Читать книгу Types of Prose Narratives - Harriott Ely Fansler - Страница 25

Table of Contents

Myth and legend compared

Historically the legend may or may not be a later development than the myth. The bards may have ascribed the fanciful deeds of the gods to their tribal heroes, or they may have elevated their tribal heroes into gods by exaggerating actual adventures into far-reaching phenomena. For our present study the descent is immaterial; the distinction is all. In the myth the chief actors are gods; in the legend, men—men endowed with superhuman strength often, to be sure, but still men, though the favorites of the gods. The course of events in the typical myth is pure and absolute imagination; the course of events in the typical legend is somewhat held down by facts. When the deeds are magnified or wholly fanciful, the characters are semi-historical; when the events or places are historical, the chief actors are generally imaginary.

Saga

In the myth-legend, or saga, the deeds transcend the ordinarily credible and the heroes are often directed by superhuman agencies. Perhaps the oldest examples of this kind are those recorded in the Sanscrit "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana", and the Persian "Shah Nameh." In the last occurs the beautiful story of Sohrab and Rustam, who lived six hundred years before Christ. Firdousi, writing as late as the first decade of the eleventh century, was therefore working over very ancient material. Such combinations likewise of older tradition and later writing are the Anglo-Saxon "Beowulf", the French "Chanson de Roland", the Spanish "Cid", the Italian "Orlando Furioso" (which is the French story adapted), the German "Hildebrand", "Waltharilied", and "Nibelungen Nôt", and the Icelandic "Grettir the Strong" and "Volsunga Saga". The "Volsunga Saga" as we have it today is prose with some songs from the "Elder Edda". Legend in its written form as a composition type we think of as prose, though it may be verse, or prose and verse combined.

Saint legends

To the early church a legend meant the narrative of the life of a saint or a martyr, especially the account of his triumphs over temptation and of the miracles he witnessed or performed. Even to-day in some monasteries such stories are read at meals while the monks eat. It is interesting to note that the church distinguishes between legenda, things to be read, and credenda, things to be believed. What appears to be the earliest of these legends and the model of the others is said to have been written by St. John of Damascus, a monk of Syria, who lived in the eighth century. It is called "Barlaam and Josaphat" and contains besides the lives of the prince and the prophet many beautiful parables, one of which Shakespeare immortalized in the casket scene in the "Merchant of Venice". The life of Josaphat is in turn said to be the legendary life of the Buddha. There are many beautiful Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Christian stories of this type. In the Cynewulfian group of Anglo-Saxon Lives of the Saints, the "Andreas" is considered very fine. With its account of St. Andrew's miraculous rescue of St. Matthew from prison among the heathen is a sturdy, realistic description of a stormy voyage on northern seas. "The Golden Legend", published by Caxton in 1483, is a translation of a celebrated medieval collection of lives of the greater saints, composed in Latin by Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican archbishop of Genoa, in the thirteenth century.

Geoffrey of Monmouth

The great English legendary history and a great source-book of English literary legend is the Historia Britonum of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Besides giving us the original story of Lear and many other things in his record of British rulers down to the Saxon Invasion, this twelfth century author, building on the meager basis of an unknown Nennius and possibly a cleric's version of Welsh traditions, started the magnificent Arthurian cycle on its way. This Latin account joined the great stream of continental legendary romance, added to it and took from it, and came back into English in Layamon's "Brut" in the form of a series of metrical legends for the common people.

Legendary romance

That most original and enchanting of all the medieval legendary romance books, Malory's "Morte Darthur", stands between the old and the new English fiction in that it has the content of the one and the form of the other. In it were gathered up the religious element (that had come in with the tradition of Joseph of Arimathæa), the love element (of the Launcelot-Guinevere stories), and the national element (Arthur, his wonderful Excalibur and his knights), and so emphasized, so incomparably set forth, so shaken together, if you please, that they combined and stayed together ever afterwards. On the form side, this work is prose and it is art—the first English prose fiction, so announced and so taken. It is literary legend. An artist conscious of his art offered the material not as history or religion, but as a thing of beauty. The preface states, "And for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read in, but for to give faith and belief that all is true that is contained herein, ye be at your liberty."

When stories such as these, either by an aim at history or at art, emphasize what has been believed, they are classed as legend; when they emphasize magic and combine history in a riotous way for the mere sake of astonishing, they are classed as wonder tales.

While on the one side legend shades off into myth and wonder tales, on the other it shades off into anecdote. A tendency to write legend instead of fact is always present. As soon as a man or a place becomes prominent, fictitious stories begin to spring up, founded not only on what was done, but also on what might have been done. But to persist, a legendary account must be true to the character and traits of the hero or town or tribe or race with which it deals; at least, it must be true to the popular conception of the character. Though innumerable, the versions of the Faust story, for example, are nevertheless essentially consistent. Typical legends shading off into history and anecdote are those about William Tell, Robert the Bruce, Alfred the Great, John Smith and Pocahontas, and many of the popular tales about Columbus, Washington, Lincoln, and Rizal.

Modern literary legends

There are modern literary legends. An exquisite legend of a place is "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving. A terrific French novel is founded on the legendary idea of the Wandering Jew. A wholesome boys' story that is often mistaken for history is "The Man Without a Country." Selma Lagerlöf, who was given the Nobel prize in 1909 for the most original piece of literature, has written among others a saint's legend about a hermit who was won to brotherly love by a pair of birds that built a nest and hatched their young in his outstretched palms as, keeping a vow, he stood day and night praying heaven to take vengeance and destroy the sinful world. Allied to this species is one of Count Tolstoy's most widely read stories. It is built upon an idea current in all races and appearing in many legends; namely, of an angel sent by God to live a while among men. But Tolstoy, with his fervent devotion to the good of the people, has turned his narrative into a parable, and calls it "What Men Live By." Another beautiful religious narrative, an art legend tangent to tradition, is Henry Van Dyke's "The Other Wise Man."

How to select and record a legend of growth

It is easy for one to select a place legend. Every town in the world, I suppose, has stories connected with it that are only typically true. Almost every prominent topographical feature has an explanatory narrative current about it. Take any of these popular tales concerning the cliffs, river, mountain peak, spring, lake, gully, or pictured rocks of your neighborhood and you have a legend, so long as your story confines itself to that particular spot, and does not let its subject be emphatically the result of great natural forces or of the cause of all subsequent similar formations. In other words, one must remember that the basis of legend is particular incident, while that of myth is universal phenomenon; the content of legend is exaggerated history, while the content of myth is fanciful science. All one needs to do to record such a place legend is to arrange the details in a coherent fashion and to write out the sentences in good, clear, simple English, sticking as close to the original oral account as correct syntax will allow. If one cares to write about people instead of places, one follows in general the same directions, being sure not to fall into mere anecdote or incident, but to have a full, complete account.