ABSTRACT
Detailed comparative work, such as Lindahl’s here, has been an important approach to folklore and legends since the nineteenth century; in legend studies, psychological analyses have gained ground following the publication of Alan Dundes’s influential essay “On the Psychology of Legend” (in American Folk Legend: A Symposium, ed. Wayland D. Hand. 21–36. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971). In this essay, Lindahl looks at legends in contrasting legend-collections, Donald Ward’s translation of the Grimms’ Deutsche Sagen and Jan Harold Brunvand’s The Vanishing Hitchhiker (1981) and The Choking Doberman (1984). He argues that an unambiguous code can be seen in the Grimms’ stories: supernatural characters are not disguised, they are either good or bad and operate according to clearly understood moral rules. In Brunvand’s modern legends, on the other hand, these interpretive rules are suspended in favor of ambiguity and duality: one story is capable of two interpretations; one situation has two possible outcomes; one symbol has two contradictory meanings. The essay explores themes which are common in contemporary legends— technology and sexual relationships—as they appear, in particular, in UFO stories and redemption rumors. This essay is reprinted from the Journal of Folklore Research 23 (1986): 1–21.
