Jack (hero)
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Jack is an archetypal Cornish and English hero and stock character appearing in legends, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes.
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Examples of Jack Tales[]
Some of the most famous Jack Tales are "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Jack Frost", "Jack the Giant Killer", "Little Jack Horner" and "This Is the House That Jack Built". While these heroes are not necessarily congruous, their concepts are related and in some instances interchangeable.
The Nature of Jack[]
Generally portrayed as a young adult. Unlike moralizing fairy heroes, Jack is often lazy or foolish, but emerges triumphant through wit and trickery, resembling the trickster or rebel archetypes. Some of the stories feature Jack's brothers, Will and Tom.[citation needed] The notion of "Jack" is closely related and sometimes identical to the English hero John, and he also corresponds with the German Hans (or Hänsel) and the Russian Ivan the Fool.[1] Some Jack tales feature themes that appear to originate from Germanic folk tales.
Jack Tales in Appalachia[]
"Jack Tales" are present in Appalachian folklore.[2][3] As noted by the folklorist Herbert Halpert, the Appalachian Jack tales are analogous to many of the folk songs of Appalachia, being passed on orally rather than in writing, and tracing back to sources in England.[4] In the Appalachian Jack Tales, where the English original would feature a king or other noble, the Appalachian Jack tale version would have a sheriff.
In his book The Jack Tales American folklorist Richard Chase collected many popular Appalachian Jack tales as told by descendants of a man named Council Harmon (1803-1896), whose grandfather Cutliff Harmon (1748-1838) was believed by Chase to have brought the Jack tales to America.[5][6] One notable descendant of Council Harmon known for the telling of Jack Tales was Ray Hicks, whose relatives continue to keep the oral tradition alive.[7] The Harmon-Hicks family are also known for their unique repertoire of traditional British folk ballads.[8]
See also[]
- Jack of all trades, master of none
- Jack in the green
- Jack-o'-lantern
- Jack o' Kent
- Jack and Jill
- Jack Be Nimble
- Jack Sprat
- Stingy Jack
- Jack (name)
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- Jack the Giant Killer
- Jack and His Comrades
- Jack and His Golden Snuff-Box
- Jack Horner (comics)
Suggested reading[]
- William Bernard McCarthy, Cheryl Oxford and Joseph Daniel Sobol, Jack in Two Worlds: Contemporary North American Tales and Their Tellers, University of North Carolina Press (1994), ISBN 978-0-8078-2135-0
- Julia Taylor Ebel, Orville Hicks: Mountain Stories, Mountain Roots, Parkway Publishers (2005), ISBN 978-1-933251-02-8
- Duncan Williamson, Don't Look Back, Jack!: Scottish Traveller Tales, Canongate Books (1990) ISBN 978-0-862413-09-5
References[]
- ^ Jack Zipes (2004). Speaking Out: Storytelling and Creative Drama for Children. Psychology Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-4159-6660-3.
- ^ Grace Toney Edwards (July 1, 2010). "Wonder Tales in Appalachia". AppLit. Retrieved 2015-01-05.
- ^ Roberta T. Herrin (1992). Journey Through Fantasy Literature: A Resource Guide for Teachers. Department of English, College of Arts and Science, East Tennessee State University.
- ^ Richard Chase, ed., The Jack Tales, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1943, ISBN 0-395-06694-8. "Told by R. M. Ward and his kindred in the Beech Mountain section of Western North Carolina and by other descendants of Council Harmon (1803-1896) elsewhere in The Southern Mountains; with three tales from Wise County, Virginia. Set down from these sources and edited by Richard Chase; with an appendix compiled by Herbert Halpert; and illustrated by Berkeley Williams, Jr."
- ^ Betty N. Smith, Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer Among Singers, University Press of Kentucky (1998), ISBN 978-0-8131-0936-7 , page 15.
- ^ Julia Taylor Ebel and Orville Hicks, Orville Hicks: Mountain Stories, Mountain Roots, University Press of Kentucky (1998), ISBN 978-1-9332-5102-8, page 11.
- ^ goldsteinsl (2019-08-02). "Hicks, Harmon, and Ward Storytelling Tradition on Beech Mountain and in Western North Carolina". Hicks, Harmon, and Ward Storytelling Tradition on Beech Mountain and in Western North Carolina. Retrieved 2020-12-04.
- ^ "No ordinary banjo | Folklife Today". blogs.loc.gov. 2018-04-12. Retrieved 2020-12-04.
Further reading[]
- Groome, Francis Hindes. "Tobit and Jack the Giant-Killer." Folklore 9, no. 3 (1898): 226-44. Accessed June 18, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/1253058.
- Lovelace, Martin. "Jack and His Masters: Real Worlds and Tale Worlds in Newfoundland Folktales." Journal of Folklore Research 38, no. 1/2 (2001): 149-70. Accessed June 18, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/3814806.
External links[]
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Look up Jack in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Folktale Transcripts, 1976-1990, Series 1. Archives of Appalachia.
- "The Folklore Tradition of Jack Tales". The Center for Children's Books. Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 15 Jan 2004. Archived from the original on 10 April 2014. Retrieved 11 June 2014.
- List of Jack tales at ferrum.edu
- Jack tales at ibiblio.org
- Audio recording of a traditional Jack tale (Streaming and downloadable formats)
- American folklore
- Appalachian culture
- English folklore
- Cornish folklore
- Heroes in mythology and legend
- Jack tales
- Fairy tale stock characters
- Legendary English people
- Male characters in literature
- Male characters in fairy tales