Analysis of Legend
Rhymes
There are 17 rhymes on Legend (-gend).
Wikipedia
A legend (Latin, legenda, "things to be read") is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive participants, includes no happenings that are outside the realm of "possibility", defined by a highly flexible set of parameters, which may include miracles that are perceived as actually having happened, within the specific tradition of indoctrination where the legend arises, and within which it may be transformed over time, in order to keep it fresh and vital, and realistic.
The word "legend" appeared in the English language circa 1340, transmitted from medieval Latin language through French. Its blurred extended (and essentially Protestant) sense of a non-historical narrative or myth was first recorded in 1613. By emphasizing the unrealistic character of "legends" of the saints, English-speaking Protestants were able to introduce a note of contrast to the "real" saints and martyrs of the Reformation, whose authentic narratives could be found in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Thus "legend" gained its modern connotations of "undocumented" and "spurious".
Before the invention of the printing press, stories were passed on via oral tradition. Storytellers learned their stock in trade: their stories, typically from an older storyteller, who might, though more likely not, have actually witnessed the "story" was "history". Legend is distinguished from the genre of chronicle by the fact that legends apply structures that reveal a moral definition to events, providing meaning that lifts them above the repetitions and constraints of average human lives and giving them a universality that makes them worth repeating through many generations. In German-speaking and northern European countries, "legend", which involves Christian origins, is distinguished from "Saga", being from any other (usually, but not necessarily older) origin.
A legend or legend fragment is a meme that propagates through a culture. It may be crystallized in a literary work that fixes it and which affects the future direction it will take. Such an example of this is the contrast of Hamlet the legend, and Shakespeare's Hamlet. When a legend that is rooted in a kernel of truth is so strongly affected by an ideal that it conforms to expected literary conventions of behavior, in certain cases it turns into a Romance. Such may well be the case with a historical Arthur (see Historical basis for King Arthur), around whom legends accumulated and were expressed in the purely literary magical atmosphere of surviving Arthurian romances, collectively known as the "Matter of Britain".
Modern retellings of the legend of Saint George omit many of the miraculous happenings that were central to earlier versions, but which have lost credibility. Thus modern "urban legends" are quite correctly termed legends: "it happened to the brother-in-law of someone my friend's mother knew". In short, legends are believable, although not necessarily believed. For the purpose of the study of legends, in the academic discipline of folkloristics, the truth value of legends is irrelevant because, whether the story told is true or not, the fact that the story is being told at all allows scholars to use it as commentary upon the cultures that produce or circulate the legends.
Hippolyte Delehaye, (in his Preface to The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, 1907) distinguished legend from myth: "The legend, on the other hand, has, of necessity, some historical or topographical connection. It refers imaginary events to some real personage, or it localizes romantic stories in some definite spot."
Alliterations
There are 8 alliterations on Legend (Lege-).
The words used are from the Wiktionary project. The text in the Wikipedia box is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and licensed under the GNU Free Document License. Contact: TimJoh.com.