions of his name (originally ''Galaad'', ''Galaaz'', or ''Galaaus''), is a knight of King Arthur's Round Table and one of the three achievers of the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. He is the illegitimate son of Sir Lancelot du Lac and Lady Elaine of Corbenic and is renowned for his gallantry and purity as the most perfect of all knights. Emerging quite late in the medieval Arthurian tradition, Sir Galahad first appears in the Lancelot–Grail cycle, and his story is taken up in later works, such as the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and Sir Thomas Malory's ''Le Morte d'Arthur''. In Arthurian literature, he replaced Percival as the hero in the quest for the Holy Grail. Origins The story of Galahad and his quest for the Holy Grail is a relatively late addition to the Arthurian legend. Galahad does not feature in any romance by Chrétien de Troyes, or in Robert de Boron's Grail stories, or in any of the contin ...
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Go I Know Not Whither And Fetch I Know Not What
Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What (, Transliteration, translit. ''Poydi tuda, ne znau kuda, prinesi to, ne znau chto'') is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in ''Narodnye russkie skazki''. Synopsis A royal hunter shoots a bird; wounded, it begs him not to kill it but to take it home, and when it goes to sleep, strike its head. He does so, and the bird Shapeshifting, becomes a beautiful woman. She proposes that they marry, and they do. After the marriage, she sees how hard he has to hunt and tells him to borrow one or two hundred rubles. He does so, and then buys silks with them. She conjures two spirits and sets them to make a marvelous carpet. Then she gives the carpet to her husband and tells him to accept whatever price he is given. The merchants do not know how much to pay for it, and finally, the king's steward buys it for ten thousand rubles. The king sees it and gives the steward twenty-five thousand for it. The steward goes t ...
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Hero
A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or Physical strength, strength. The original hero type of classical epics did such things for the sake of glory (honor), glory and honor. post-classical history, Post-classical and modern history, modern heroes, on the other hand, perform great deeds or selfless acts for the common good instead of the classical goal of wealth, pride, and fame. The antonym of ''hero'' is ''villain''. Other terms associated with the concept of ''hero'' may include ''good guy'' or ''wikt:white hat, white hat''. In Classics, classical literature, the hero is the main or revered character in Epic poetry, heroic epic poetry celebrated through ancient legends of a people, often striving for military conquest and living by a continually flawed personal honor code. The definition of a hero has changed throughout time. Webster's Dictionary, Merriam We ...
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Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human condition. Campbell's best-known work is his book '' The Hero with a Thousand Faces'' (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth. Since the publication of ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces'', Campbell's theories have been applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. His philosophy has been summarized by his own often repeated phrase: "Follow your bliss." He gained recognition in Hollywood when George Lucas credited Campbell's work as influencing his ''Star Wars'' saga. Campbell's approach to folklore topics such as myth and his influence on popular culture has been the subject of criticism, especially from academic folklorists. Lif ...
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Folklore
Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also includes material culture, such as traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also encompasses customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, including folk religion, and the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas, weddings, folk dances, and Rite of passage, initiation rites. Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a Cultural artifact, folklore artifact or Cultural expressions, traditional cultural expression. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead, thes ...
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Vladimir Propp
Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (; – 22 August 1970) was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analysed the basic structural elements of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible structural units. Biography Vladimir Propp was born on 29 April 1895 in Saint Petersburg to an assimilated Russian family of German descent. His parents, Yakov Philippovich Propp and Anna-Elizaveta Fridrikhovna Propp (née Beisel), were Volga German wealthy peasants from Saratov Governorate. He attended Saint Petersburg University (1913–1918), majoring in Russian and German philology.Propp, Vladimir. "Introduction." ''Theory and History of Folklore.'' Ed. Anatoly Liberman. University of Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. pg ix Upon graduation he taught Russian and German at a secondary school and then became a college teacher of German. His ''Morphology of the Folktale'' was published in Russian in 1928. Although it represented a breakthrough in both folkloristics ...
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Jason
Jason ( ; ) was an ancient Greek mythological hero and leader of the Argonauts, whose quest for the Golden Fleece is featured in Greek literature. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcos. He was married to the sorceress Medea, the granddaughter of the sungod Helios. Jason appeared in various literary works in the classical world of Greece and Rome, including the epic poem ''Argonautica'' and the tragedy '' Medea''. In the modern world, Jason has emerged as a character in various adaptations of his myths, such as the 1963 film '' Jason and the Argonauts'' and the 2000 TV miniseries of the same name. Persecution by Pelias Pelias (Aeson's half-brother) was power-hungry and sought to gain dominion over all of Thessaly. Pelias was the progeny of a union between their shared mother, Tyro ("high born Tyro"), the daughter of Salmoneus, and the sea god Poseidon. In a bitter feud, he overthrew Aeson (the rightful king), killing all the descendants of Aeson ...
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Supernatural
Supernatural phenomena or entities are those beyond the Scientific law, laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin 'above, beyond, outside of' + 'nature'. Although the corollary term "nature" has had multiple meanings since the ancient world, the term "supernatural" emerged in the Middle Ages and did not exist in the ancient world. The supernatural is featured in folklore and religious contexts, but can also feature as an explanation in more secular contexts, as in the cases of superstitions or belief in the paranormal. The term is attributed to non-physical entity, non-physical entities, such as angels, demons, gods and ghost, spirits. It also includes claimed abilities embodied in or provided by such beings, including Magic (supernatural), magic, telekinesis, levitation (paranormal), levitation, precognition and extrasensory perception. The supernatural is hypernymic to religion. Religions are standardized supernaturalist worldviews, or at least m ...
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Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan War#Sack of Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome, Romans. Written by the Roman poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, the ''Aeneid'' comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed. The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the ''Iliad''. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Ancient Rome, Rome and his description as a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous ''pietas'', ...
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Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the ''Eclogues'' (or ''Bucolics''), the ''Georgics'', and the Epic poetry, epic ''Aeneid''. A number of minor poems, collected in the ''Appendix Vergiliana'', were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars generally regard these works as spurious, with the possible exception of a few short pieces. Already acclaimed in his own lifetime as a classic author, Virgil rapidly replaced Ennius and other earlier authors as a standard school text, and stood as the most popular Latin poet through late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and early modernity, exerting inestimable influence on all subsequent Western literature. Geoffrey Chaucer assigned Virgil a uniquely prominent position among all the celebrities ...
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