SOURCE: "Greek Mythology and the Study of the Ancient Greek Oral Story," in Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 20, Nos. 2 & 3, June-December, 1983, pp. 101-12.

In the following essay, Hansen examines Rose's inclusion of märchen in his study of Greek mythology and argues that Rose fails to adequately treat the category of folktales. Hansen suggests that the idea that mythology encompasses "all Greek traditional stories" has not been fully explored.

The late Professor Cedric Whitman of Harvard University told of an old sailor with whom, many years earlier, he had shared a ride on a train going to New York.

He was reading a comic book and I was reading Paradise Lost. Presently he began to read over my shoulder, then nudged me and asked: 'Hey, you like dat stuff?' I said I did, and a conversation began. I asked how long he had been in the Navy, and...