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1 “The Abduction of the Beautiful wife” as International Tale

Lowell Edmunds

in Stealing Helen: The Myth of the Abducted Wife in Comparative Perspective

This chapter discusses the folktales that attest the recurring story-pattern contained in the Helen myth. The comparison between the texts under discussion and the ancient Greek myth of Helen ... More

This chapter discusses the folktales that attest the recurring story-pattern contained in the Helen myth. The comparison between the texts under discussion and the ancient Greek myth of Helen requires that they be described typologically. Hence the chapter first provides an overview of typology in folklore studies and the various concepts and approaches to be taken with the Abduction story. It then embarks on a more detailed analysis of “The Abduction of the Beautiful Wife,” breaking it down piece by piece and discussing recurring motifs, typologies, characters, variations across similar stories or stories which fall under the same type as the Abduction, and other such elements that repeat or break from the pattern.Less

Explaining Tradition: On Folk and Folkloristic Logic

Simon J. Bronner

in Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture

This chapter addresses the association of folklore with tradition, particularly in the United States. It points out a tension between structural and post-structural approaches in folklore studies, ... More

This chapter addresses the association of folklore with tradition, particularly in the United States. It points out a tension between structural and post-structural approaches in folklore studies, and suggests a methodology focusing on explanation of cultural practices rather than their vague interpretation.Less

Introduction

Shirley Moody-Turner

in Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation

The introduction details an alternative genealogy through which to approach both African American folklore studies and African American literary engagements with black folklore in the ... More

The introduction details an alternative genealogy through which to approach both African American folklore studies and African American literary engagements with black folklore in the post-reconstruction period, centering African Americans as active participants, rather than merely passive repositories, in the study and representation of black folklore. It proposes a corrective to both the discipline of folklore studies and a new lens through which to read representation of folklore in African American literature. In particular, the introduction shows how developments in folklore studies were inseparable from turn-of-the-century constructions of race.Less

“By Custom and By Law”: Folklore and the Birth of Jim Crow

Shirley Moody-Turner

in Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation

This chapter reconstructs the national debates taking place around representations of black folklore, starting with the parameters advanced by William Wells Newell (founder of the American Folklore ... More

This chapter reconstructs the national debates taking place around representations of black folklore, starting with the parameters advanced by William Wells Newell (founder of the American Folklore Society) for the study of folklore. The chapter then locates the emergence of folklore studies in relation to the larger interests in folklore that converged during the second half of the nineteenth century, considering how constructions of the black folk in ante- and post-bellum popular culture, as specifically located in the ironic figure of Jim Crow and the subsequent minstrel tradition, fed the national interest in black folklore and fueled white fascination with “authentic” black folks and folklore. Reading at the intersections of “scientific” and popular representations of black folklore, and against the backdrop of the mounting debates over racial identity and segregation, chapter one suggests the complex protocols that influenced representations of black folklore in the mid- to late-nineteenth century.Less

Documenting the Musical Event: Observation, Participation, Representation

Jonathan P. J. Stock

in Empirical Musicology: Aims, Methods, Prospects

This chapter reviews approaches to the empirical documentation of music as found in comparative musicology, folklore studies, and through the fifty-year history of ethnomusicology. Means of gathering ... More

This chapter reviews approaches to the empirical documentation of music as found in comparative musicology, folklore studies, and through the fifty-year history of ethnomusicology. Means of gathering and measuring research data are shown to be linked to available technology as well as to prevailing intellectual paradigms. The central part of the chapter focuses on empirical aspects of participant-observation, including the keeping of field notes, interviewing, photography, and audio- and video-recording. Good practice conventions for data preservation are explained and illustrated. The chapter's coda emphasizes the importance of ethics in research that documents the voices of live people.Less

Advanced Studies in Folklore

Susan G. Davis

in Dirty Jokes and Bawdy Songs: The Uncensored Life of Gershon Legman

In 1953, forced out of business by postal authorities, Legman moved to Paris. There he turned his attention to a long-planned series, Advanced Studies in Folklore, which he hoped would eventually ... More

In 1953, forced out of business by postal authorities, Legman moved to Paris. There he turned his attention to a long-planned series, Advanced Studies in Folklore, which he hoped would eventually cover songs, stories, jokes, rhymes, and vocabulary, as well as nonverbal forms like gestures and graffiti. His first volume in the series was anonymous, The Limerick (1954), which garnered him fans in the United States and provided a modest income. Legman moved on to research folk songs in English that had been censored or ignored because of their erotic or obscene content. His “Ballad” project would occupy Legman for decades. As he worked on it, Legman corresponded extensively with folklorists such as Roger Abrahams, Vance Randolph, and Kenneth Goldstein and with archivists at the Library of Congress. His letters reveal his romantic, textual orientation toward folk song and show his efforts to open folklore study to consideration of obscenity and erotica. Legman’s persistent research led to such important discoveries as an unpublished song manuscript by Robert Burns and to a deep understanding of the history of folk song collecting. It also gave him productive friendships with the British folklorists and folk song revival singers Ewan MacColl and Hamish Henderson.Less

