Spanning folk cultural developments as old as feudalism and as new as today's TV ad, American Folklore and the Mass Media demonstrates how vital folklore remains, how often it absorbs--rather than being absorbed by--the most dramatic technological innovations and social realignments. --Carl Lindahl Linda DŽgh, one of the twentieth century's leading folklore scholars, argues that folklore is not an artifact but a dynamic historical process. Demonstrating how the common cultural properties and ways of thinking seen in folktales can be detected in television and mass-circulation publications, DŽgh deciphers basic human ideas that recur in new interpretations. She discusses the contemporary manifestation of traditional genres such as folktales (in television ads) and legends (in preachers' tales).