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Mythology vs Folktale - What's the difference?

mythology | folktale |

As nouns the difference between mythology and folktale

is that mythology is the collection of myths of a people, concerning the origin of the people, history, deities, ancestors and heroes while folktale is a tale or story that is part of the oral tradition of a people or a place.

mythology

Noun

  • The collection of myths of a people, concerning the origin of the people, history, deities, ancestors and heroes.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Obama goes troll-hunting , passage=The solitary, lumbering trolls of Scandinavian mythology would sometimes be turned to stone by exposure to sunlight. Barack Obama is hoping that several measures announced on June 4th will have a similarly paralysing effect on their modern incarnation, the patent troll.}}
  • (countable, and, uncountable) A similar body of myths concerning an event, person or institution.
  • * 2003 , Peter Utgaard, Remembering & Forgetting Nazism: Education, National Identity, and the Victim Myth in Postwar Austria , Berghahn Books, ISBN 978-1-57181-187-5, page x:
  • This program to distinguish Austria from Germany was important to building a new Austria, but it also indirectly contributed to victim mythology by implying that participation in the Nazi war of conquest was antithetical to Austrian identity.
  • Pervasive elements of a fictional universe that resemble a mythological universe.
  • * 2000 April 28, Caryn James (?), As Scheherazade Was Saying . . .], in The New York Times'', page E31, reproduced in ''The New York Times Television Reviews 2000 , Routledge (2001), ISBN 978-1-57958-060-5, [http://books.google.com/books?id=z0QFKpI6p7AC&pg=PA198&dq=mythology page 198:
  • This tongue-in-cheek episode is especially fun for people who don’t take their “X-Files” mythology seriously.
  • (uncountable) The systematic collection and study of myths.
  • Synonyms

    *

    Derived terms

    * mythological * mythologist

    See also

    * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink) * (projectlink)

    folktale

    English

    Alternative forms

    * folk tale

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A tale or story that is part of the oral tradition of a people or a place
  • See also

    * folklore