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In this book Nick Harding sets out to describe a host of Urban Legends suggesting that we should not dismiss them purely as nonsense nor accept them as gospel truth but by striving to understand their underlying meanings we begin to see their true worth as folklore for the modern world. To understand folklore and therefore the realm of the Urban Legend is to understand the psyche of a nation. By understanding Urban Legends we can gain an insight into our own fears and those of our fellow human beings.
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Urban Legends occupy a unique position in human
culture. They are a bridge between true story telling,
the realm of fantasy, and the real world.They exist on
the boundaries where the definitions of what is true
and what is imaginary lack solidity and clarity.They are
stories that blur the edges.We pride ourselves, particularly
in this day and age, on being intelligent, aware and
conscious of the world around us.We think that we are
less likely, in this modern world of instant information,
to fall victim to the scam, dupe or tall story.We do not
believe in a flat Earth or that the stars are fixed to
crystal spheres. We know that the planets revolve
around the sun.We know the age of the universe, the
speed of light and the workings of quantum mechanics.
But somehow, despite these advances, Urban Legends
still hold sway.Why is this so?
Urban Legends have survived so long because humans tell stories and have done so from the
Palaeolithic campfire to the bar in the local pub. The
reasons for doing so are numerous. Stories are told as
social bonding devices. They can be tools for selfaggrandisement
or used for the transmission of information.
They can be a means of instruction, particularly
in the realm of morality and mores, and, in some cases,
they can be used as a device to control the behaviour
of others, from groups of small children to whole
nations. Even in an electronic age stories are still
important to our species. One only has to look at the
continuing popularity of TV, film, novels and computer
games to realise that the telling of stories is very much
alive and will survive as long as there are humans to tell
them. Stories are a social glue – we need them, probably
more than ever at the start of a new millennium
(something that has itself contributed to the creation of
Urban Legends), as great swathes of the population
around the globe feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are
entering a more precarious era. Stories bring security –
a shared experience and a communality that helps us all
deal with the wider world – but they can also delude
us and encourage enormous misconceptions about our
society and our position in it.
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ISBNs
1433702894
9781433702891
9781904048350