Daniel Hoffman stands in the front rank of American scholar-critics today. He does not easily fit into any one critical category: it is possible to regard him as one of the modern myth critics, placing him in the company of the early Richard Chase, but with greater truth he can be said to continue the tradition, initiated in the nineteen thirties by Constance Rourke, of explaining the themes and characters of sophisticated fiction in terms of their relationship with folklore. (p. 319)

What Hoffman is looking for in folklore is … patterns of thought and traditional shared symbols that do not only express attitudes toward human experience characteristic of the folk groups that produced them, but also have significance beyond their societies of origin. More specifically, in American folklore he wants to find the conceptual ideas that have contributed to literary works of the first intensity. (p. 321)

In the preface...