Folklore

"Finnish folklore" redirects here. For more relevant information, see Finnish mythology.

This article is about Folklore in general. For Folklore in Christianity, see Christian Oral Tradition.

For other uses, see Folklore (disambiguation).

A Magic carpet was a legendary carpet that could allegedly be used to transport persons who were on it instantaneously or swiftly to their destination.

Folklore (or lore) consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales, stories, tall tales, and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics. The word "folklore" was first used by the English antiquarian William Thoms in a letter published in the London journal The Athenaeum in 1846. In usage, there is a continuum between folklore and mythology. Stith Thompson made a major attempt to index the motifs of both folklore and mythology, providing an outline into which new motifs can be placed, and scholars can keep track of all older motifs.

Folklore can be divided into four areas of study: artifact (such as voodoo dolls), describable and transmissible entity (oral tradition), culture, and behavior (rituals). These areas do not stand alone, however, as often a particular item or element may fit into more than one of these areas.

Oral tradition

Folklore can contain religious or mythic elements, it equally concerns itself with the sometimes mundane traditions of everyday life. Folklore frequently ties the practical and the esoteric into one narrative package. It has often been conflated with mythology, and vice versa, because it has been assumed that any figurative story that does not pertain to the dominant beliefs of the time is not of the same status as those dominant beliefs.^{[citation needed]} Thus, Roman religion is called "myth" by today's dominant religions. In that way, both "myth" and "folklore" have become catch-all terms for all figurative narratives which do not correspond with the dominant belief structure.^{[citation needed]}

Sometimes "folklore" is religious in nature, like the tales of the Welsh Mabinogion or those found in Icelandic skaldic poetry. Many of the tales in the Golden Legend of Jacob de Voragine also embody folklore elements in a Christian context, as well as the tales of Old Mr. Brennan. Examples of such Christian mythology are the themes woven around Saint George or Saint Christopher. In this case, the term "folklore" is being used in a pejorative sense.

"Folktales" is a general term for different varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to basic and complex societies alike. Even the forms folktales take are certainly similar from culture to culture, and comparative studies of themes and narrative ways have been successful in showing these relationships. Also it is considered to be an oral tale to be told for everybody.

Hansel and Gretel is a fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. The tale has been adapted to various media, most notably the opera Hänsel und Gretel (1893) by Engelbert Humperdinck and a stop-motion animated feature film based on the opera. Artwork by Arthur Rackham, 1909

On the other hand, folklore can be used to accurately describe a figurative narrative, which has no sacred or religious content. In the Jungian view, which is but one method of analysis, it may instead pertain to unconscious psychological patterns, instincts or archetypes of the mind. This may or may not have components of the fantastic (such as magic, Non-physical entity#ethereal beings or the personification of inanimate objects). These folktales may or may not emerge from a religious tradition, but nevertheless speak to deep psychological issues. The familiar folktale, "Hansel and Gretel", is an example of this fine line. The manifest purpose of the tale may primarily be one of mundane instruction regarding forest safety or secondarily a cautionary tale about the dangers of famine to large families, but its latent meaning may evoke a strong emotional response due to the widely understood themes and motifs such as “The Terrible Mother”, “Death,” and “Atonement with the Father.”

There can be both a moral and psychological scope to the work, as well as entertainment value, depending upon the nature of the teller, the style of the telling, the ages of the audience members, and the overall context of the performance. Folklorists generally resist universal interpretations of narratives and, wherever possible, analyze oral versions of tellings in specific contexts, rather than print sources, which often show the work or bias of the writer or editor.

Contemporary narratives common in the Western world include the urban legend. There are many forms of folklore that are so common, however, that most people do not realize they are folklore, such as riddles, children's rhymes and ghost stories, rumors (including conspiracy theories), gossip, ethnic stereotypes, and holiday customs and life-cycle rituals. UFO abduction narratives can be seen, in some sense, to refigure the tales of pre-Christian Europe, or even the Ascent of Elijah to heaven. Adrienne Mayor, in introducing a bibliography on the topic, noted that most modern folklorists are largely unaware of classical parallels and precedents, in materials that are only partly represented by the familiar designation Aesopica: "Ancient Greek and Roman literature contains rich troves of folklore and popular beliefs, many of which have counterparts in modern contemporary legends" (Such as Mayor, 2000).

