Saturday, September 28, 2019

Tall tales

I like to distinguish a tall tale from a legend. Both may have exaggeration, but the tall tale isn't really meant to be taken seriously, and the exaggeration is the point. We all know stories of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and other American characters, but how common is the genre elsewhere?

Wikipedia says, not surprisingly, that Canada has a number of tall tales, and Australia, and it mentions others from Europe (e.g. Finn MacCool creating the Giant's Causeway), but doesn't mention anything outside the Euro-Anglophone west.

It seems unlikely that other cultures wouldn't have them too. But...

I remember reading a book on Chinese humor (though I don't remember a lot from it), and finding some examples quite opaque. If I can't always recognize humor, I'm probably not enough in tune with the nuances of the literature to spot when something is exaggerated for humor. Or possibly some cultures don't use "tall tales," finding something else funnier instead. Or maybe I should broaden my definition to include "just-so" type stories like the Anansi stories.

1 comment:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Magical items like seven-league boots abound, but I can't think of - oh, wait. Baron Munchausen. But looking at the index for Grimm's, I don't see that the Germans have any other examples.