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Folklore; folk literature Listen to professors at University College Cork discussing the many facets of folklore, both as a subject of study and as an academic discipline. University College Cork, Ireland Folklore, in modern usage, an academic the subject matter of which (also called folklore) the sum total of traditionally derived and orally or imitatively transmitted literature, and custom of subcultures within predominantly literate and technologically advanced societies; comparable study among wholly or mainly nonliterate societies belongs to the of and anthropology. In popular usage, the term is sometimes restricted to the.Folklore studies began in the early 19th century. The first folklorists concentrated exclusively upon rural peasants, preferably uneducated, and a few other groups relatively untouched by modern ways (e.g., gypsies).
Folklore is the expressive body of culture shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. These include oral traditions such as tales, proverbs and jokes.
Their aim was to trace preserved customs and beliefs to their remote origins in order to trace the mental of. In Germany, Jacob Grimm used folklore to Germanic religion of the Dark Ages. In Britain, and others combined data from anthropology and folklore to “reconstruct” the beliefs and rituals of prehistoric man. The best-known work of this type is Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890).Large collections of material were amassed in the course of these efforts. Inspired by the Grimm Brothers, whose first collection of fairy tales appeared in 1812, scholars all over Europe began recording and publishing oral literature of many genres: fairy tales and other types of folktales, ballads and other songs, oral epics, folk plays, riddles, proverbs, etc.
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Similar work was undertaken for music, dance, and traditional arts and crafts; many archives and museums were founded. Often the underlying impulse was nationalistic; since the folklore of a group reinforced its sense of ethnic identity, it figured prominently in many struggles for political independence and national unity. As the scholarship of folklore developed, an important advance was the classification of material for comparative analysis. Standards of identification were devised, notably for ballads (by F.J. Child) and for the plots and component motifs of folktales and (by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson). Using these, Finnish scholars, led by Kaarle Krohn, developed the “historical-geographical” method of research, in which every known variant of a particular tale, or other item was classified as to place and date of collection in order to study distribution patterns and reconstruct “original” forms.
Destiny 2 latest news. This method, more statistical and less speculative than that of the anthropological folklorists, dominated the field throughout the first half of the 20th century. Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription.After new trends emerged, particularly in the United States.
Interest was no longer confined to rural, since it was recognized that cities too contained definable groups whose characteristic arts, customs, and values marked their identity. Although some Marxist scholars continued to regard folklore as belonging solely to the working classes, in other circles the concept lost its restrictions of and even of educational level; any group that expressed its inner cohesion by maintaining shared traditions qualified as a “folk,” whether the linking factor be occupation, language, place of residence, age, religion, or ethnic origin. Emphasis also shifted from the past to the present, from the search for origins to the investigation of present meaning and function.
Change and within tradition were no longer necessarily regarded as corruptive. In the view of “contextual” and “performance” analysis in the late 20th century, a particular story, song, drama, or custom more than a mere instance to be recorded and compared with others of the same category. Rather, each phenomenon is regarded as an event arising from the interaction between an individual and his, which fulfills some function and satisfies some need for both performer and audience.
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In this functionalist, sociological view, such an event can be understood only within its total context; the performer’s biography and personality, his role in the, his and artistry, the role of the audience, and the occasion on which the performance occurs all contribute to its folkloric meaning.
folklore, the body of customs, legends, beliefs, and superstitions passed on by oral tradition. It includes folk dances , folk songs , folk medicine (the use of magical charms and herbs), and folktales (myths, rhymes, and proverbs). The study of folklore emerged significantly in the 19th cent., partly out of the rise of European romanticism, with its interest in the past, and partly out of nationalism, with its stress on the indigenous. Today most folklorists and anthropologists regard folk customs, legends, and beliefs as an imaginative expression by a people of its desires, attitudes, and cultural values. Folk heroes (e.g., Frederick Barbarossa in Germany, the Cid in Spain, Robin Hood in England, Cuchulain in Ireland, Paul Bunyan in the United States, and Yü in China) have been said to reflect the civilization from which they sprang. Many theories have arisen to explain folk tales—Max Müller, a philologist, interpreted the legends as linguistic corruptions; Jakob Grimm saw them as corrupted cosmic allegories; the German school considered them as personified elements of nature; Edward Tylor and Andrew Lang held them to be survivals from a savage society; Freud and the psychoanalytical school found them fraught with sexual symbolism. Folklore has become increasingly important in the study of primitive societies and in understanding the history of mankind. Almost every country has a folklore society which collects, analyzes, and publishes folk material (e.g., in the United States the American Folklore Society publishes the Journal of American Folklore ). For further information, see games, children's ; monsters and imaginary beasts in folklore ; mythology . See C. L. Daniels and C. M. Stevans, ed., Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World (1971); D. Emrich, Folklore on the American Land (1972); R. M. Dorson, ed., Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction (1972); T. P. Coffin and H. Cohen, Folklore from the Working Folk of America (1973); R. M. Dorson, America in Legend (1974); A. Dundes, Analytic Essays in Folklore (1975).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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