Collects and annotates more than 150 urban legends from around the world.
Gillian Bennett is an independent scholar and the author of numerous works on ghost stories and urban legends. She has edited several works with Paul Smith and is also the author of Alas, Poor Ghost!: Traditions of Belief in Story and Discourse (1999), and Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease, and Death in Contemporary Legend (2005). Paul Smith is Professor of Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland. His work encompasses contemporary legend, traditional drama, and folklore and popular literature. With Gillian Bennett, he has edited numerous works, including Contemporary Legend: A Folklore Bibliography (1993), and Contemporary Legend: A Reader (1996).
This entertaining guide is suitable for a wide range of audiences
and amply demonstrates for the students that academic scholarship
can be quite fun.
*Lawrence Looks at Books*
This collection describes urban legends in nine themed chapters:
city life; horror; accidents, fate, and chance; the body and
disease; animals; sex and nudity; merchandise; murder, death, and
burial; and the supernatural. The authors compiled stories from
friends and colleagues, newspapers and magazines, folklore books
and journals, compilations, and correspondence. Interpretation of
the legends or explanations for their popularity is avoided, as is
discussion of whether they are true. Instead, background on the
story and examples of them are given. Criteria for urban legends
include presence of a narrative structure, outrageous content in an
everyday setting, anonymous origins, and multiple examples. The
four indexes are organized by title, examples in film and
literature, and subject.
*Reference & Research Book News*
Studying urban legends may encourage students to think critically
about information found in questionable resources such as the Web.
Chapters include City Life beginning with the standard, Alligators
in the Sewers, Horror, Accidents, Fate, and Chance, The Body and
Diseases, Animals, Sex and Nudity, Merchandise, Murder, Death, and
Burial and The Supernatural. Chapters have brief introductions and
each legend is discussed with an example and suggestions for
further reading. Appendixes include A Provisional List of Urban
Legends in Film and Literature, further reading and online
resources, the Urban Legend Title Index and three indexes, Urban
Legends on Film, in Literature and a subject index. This provides
excellent examples of carefully researched and reported information
about tall tales.
*GALE Reference for Students*
Bennett and Smith's Urban Legends is a worthy follow-up to their
earlier compilations and deserves a place in any reference
collection on the subject….The on-line resources listed are crucial
in this electronic age and go well beyond the standard (and
invaluable) sources such as Snopes.com or About.com's urban legends
Web site.
*Journal of American Folklore*
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