Founding tales, myths and legends

Before being books, these narratives were spoken, sung and repeated for centuries, and that is why they resemble each other from one continent to the next: a flood, a hero who goes down among the dead, a forbidden object. The nineteenth century turned them into scholarly collections, when Grimm in Germany, Afanasyev in Russia and Lönnrot in Finland gathered from storytellers what print threatened to erase. Ovid had already done the opposite, bringing the Greek myths together in a single Latin poem.

works 12

• EpicThe Sumerian Poems of GilgameshBilgameshAnonymous · -2100The oldest tales about Gilgamesh, in Sumerian, well before the Akkadian version that took up several of their episodes.Literature
• TaleAesop's FablesΜῦθοιAesop · -570Short fables in which animals play the roles of men, handed down by word of mouth before being gathered in writing three centuries later.Literature
• PoetryShahnameh: The Persian Book of KingsشاهنامهFerdowsi · 1010The kings and heroes of ancient Iran sung in a Persian almost free of Arabic words.Literature
• NarrativeThe Prose EddaEddaSnorri Sturluson · 1220An Icelandic handbook of poetry from the thirteenth century, which sets out Norse mythology for that purpose.Literature
• TaleOne Thousand and One Nightsألف ليلة وليلةAnonymous · 1400Nested tales from Persia, India and the Arab world, which a female storyteller sets against death.Literature
• PoetryFablesJean de La Fontaine · 1668Talking animals act out the failings of men, in a few lines each.LiteraturePublic domain
• TaleTales of Mother GooseHistoires ou contes du temps passéCharles Perrault · 1697Eight short tales, written for the salons from stories that were already in circulation, and followed by rhymed morals.Literature
• TaleGrimm's Fairy TalesKinder- und HausmärchenJacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm · 1812Two hundred tales gathered at the beginning of the nineteenth century by two philologists who wanted to give their language a body of stories comparable to that of other languages.LiteraturePublic domain
• TaleThe Little MermaidDen lille havfrueHans Christian Andersen · 1837A tale published in a series intended for young people, in which a creature of the sea pays with her voice for the wish to join the human world.LiteraturePublic domain
• EpicKalevalaElias Lönnrot · 1849In the middle of the nineteenth century, a district doctor brings back from his rounds in the eastern countryside the songs that will give a grand duchy with no written past a national antiquity.Literature
• TaleRussian Fairy TalesНародные русские сказкиAlexander Afanasyev · 1863A Russian collection of tales from the oral tradition, published in the mid-nineteenth century and often compared to that of the Grimms.Literature
• PoetryMetamorphosesOvidFrom chaos to Rome, a series of tales in which bodies change shape.Literature