Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A pourquoi story [a] (French pronunciation: ⓘ; "pourquoi" meaning "why" in French) is a fictional narrative that explains why something is the way it is, for example why snakes have no legs or why tigers have striped coats. Many legends, origin myths and folk tales are pourquoi stories.
A notable example is the myth of the foundation of Rome—the tale of Romulus and Remus, which Virgil in turn broadens in his Aeneid with the odyssey of Aeneas and his razing of Lavinium, and his son Iulus's later relocation and rule of the famous twins' birthplace Alba Longa, and their descent from his royal line, thus fitting perfectly into ...
A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories such as, "That fish was so big, why, I tell ya, it nearly sank the boat when I pulled it in
A less pejorative term is a pourquoi story, which has been used to describe usually more mythological or otherwise traditional examples of this genre, aimed at children. This phrase is a reference to Rudyard Kipling 's 1902 Just So Stories , containing fictional and deliberately fanciful tales for children, in which the stories pretend to ...
Another etiological tale, from a Slavic source, is The Seven Stars: a princess is kidnapped by a dragon, so the high chamberlain seeks a "Dragon-mother" and her sons, who each possess extraordinary abilities, to rescue her. At the end of the tale, the rescuers and the chamberlain enter a dispute on who should have the princess, but the "Dragon ...
The Mwindo epic is an oral tale from the Congo told by the Nyanga people. The origins and creation of the Mwindo epic are mostly unknown since the story is only passed down orally. A version of the story was recorded by Kahombo Mateene and Daniel Biebuyck and published in 1969.
Each story has its feet firmly planted in the real world, but serves as an epicenter for swirling fantasies. In one story, "The Lizzie Borden Jazz Babies," Sparks makes use of a tragic plot point that sets off many classic fairy tales – the untimely death of a protagonist's parent – and applies it to the father instead of the mother.
Ovid is telling the etiological story of Medea's poison for Theseus. When Hercules traveled to the Underworld to capture Cerberus as one of his 12 Labours, Cerberus spread white foam from his mouths, which grew poisonous plants. [36] The katabasis of Orpheus in book 10 is the last major inclusion of the theme by Ovid in the Metamorphoses.