African

  • A Dictionary of African Mythology: The Mythmaker as Storyteller

Egyptian

  • Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor
  • Westcar Papyrus
  • Tale of Two Brothers

Ethiopia

  • Kebra Nagast (or “The Glory of the Kings”)

Antartica is quite unique. It has no indigenous peoples. That doesn’t stop it from having traditions, however, because people do come and go. On the other hand, written works? Anyone know of any?

Here are a couple articles of interest:

Chinese

   Four Great Classical Novels

  • Water Margin by Shi Nai’an
  • Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
  • Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en
  • Dream of the Red Chamber Cao Xueqin

   Other

  • Fengshen Yanyi
  • The Plum in the Golden Vase (or The Golden Lotus)
  • Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong (based on the historical “Records of the Three Kingdoms” by Chen Shou)

Indian

  • Mahabharata (includes the Bhagavad-Gita)
  • Ramayana
  • Rigveda
  • Panchatantra by Vishnu Sharma
  • Hitopadesha
  • Baital Pachisi
  • Kathasaritsagara
  • Jataka Tales

Japanese

  • Kojiki (or “Records of Ancient Matters”) by Ō no Yasumaro 
  • Nihon Shoki (“The Nihongi” or “The Chronicles of Japan”)
  • The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
  • Man’yōshū (or “Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves”)
  • Konjaku Monogatarishu (aka “Hogen Monogatari” or “Anthology of Tales Old and New”) – includes some tales from China and India
  • Heiji Monogatari
  • Heike Monogatari
  • The Tale of the Heike

Malay

  • Hikayat Hang Tuah

Mongolia

  • Secret History of the Mongols (primarily preserved in the “Yüan ch’ao pi shih”)

British

  • The Nowell Codex (or “The Beowulf Manuscript”)
  • The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
  • Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth
    • (Includes the Vita Merlini)
  • Matter of Britain

Finnish

  • The Kalevala

French

   Matter of France (or “Carolingian Cycle”)

  • The Song of Roland
  • The Song of William
  • The Doon de Mayence cycle
  • Gormond and Isembart

   Other

  • The Song of the Cid (or “The Poem of the Cid”)
  • La Bete du Gevaudan

German

  • The Nibelungenlied
  • Muspilli
  • The Hildebrandslied
  • The Legend of William Tell
  • Urner Tellspiel
  • White Book of Sarnen by Hans Schriber
  • The Tellenlied
  • Kudrun (or Gudrunlied)
  • Children’s and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm
  • The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Greek/Roman (Is Greece really European?)

  • Theogony by Hesiod
  • Works and Days by Hesiod
  • The Iliad by Homer
  • The Odyssey by Homer
  • The Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius
  • The Aeneid
  • Matter of Rome
  • The Republic by Plato

Icelandic

  • The Volsunga Saga
  • Codex Regius
  • Skalholtsbok (“Book of Skaholt”)
  • The Flatey Book (or “Codex Flateyensis”)

Irish

  • Book of Kells (“Codex Cenannensis” or “Book of Columbia”)
  • Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

Italian

  • The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
  • The Facetious Nights of Straparola by Givoanni Francesco Straparola
  • Pentamerone by Giambattista Basile
  • Divine Comedy
  • Gerusalemme liberata (or “Jerusalem Delivered”)
  • Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando) by Ludovico Ariosto
  • Orlando innamorato (or “Orlando in Love”) by Matteo Maria Boiardo

Norse

  • The Poetic Edda
  • The Prose Edda possibly by Snorri Sturlson
  • The Karlamagnus Saga
  • Norwegian Folktales by Peter Christen Asbjornsen
  • The Saga of Hervor and Heidrek
  • Heimskringla by Snorri Sturlson
  • Volsunga Saga

Portugal

  • The Lusiads

Russian (This has an explanation of why I’m including it as European)

  • Russian Fairy Tales by Alexander Afanasyev
  • Notes on Southern Russia by Panteleimon Kulish
  • South-Russian Folk Tales by Ivan Rudchenko
  • Narodnuiya Russkiya Skazki by Alexander A. Erlenvein

Spanish

  • Don Quixote de la Mancha
  • The Poem of the Cid [Note to self: I have this under Spanish and French – why?]

Welsh

  • Mabinogion (from the Red Book of Hergest)
  • The Welsh Triads (Peniarth)

Ancient Mesopotamia (I’ve begun splitting this one down)

  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • Atra-Hasis [Originally listed as Akkadian – still true but just as vague]

Babylonia

  • The Enuma Elish

Persian

  • Shahnameh (“Shah-Nameh” or “Book of Kings”) by Ferdowsi

Sumer

  • Enheduanna
  • Inninmehusa
  • Inninsagurra (“The Great-Hearted Mistress”)
  • Kesh Temple Hymn (to Nintud)
  • Instructions of Shuruppak
  • (Read Sumer texts here: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/)

Turkish

  • Dede Korkut

Ugaritic

  • The Baal Cycle
  • Legend of Keret

General Middle East

  • Alf Laylah wa-Laylah (or “One Thousand and One Nights”

 

American Indian (aka “Native American”) – This will be more properly broken down later

  • Blackfoot Lodge Tales
  • Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales
  • Myth of Hiawatha and Other Oral Legends of the North American Indians
  • American Indian Legends

Mayan

  • Popol Vuh

Of Unknown/Uncertain Origins

  • The Bible [numerous versions; include the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha]
  • The Seven Wise Masters

General

These are some of the websites and less-specific sources I have found very useful in studying the different types of tales that exist throughout the world. As time goes on I will add more that I either discover or first forgot. If you know of any good ones, let me know!

Mythology

Fairy Tales

Legends
Tall Tales
Folklore
Fables
Religious

  • Buddhism
    • The Mahavamsa
  • Christianity
    • Holy Bible
  • Confucianism
    • Lunyu (Analects of Confucius)
    • Five Classics
      1. Ch-un-ch-iu
      2. I Ching
      3. Li Ching
      4. Shih Ching
      5. Shu Ching
    • Four Books
      1. Chung Yung
      2. Lun Yii
      3. Meng-tzu
      4. Ta Hsueh
  • Hinduism
  • Taoism
    • Tao-te-Ching (“The Book of the Way and its Power” or “Treatise of the Way and of Virtue”) by Lao-tzu
  • Zoroastrianism
    • Avesta

Smorgasbord of everything

Other/Unknown (i.e. I don’t know how to categorize these…yet)

Everywhere

  • The Mythology of All Races
  • Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
  • The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer
  • One Thousand and One Arabian Night

The Sources

“We are now buried under an avalanche of manuscripts. We don’t even pretend to read them anymore. We have given up trying. We have reached the saturation point and don’t even know what’s in the books. They could be full of great surprises…What can we do with all these?…Simply to describe them, when they were found, and under what circumstances, would take many hours. You would then know the books were there, but you wouldn’t know what was in them. We can make some generalizations about them. They’re not found as separated documents but in batches – whole libraries turn up. You don’t just find a document here and a document there. There’s a great flood of them, found in great collections, and their value and significance can be gradually appreciated only because what they contain is quite radically different from what we have thought about certain things before…There are not one or two but hundreds of these documents, and they match each other. So what do we do?”

– Hugh Nibley –