Vladimir Propp's classic study Morphology of the Folktale (1928) became the basis of research into the structure of folklore texts. Propp discovered a uniform structure in Russian fairy tales. His book has been translated into English, Italian, Polish and other languages. The English translation was issued in USA in 1958, some 30 years after the publication of the original. It was met by approving reviews and significantly influenced later research on folklore and, more generally, structural semantics. Though his work was based on syntagmatic structure, it gave the scope to understand the structure of folktales, of which he discovered thirty one functions. Derrida's concept of archewriting does not obey the distinction between writing and speaking.

Cultural

Folklorist William Bascom states that folklore has many cultural aspects, such as allowing for escape from societal consequences. In addition, folklore can also serve to validate a culture (romantic nationalism), as well as transmit a culture's morals and values. Folklore can also be the root of many cultural types of music. Country, blues, and bluegrass all originate from American folklore. Examples of artists which have used folkloric themes in their music would be: Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, Old Crow Medicine Show, Jim Croce, and many others. Folklore can also be used to assert social pressures, or relieve them, for example in the case of humor and carnival.

In addition, folklorists study medical, supernatural, religious, and political belief systems as an essential, often unspoken, part of expressive culture.^{[citation needed]}

Rituals

Many rituals can sometimes be considered folklore, whether formalized in a cultural or religious system (e.g. weddings, baptisms, harvest festivals) or practiced within a family or secular context. For example, in certain parts of the United States (as well as other countries) one places a knife, or a pair of scissors, under the mattress to "cut the birth pains" after giving birth. Additionally, children's counting-out games can be defined as behavioral folklore.

Modern Works (1835 - Present)

Many authors have set out to create the new folklore of their time; weaving magical tales designed to carry moral messages. Hans Christian Andersen published his "Fairy Tales" in 1835 with the intention of educating Denmark's children on the ways of society. The Ugly Duckling spoke to the danger of judging someone before they have fully grown into themselves, both physically and mentally. The Little Mermaid proposed putting someone else’s well being before one’s own dreams.

Edgar Allan Poe used the gothic genre to espouse his views on beauty, death, and cunning. For example, these are all elements he includes in “Hop-Frog.” The title character, a dwarf taken from his homeland, becomes the jester of a king particularly fond of practical jokes. Taking revenge on the king and his cabinet for striking his friend and fellow dwarf, Trippetta, he dresses them as orangutans for a masquerade. In front of the king's guests, Hop-Frog murders them all by setting their costumes on fire before escaping with Trippetta.”

Frank L. Baum published “Mother Goose in Prose” in 1897, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900, and American Fairy Tales in 1901. Mr. Baum cleverly disguised his views on life, politics, and religion. The Wizard of Oz, in particular, is considered to be an allegory of the politics and characters of the 1890s.

On September 17, 2004, Jonathan Safran Foer published a short story called, "The Sixth Borough" in The New York Times Op/Ed section. The story speaks of a mystical sixth borough that once existed off the coast of Manhattan. It has since floated down to Antarctica, where it sits today. According to the tale, central park once rested at the "heart" of the island, and was only airlifted to its current location for preservation purposes.

Alex Schattner wrote a series of “Modern American Folktales.” One of these tales, "The Queen of Port Orchard, WA," (2012) is about a girl who sees only her flaws. One night, she wishes on a star to be "Beautiful." Instead of getting her wish, she gets a much-needed mind adjustment by a very bold fairy. Most importantly, the fairy tells her, “Close your eyes, and picture the woman you think is the most beautiful in all the world. Then think of all the magazines that have her touched up, because they only see her flaws. Think of the hundreds of nasty comments people write about her being ugly, or fat, or how her hair would look better in whatever way it isn’t at that moment. I’ll repeat. Hundreds of people tell this woman that she’s ugly every single day. You only have one or two people. Maybe your real problem is that you aren’t ugly enough."

