ABSTRACT
Through folk narratives and beliefs that the Victorians produced fantasies, and through folklore, nineteenth-century psychologists most notably Sigmund Freud explored the unconscious mind of humanity. The traditional legend presents to its audience a sense of pervasive and perennial threats: Clarifying how folk narratives and beliefs influenced nineteenth and early-twentieth century writings of the literary fantastic entails exploring the conceptual context of folklore in the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century literary representations of fairy tales, folk legends, and superstitions are the culmination of attitudes towards the supernatural in general and folklore in particular. To analyze thoroughly literary innovations means first knowing folkloric tradition, as well as literary precedents; the Gothic and other literary traditions of fantasy and the fantastic have extended and stylized motifs and metaphysics that were longstanding in folklore to begin with. Self-consciousness that there was something immoral, ignorant, irrational, or unrespectable in contemplating supernatural folklore permeates the majority of authors who most obviously deal with the fairy tale and legend.