Röhrich beyond German Borders

Sadhana Naithani

in Folklore Theory in Postwar Germany

This chapter discusses the relevance of Röhrich to the contemporary scholarship on European and American folk and fairy tales and literary fairy tales; and the relevance and significance of his ideas ... More

This chapter discusses the relevance of Röhrich to the contemporary scholarship on European and American folk and fairy tales and literary fairy tales; and the relevance and significance of his ideas for the study of contemporary South Asian folklore studies. It considers recent work by another great scholar of German and European folktale and fairy tale, Jack Zipes, and compares and juxtaposes Zipes’s thesis in Why Fairy Tales Stick (2006) to that of Röhrich’s as articulated in Folktales and Reality (1956). To demonstrate Röhrich’s relevance for the study of South Asian folklore today, the chapter draws on the author’s own research on the history of folkloristics in South Asia and its roots in colonialism, and on an ongoing study of folk performers in contemporary India and the evolution of certain performative genres in the context of freedom from colonialism and division of the subcontinent in 1947.Less

Fields: Colonialism, Folklore, and Postcolonial Theory

Sadhana Naithani

in The Story-Time of the British Empire: Colonial and Postcolonial Folkloristics

This chapter discusses folklore studies and how the history of folklore research, critical studies on folklore collectors and their ideologies, and the socio-political implications of folklore ... More

This chapter discusses folklore studies and how the history of folklore research, critical studies on folklore collectors and their ideologies, and the socio-political implications of folklore studies have all been seen within national boundaries. The history of folklore as a subject and object of research is traced back to the early nineteenth-century romantic-nationalist movement in Germany. The global history of folklore research, on the other hand, is Eurocentric in its approach, to the extent that it is based on nineteenth-century European folklore collectors within Europe, although it is well known that in the same century a large number of Europeans collected folklore of countries on other continents. Much of this work outside the European continent was accomplished in the context of colonial relations and done by non-folklorists.Less

Genealogies of the Folk Concept in Colonial Uttarakhand

Stefan Fiol

in Recasting Folk in the Himalayas: Indian Music, Media, and Social Mobility

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indigenous and British colonial elites gathered local knowledge from low-status (Shilpkar) performers and inscribed this knowledge within the ... More

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indigenous and British colonial elites gathered local knowledge from low-status (Shilpkar) performers and inscribed this knowledge within the emerging discipline of folklore studies. Depending on the shifting ideological and political positions with respect to local caste hierarchies, Indo-Aryan migration theories, and colonial administrative agendas, scholars utilized folklore to call attention alternately to the exceptional character of central Himalayan society as a whole and to the backward and superstitious character of particular castes and communities. This chapter illuminates the ways in which the folk concept was a critical instrument of colonial domination even as it offered local Indian elites the opportunity to compare Himalayan societies favorably with European societies. Less

Where Have All the Hoaxes Gone?

Willow G. Mullins

in Implied Nowhere: Absence in Folklore Studies

As folklorists know, one way to gain understanding of a group is through the folklore they produce. In this essay, folklorists are the group, and the hoaxes perpetrated by and on them, or the lack of ... More

As folklorists know, one way to gain understanding of a group is through the folklore they produce. In this essay, folklorists are the group, and the hoaxes perpetrated by and on them, or the lack of such hoaxes, offer some insight into the culture of folklore studies. Looking at a series of alleged hoaxes, including the Tasaday tribe, MacPhearson's Ossian, and Leland's Aradia, the essay probes folklorists' desire to believe and disbelieve. Folklorists have historically proven difficult to hoax, to intentionally deceive, but that disciplinary skepticism may come with a cost.Less

Revelry: Shirley Jackson and Stanley Edgar Hyman

Shelley Ingram

in Implied Nowhere: Absence in Folklore Studies

This chapter examines the role of folklore in the life and work of writer Shirley Jackson and her husband, literary critic and folklorist Stanley Edgar Hyman. It focuses particularly on their ... More

This chapter examines the role of folklore in the life and work of writer Shirley Jackson and her husband, literary critic and folklorist Stanley Edgar Hyman. It focuses particularly on their differing relationships with folklore and folklore studies and argues that reading Jackson and Hyman both and together gives us new understandings of her fictions and new insights into his particular brand of myth-ritual criticism.Less

The Decline of Magic: J. G. Frazer

Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm

in The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences

Chapter 5 argues that James Frazer came late to the narrative of magical decline, and that he did so within a context of psychical research and in the face of a folkloric narrative itself about the ... More

Chapter 5 argues that James Frazer came late to the narrative of magical decline, and that he did so within a context of psychical research and in the face of a folkloric narrative itself about the departure of fairies and the decline of magic. It shows how Frazer formulated an influential trinary opposition between religion, magic, and science while encoding this typology within a disenchantment narrative. It also recovers a lot theory, Frazer's notions of "the despiritualization of nature" and demonstrates his subsequent influence on occult thinkers.Less

