Project Ideas: Food

A great motif to look at in folktales and legends is food, zooming in on a specific food that you want to use to create a collection of stories. You could do stories about a specific food across different cultures (stories about apples, corn, etc. etc.), or you could zoom in on a specific food within a specific culture or region (Danish stories about cheese, Greek stories about wine, etc.).

Research Tip: First, check Wikipedia to see if there is a folklore, mythology or symbolism section about the food or drink that you are interested in; often Wikipedia will include something like that, or even an entire article, like this article about Apple Symbolism. Then you can also use a full-text search of a site like Sacred Texts, Sur La Lune, Baldwin Project, or the Andrew Lang Fairy Books to see what you can find. How you do research for a topic like this really depends on the specific food or drink that you are interested in, and if you let me know what you are looking for, I will see what other kinds of specialized searches I can think of!

Past Projects:

• Apple Tales
• The Story of Golden Apples
• The Real Veggie Tales