Definition of "folktale" [folktale]

• A story or legend forming part of an oral tradition. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Not my grandmother, who knew every folktale from the old countrymost of them gruesome; children devoured by wolves and beheaded by witchesbut never spoke about the war in my hearing."
• "Silver (2005) tells us that animal lovers in folktale serve a variety of functions, but one of the most important may be to instruct women to love “beastly” husbands in spite of their frightening or boorish qualities, possibly with the end of civilizing them, as in “Beauty and the Beast.”"
• "As we speak we are still in the midst of a kind of folktale maelstrom, so you’ll forgive me if my initial sideways glance at “Letters from Rapunzel,” appeared to produce just more of the same."