The Academic Stage

M. Heather Carver and Elaine J. Lawless

in Troubling Violence: A Performance Project

This chapter discusses the work of Elaine Lawless and Heather Carver in identifying the intersections of performance studies and folklore studies as they emerged in the twenty-first century. Elaine ... More

This chapter discusses the work of Elaine Lawless and Heather Carver in identifying the intersections of performance studies and folklore studies as they emerged in the twenty-first century. Elaine and Heather argue that ethnography informs performance through a careful focus on the real stories of women’s lives. Performance informs the ethnographic project by turning the traditional theatrical focus of the actor on stage into a multilayered dialogic performance involving performers, stories, and listeners.Less

The Revivalist and the Folklorist

Corey Gibson

in The Voice of the People: Hamish Henderson and Scottish Cultural Politics

This chapter sets out Henderson’s conception of the folk tradition, and its manifestations in his work as a folk revivalist and as a folklore scholar. In collecting songs and redistributing them, ... More

This chapter sets out Henderson’s conception of the folk tradition, and its manifestations in his work as a folk revivalist and as a folklore scholar. In collecting songs and redistributing them, Henderson analysed this tradition whilst also contributing to it. His work can therefore be approached as an interrogation of the limits of the individual’s own cultural ‘mediation’. This dynamic both liberated Henderson’s political imagination and plagued it with doubts over the manipulation and affectations of folk ‘voices’. Henderson’s own contributions to the field of folklore studies are placed in the context of on-going scholarly discourse, but also in relation to his own work as one who sought to operationalize a culture he was convinced belonged to the ages and was immune to interference. Federico García Lorca’s comments on the duende, and the vital folk culture of Scotland’s travelling people helped Henderson to glimpse the unbounded reach of the folk tradition and, consequently, the limited scope of the folklorist-revivalist. Through each of these chapters, Henderson’s struggle with the endless distance between himself – the poet, songwriter, folk revivalist, and folklorist – and the political and cultural lives of ‘the people’, is a constant feature.Less

Sustainability Clashes and Concordances

Thomas Baron and Jeff Todd Titon

Timothy J. Cooley (ed.)

in Cultural Sustainabilities: Music, Media, Language, Advocacy

Cultural sustainability as concept and movement is rooted in discourses, practice, and theory drawn from environmental conservation and sustainability. Metaphors from nature and culture are ... More

Cultural sustainability as concept and movement is rooted in discourses, practice, and theory drawn from environmental conservation and sustainability. Metaphors from nature and culture are convergent or divergent across semantic domains. This chapter explores metaphors of vulnerability such as endangerment, invasive and exotic, loss and protection, as well as tropes of restoration and recovery such as resilience and forms of intervention through protest, regulation, or stewardship. It also discusses cases in which cultural traditions and environmental conservation are in conflict, exemplified in disputed indigenous whale hunting. The creative tension in folklore studies engaging extinction, emergence and revitalization is further discussed as a foundational disciplinary issue. Intervention in nature through ecosystem engineering or conservation reliance is compared with cultural intervention and protection.Less

Introduction and Translation by Mickey Hong

Son Chint’ae

in Imperatives of Culture: Selected Essays on Korean History, Literature, and Society from the Japanese Colonial Era

This concluding chapter discusses the account of Son Chintʻae, a pioneer of Korean folklore history. He published books on folklore studies in Japanese, including Collected Old Folksongs of Korea, ... More

This concluding chapter discusses the account of Son Chintʻae, a pioneer of Korean folklore history. He published books on folklore studies in Japanese, including Collected Old Folksongs of Korea, Extant Shamanist Songs of Korea, and Collected Folk Stories of Korea. The preface to his seminal work, Introduction to the History of the Korean Nation was a manifesto for a new Korean history free from what he repeatedly criticizes as the monarchism and aristocentrism of previous historiography. The work exhorted Korean historians to find a new scientific methodology to enable them to write a new history that placed Korea within the context of world history.Less

Invoking the Goddesses

Saswati Sengupta

in Mutating Goddesses: Bengal's Laukika Hinduism and Gender Rights

Mutating Goddesses begins by examining the paradox of goddess worship in patriarchal societies. Hindu goddesses have been dominantly understood from a śāstrik perspective—deriving from Sanskrit ... More

Mutating Goddesses begins by examining the paradox of goddess worship in patriarchal societies. Hindu goddesses have been dominantly understood from a śāstrik perspective—deriving from Sanskrit scriptures authorized by the male Brahman—that exiles women. But there are religious practices under Hinduism that are governed by neither the Brahman nor Sanskrit. These laukika practices are held in a hierarchical relation to the śāstrik. Chapter 1 focuses from within that vibrant realm, the kathās/narratives appended to the propitiation of the goddesses known as bratas which allow direct participation of the women and the Dalit castes unlike the Brahmanical rituals. Briefly the Brahmannization of Bengal is traced and the Bengal caste system is sketched, since caste and gender are held together in the dominant construction and reception of goddesses. This Chapter concludes by showing how caste and gender define genres to categorize the construction and reception of goddesses and votives.Less