Categories of folklore

See also: Aarne–Thompson classification system

Genres

Archetypes, stereotypes and stock characters. Ballad Blason Populaire Childlore Children's street culture Counting rhymes Costumbrismo Craft

Custom Epic poetry Factoids Festival Folk art Folk belief Folk magic Folk medicine

Folk narrative Folk play Folk poetry and rhyme Folk song Games Holiday lore and customs Idiom

Mythology Riddle Saying Superstition Taunts Weather lore Xerox lore

Folk narratives

Anecdote Fable Fairy tale

Ghost story Joke Legend

Maxim Proverb Myth

Parable Tall tale Urban legend

National or ethnic

Further information: List of mythologies

Americas Folklore of the United States Latin American folklore Brazilian folklore Caribbean folklore Colombian folklore Australian folklore East Asian Chinese folklore Japanese folklore Korean folklore

European folklore Alpine (Austrian and Swiss) folklore English folklore Estonian folklore Dutch folklore Finnish folklore French folklore German folklore Hungarian folklore Irish folklore Italian folklore Lithuanian folklore

European folklore Maltese folklore Montenegrin folklore Romanian folklore Scandinavian folklore Scottish folklore Slavic folklore Polish folklore Russian folklore Ukrainian folklore Spanish Folklore Swiss folklore Welsh folklore

Near Eastern Aggadah Arab folklore Iranian folklore Jewish folklore Turkish folklore South Asian Indian folklore Maldivian folklore Nepali Folklore Pakistani folklore Southeast Asian Philippine folklore Indonesian Folklore

Counter-views

Some cultural studies scholars maintained that the construction of the category "folk" was born out of super-ordinate's essentialist gaze that de-sign-ates otherness in the form of a discipline, "Folklore". The dichotomous divisions between folk/non-folk, tribe/non-tribe, civil/savage, sastriya/loukika typically reflect colonial pedagogy that constitutes otherness by deploying different exonyms to peripheral other, ignoring the ethno/endonyms as used by a community from their subject-position. These divisions between dominant centre and dominated periphery gave birth to some surrogated subjects like "Folklore" or "Anthropology" in contrast to the white men's epistemological fields such as "History", "Sociology" or "Physiology". These subjects subjectify as well as objectify dominated and peripheral "other" in the way of surrogating the "scientific" construction of "human beings".

The problem is with the imaginative boundary between these two. From the standpoint of enlightened science, the limit or boundary of different epistemological fields needs to be enumerated or well defined, i.e., in this case, the binaries like Folk language/language, folk-art/non-folk-art, Folksong/Classical song, Folk drama/theatre must be distinguished according to the existing enlightened “scientific” logic. However the construction of such boundary, diachronically, is not always transparent, but rather fuzzy; and on the other hand it reflects a tension of maintaining the boundary.

In case of the folk-language/standard language binary, linguistic imperialism is also evident in the terms like "dialect", "folk-language" or "standard language". The constitution of Folklore and Anthropology is colonially derived disciplines that surrogate white men’s History and Sociology. It may be illustrated that the fuzziness of such boundaries reveals the nature of subsumption through subjectification (birth of a discipline), objectification (a group of people are treated/categorized and analyzed as a stable object) as well as subjection (others’ bodies are under the control of the centre).

See also

• Applied folklore
• Appropriation (music)
• Chinook wind
• Folk
• Folklife
• Folkloristics
• Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Petrosomatoglyph (image of parts of a human or animal body incised in rock)
• Signifying monkey

Further reading

• Adrienne Mayor, "Bibliography of Classical Folklore Scholarship: Myths, Legends, and Popular Beliefs of Ancient Greece and Rome", from Folklore (April 2000)
• Coffin, Tristram P.; Cohen, Hennig, (editors), Folklore in America; tales, songs, superstitions, proverbs, riddles, games, folk drama and folk festivals, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1966. Selections from the Journal of American folklore.

External links

• Meeting-place and knowledge bank for everyone whose ancestry hails from Sweden
• CIOFF: International Council of Organizations of Folklore Festivals and Folk Arts
• Folktales from around the world
• Folklore Society
•  "Folklore". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. 
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Folklore". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Slovak Folklore — folklore groups, videos, songs, history, news, events, festivals