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This exploration of the making of a legend compares the actual events surrounding duster's defeat with the imaginative account of the "Last Stand" as it developed in American folklore. The battle of the Little Big Horn is then compared with other great "epics of defeat" in terms of both the similarities of the narratives and the known facts about them. The other epic stories include the Biblical account of Saul and his losing struggle against the Philistines, Leonidas's defense of the pass at Thermopylae, the death of Roland in the Chanson de Roland, the Morte Arthure,...

John Andre was captured in September 1780, outside British lines, and was hanged as a spy. Forty years later, he was still so highly regarded that, in 1821, his body was exhumed and reburied in the Heroes' Corner of Westminster Abbey. This book argues that James Fenimore Cooper's second novel, "The Spy," is an examination of the nature and character of clandestinity in which the author investigates the morality of deceit and disguised intentions in normal life as well as in wartime by using the Andre affair as background. A century later, The Spy was undiscovered by British spy novelists....

Jesse James, General Custer, and Casey Jones. The Pony Express, The Momon handcart odyssey to Zion. The Forty-Niners pick-and-shovel pilgrimage to Mammon. These are the colorful stuff of Western American folklore, part of an original and vital heritage passed on through songs, tales, and dime novels in the last century, and movies, advertising, and television serials in our own. In The Code of the West folklorist Bruce Rosenberg takes a look at some of the most durable legends of frontier days, explores the origins of their popularity, and deciphers the messages--or code--they communicate....

Long before the written word existed, humans expressed themselves by telling stories. Handed down through centuries, these stories were woven into the tapestry of everyday life. For close to three centuries, folklore has inspired adaptations to film, operas, ballets, short stories, novels, and poetry. Its no surprise, then, that many folklore scholars consider folklore as original literature--existing before written literature. Most folklorists seem to share the belief that folklore, whether drawn from oral observation or from the written record, is a rich cultural resource that is readily...