Narrative Analysis Frameworks
Bascom’s Narrative Genres
William Bascom’s “The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives” (1965) distinguishes myth, legend and folktale through the status a narrative has among its tellers and listeners.
“Believed” describes a community’s understanding in a particular context. It is not a judgement by this website about whether an event occurred.
Three prose narrative genres
The following summaries describe Bascom’s comparative scheme.
| Reference | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Myth | Treated as true and commonly sacred; set in a remote past or an earlier world, often involving nonhuman principal actors. |
| Legend | Presented as true; set in a more recent past and a world recognisable to the community, usually with human principal actors. It may be sacred or secular. |
| Folktale | Understood as fiction; time and place may be indefinite, and the actors may be human or nonhuman. Sacred authority is not its defining status. |
Questions for comparison
Read these dimensions together, rather than classifying a story from one isolated feature.
| Reference | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Belief | How do the teller and audience frame the account: true, fictional, doubtful, or disputed? |
| Time | Is the setting primordial, historically situated, or unspecified? |
| Place | Does the action belong to an earlier world, familiar geography, or an indefinite setting? |
| Attitude | Is the telling sacred, secular, or dependent on the occasion? |
| Principal characters | Who acts in the story, and how are those beings understood locally? |
Using this reference
The same plot can have a different genre status in another community or performance. Preserve local genre terms, the date and setting of collection, and evidence of belief or doubt.
An editorial use of this scheme should allow “uncertain” and competing readings. Do not infer genre from the title, a supernatural character, or a database’s existing shorthand alone.
Each heading has a stable link for citation and future cross-referencing. Narrative associations will follow later analysis.
Sources and further reading
Bascom, William. “The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives.” The Journal of American Folklore 78, no. 307 (1965): 3–20.
The explanations are concise editorial summaries. Published identifiers are distinguished from this page’s reference headings and suggested recording practices.
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