1st Day Lecture Notes for Introduction to Folklore

FOLKLORE

• Vital and persistent in all our lives

• Broad, common, contemporary and ancient

• In colloquial (everyday) English= falsehood, nonsense, childish, old-fashioned

• But actually interconnected with tradition, community, creativity, and innovation

Rug makers in Turkey, wood carvers in Africa, Navajos performing night-way chant, Maoris telling myth, quilters from Georgia, singers from Appalachia, fiddlers in France, potters in Bangladesh – all learn, use, perform, or display their art IN COMMUNITIES

THE FOLK
    William Thoms coined term "folk lore" (1846) in England

In the PAST (Since 19^th century) – folk were illiterate peasants of a given region

• Collections and recordings of folktales throughout Europe

• Educated, "civilized" people studying the folk did not consider themselves folk, but instead believed themselves "above" the folk, civilized, more rational, more adult

• 19^th c. evolutionary perspectives from science influenced social scientists, leading to explicit notions of primitive versus civilized within and among societies

• Folk (nostalgic) = quaint, childish, foolish in customs, superstitions, and stories

• Many of our conceptions about folklore as childish, insignificant, or untrue reflect the bias of early scholars who thought of the folk, however much they were admired, as being on a lower rung of what was literally conceptualized as a social ladder

In the PRESENT (since the 1960’s)

• Fieldwork (first hand knowledge & observation) revealed similarities as humans (less judgment as “others”/primitives)

• But in fact complex, humane, technically astute, artistically inspired and enriching, philosophically profound, morally deep, and fully mature

• Today we recognize as folk any collectivity (a group or a culture): "Who are the folk? Among others, we are!" Alan Dundes proclaimed in 1977 (1980, 19)

• Reorientation in thinking – universality of the human condition & centrality of folklore to all cultures

THE LORE

In the PAST meant texts (stories and songs)
Now = any willed, individual, creative expression

FOLKLORE DEFINITION: Since the 1960's and 70's folklore has been defined as "artistic communication in small groups" (Ben-Amos 1972) or "the study of human creativity in its own context" (Glassie, 1993)

• “Art” made with an awareness of and a connection to tradition and community

• Tradition & folklore = dynamic processes connected to community & creativity

“AUTHENTICITY” in terms of tradition = created out of a sense of community

• Does not mean “exactly like it was in the past”

• Involves continuity (connection to past)

• Also involves inspiration, insight and will

CULTURES ALWAYS CHANGE – tradition = connecting to past while showing clear awareness of present and accepting responsibility to shape future (as dynamic as the lives and minds of the humans who create)

ART: decorative in form, proportion, and detail (aesthetics primary)

CRAFT: made to serve a specific and important function -- to be used in everyday life (function primary)

• Furniture, tools, caned chairs, quilts, pots, baskets, etc.

• Nonetheless decorative in form, proportion, and detail

Transformation of Craft into Art requires enhanced, refined ornamentation, challenging self, but same skills  

FOLKLORE  resonates locally and globally

• Fundamentally appealing because it typically displays the best of our humanity

• Shows the strengths of our community

• Binds us to traditions while helping to shape our future

• Greatest thing that folklore teaches us is our common humanity

• We are all the folk

• Though not all of us may have the skills/expertise of a given art

• Always there are those whose competency flowers into art

• We are all part of communities that these arts come from and express