An annotated bibliography of general Melanesian folklore

Below is an annotated bibliography of general Melanesian folklore. See the main bibliography page for more details. Please send comments and corrections to me.

A “*” following a reference indicates that I have not seen.

Melanesia: general

• Codrington, R. H. (1972 [1891]). The Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folk-Lore. New York: Dover, 419 pp., illustrated. Folktales are on pages 356-411. Reprinted by Dover.
• Dixon, Roland B. (1964). The Mythology of All Races. Volume IX. Oceanic. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., 364 pp. + 24 plates. Pages 101-150 are on Melanesia. Review.
• Eliade, Mircea (1970). “Cargo-Cults” and Cosmic Regeneration. In: Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutionary Religious Movements. Sylvia L. Thrupp, ed., pp. 139-143.
• Flood, Bo; Strong, Beret E.; & Flood, William (1999). Pacific Island Legends: Tales from Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and Australia. Honolulu, HI: Bess Press, 266 pp., illustrated. This book has many Pacific Island tales which are retold by the authors at a fouth-grade reading level. This book presents 3 tales from Papua New Guinea, 1 tale from the Solomon Islands, 3 tales from Vanuatu, and 2 tales from New Caledonia.
• Gregor, Thomas A. & Tuzin, Donald (2001). The anguish of gender: Men’s cults and moral contradiction in Amazonia and Melanesia. In: Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia: An Exploration of the Comparative Method. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 309-336. This chapter compares gender and mythology between Melanesia and Amazonia.
• Guiart, Jean (1970). The millenarian aspect of conversion to Christianity in the South Pacific. In: Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutionary Religious Movements. Sylvia L. Thrupp, ed., pp. 122-138.
• Kirtley, Bacil Fleming (1955). A Motif-Index of Polynesian, Melanesian, and Micronesian Narratives. Ph.D Thesis, Indiana University, 687 pp. This was reprinted in the Folklore of the World Series by Ayer Company (New York).
  Kirtley (1955) extends the folklore motif-index of Stith Thompson (Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folk Tales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, CD-ROM editon, 1993).
• Knappert, Jan (1992). Pacific Mythology: An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend. New York: HarperCollins / London: Diamond Books, 336 pp., illustrated. This book covers admittedly covers to broad a scope, covering the Pacific islands, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and much of southeast Asia. The sections covering Melanesia receive inadequate coverage.
• Laufer, Carl (1978). “The Place of the Snake in the Religious Beliefs and Cults of Island Melanesia: A Review of Ritter’s 1945 Publication.” Oral History 6(1): 78-96. This article reviews Hans Ritter’s article, “Die Schlange in der Religion der Melanesier” in Acta Tropica, Supplementum 3, 128 pp., 1945. This article was translated by John J. Tschauder. It originally appeared in German in Anthropos, vols. 41-44 (1946-1949).
• Lawrence, P. [Peter] & Meggitt, M. [Mervin] J. (1965a). Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia: Some Religions of Australian New Guinea and the New Hebrides. London: Oxford University Press, 298 pp.
• Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien (1983). Primitive Mythology: The Mythic World of the Australian and Papuan Natives. Translated by Brian Elliott from La Mythologie Primitive (1935). St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 332 pp. Review.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw (1954 [1948]). Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 274 pp. The chapter, “Myth in Primitive Psychology” (pp. 93-148) includes Melanesia in its discussion.
• MacKenzie, Donald A. (c. 1930). Myths from Melanesia and Indonesia. London: Gresham. * Out of print.
• Poignant, Roslyn (1967). Oceanic Mythology: The Myths of Polynesia · Micronesia · Melanesia · Australia London: Paul Hamlyn, 141 pp., illustrated. Pages 84-109 are on Melanesia.
• Pouwer, Jan (1998). “Mythe en geschiedenis in Nieuw-Guinea.” Spiegel Historiael 33: 326-331. This article is regarding myth and cargo cults. *
• Steinbauer, Friedrich (1979). Melanesian Cargo Cults: New Salvation Movements in the South Pacific. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, translated by Max Wohlwill, 215 pp., illustrated. Originally published in Germanas Melanesische Cargo-Kulte: Neureligiöse Heilsbewegungen in der Südsee by Delp’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung of Munich. This book presents an excellent historical summary of cargo cults as well as several myths relating to cargo cults (pp. 6-8, 41, 174-180).

© 2005 by Thomas H. Slone.

Last modified May 5, 2005.