Reading Notes: Myth-folklore Anthology

While reading through the Myth-Folklore Anthology, there were quite a few things I noticed about how several of the stories were written.

Fairy Tale Illustration from PublicDomainPictures

In The Eight-Forked Serpent of Koshi, for example, I saw that the type of vocabulary used was unique. The story's flow was influenced by the fanciful words it used. Reading a story with this older style keyed me into the fact that this is an ancient story that holds some value that the people of Japan held during its conception. I know that this is not merely some commercial product wrapped in a nice cover to be sold on a shelf in a store. It has the characteristics of an old story that are often given away by the word and structure choices. 

In the story about the Man in the Moon, I also saw that it is important to show a story in a series of steps. Had the wise man punished the man after he asked for change only two times, it may have seemed harsh. There wouldn't be enough instances of his greed to really get the point across. Because the man was repeatedly ungrateful, shown in the multiple wishes made to change his life, the audience is able to find the lesson in the story more readily. 

My favorite story and the one I will focus on more was The Three Roses. Personally, I grew up on the story of Beauty and the Beast so it was easy to tune into this story and pull a deeper understanding from it. First, the story starts with the classic "Once upon a time..." phrase that has introduced fairy tales for ages. This phrase makes it easy to recognize that there will likely be some kind of magic involved in the story (and indeed there was). Second, I noticed that this story did not rely on a lot of actual dialogue, Rather than directly quoting what the daughter Mary would say, for example, her responses to situations would be described. This way of expressing Mary's thoughts and actions further goes to support the story-like nature of the store. There is a larger disconnect between the characters in the story and the audience. 

I hope to employ some of these writing techniques when I start storytelling. I want to write something that gives off the same kind of feeling that passing along cultural stories does, so I think using all of these techniques can be beneficial. 

Bibliography

The Eight-Forked Serpent of Koshi by  E. W. Champney and F. Champney

The Man in the Moon by Katherine Neville Fleeson

The Three Roses by Josef Baudis