Folklore

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Folklore

The word folklore has a precise genesis, August 1846, when William Thoms, an English antiquary, used it as a substitute for the expression popular antiquities. In spite of the simplicity of the word's components—translating literally into the lore of the folk—it is difficult to find an accurate definition of folklore, because it refers both to a field of learning and to the whole subject matter of that field. Folklorists identify three main elements when they attempt to explain the nature of their work: They see folklore as a diversity of forms of expression, grounded in tradition, by means of which a community manifests its own identity.

DEFINING FOLKLORE

The "Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore," adopted on November 15, 1989, by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), offered the following definition of folklore: "Folklore (or traditional and popular culture) is the totality of tradition-based creations of a cultural community, expressed by a group or individuals and recognized as reflecting the expectations of a community in so far as they reflect its cultural and social identity; its standards and values are transmitted orally, by imitation or by other means." This definition manages to bring together the main key words—tradition, community, and identity—on which folklorists concur when they attempt to explain the nature of their discipline. Other elements of the UNESCO proposal, however, are open to debate or to questioning. The idea, for instance, that folklore is transmitted orally has been questioned by Alan Dundes (1989) and does not correspond to the present conception of folklore. In the early twenty-first century, folklore might include, for example, autograph or recipe books, and the domain of electronic communication taking place on the Internet and cellular phones. The quotation above tries to summarize the folk component of the word. When it comes to the lore element, the usual practice is to list the diversity of expressive forms: beliefs, customs, skills, and the broad range of verbal genres such as legends, personal stories, riddles, proverbs, and songs. Richard M. Dorson (1972) tries to regroup the matter in four sectors: verbal forms on the one hand and, on the other hand, the manifestations of folk-life—material culture, social folk customs, and performance folk arts. It is precisely the diversity of the materials and their dissimilarity that challenges any attempt to define the discipline, according to Barre Toelken (1979), who offers, however, a brief definition that adds the two important notions of informality and dynamism. Folklore's substance consists of "tradition-based communicative units informally exchanged in dynamic variation through space and time" (p. 32).

TRADITION: A DYNAMIC PROCESS

An aura of nostalgia may still surround the notion of folkloric traditions, a legacy of the origins of the discipline in the nineteenth century. At that time, customs, beliefs, or expressions of simple folk, mainly peasants, were seen as survivals of ancient cultural systems. Folklorists from urban milieus thought that they could restore traditional rural cultures represented by the "backward" groups they were studying, groups who were supposed to have resisted to the so-called advanced industrial culture. Tradition is no longer viewed as something fixed in a past that folklorists should resurrect. Tradition gives meaning to the present and builds the future through making reference to the past; it entails change and creativity. The way the performer of a song builds upon preexisting models and repertoire leaves room for interpretive innovation and adjustment to new contexts. In order to remain within the boundaries of folklore, however, a balance must be kept between individual creativity and the respect for what a community considers its tradition. It is precisely through this common agreement on what constitutes its beliefs, customs, and verbal lore that a group defines its identity. Change and creativity within a sense of continuity are essential; otherwise, the group can become oppressive. A perverse manipulation of tradition may occur when the sense of a common heritage is invoked for nationalistic or racist motives. There is something paradoxical in this kind of fallacious recourse to traditions at a time when the world is experiencing the globalization of means of communication and the rapid changes brought about by this phenomenon.

COMMUNITIES AND THEIR FOLKLORES

Until the last two decades of the twentieth century, the general practice was to associate folklore with socially or geographically marginalized groups. This opposition between folkloric communities and those who studied them was a reflection of nationalism and of a romantic vision of the people. It has been replaced by a more inclusive and diversified notion of what constitutes a group expressing its own identity through a specific folklore. The term folk does not refer to a single homogeneous entity: Everyone belongs to a variety of groups "national, ethnic, linguistic, religious, occupational, familial—each with its set of identifying traditions." Sexual identity must also be added to this "onion-skin layering of multiple identities of each individual" (Dundes 1989, p. 16). One of the earliest categories to be socially recognized, sexual identity, generates a rich and elaborate repertoire of divination techniques, songs, proverbs, tales about gender roles, and crafts specific to men and women. Identity groups develop significant forms of expression and behavior that bring their members together and function as means of identification and cohesion. Even formal institutions such as academia, law, and government create their own peculiar folklore, made up of common ways of talking or behaving that are not the product of a specific training but built up and transmitted as a result of more or less codified interactions between their members. The "folk," according to Dundes (1965), refers to "any group of people whatsoever who share one or more common factors" (p. 3).

Identification with a group through a common set of traditions becomes a problematic issue in the context of multiple forms of diasporas that are the result of market forces, political upheavals, and mass communication. Original forms of folklore are emerging from new types of global communities that are building up through the Internet and the cellular phone. Such new forms coexist with the local elder who orally transmits old tales to the grandchildren of the community. The phenomenon of multicultural and diverse societies leads, on the one hand, to forms of hybridization or creolization, for example, to a process of cultural cross-fertilization; on the other hand, it may result in a sometimes intolerant promotion of a certain group's image. Ethnic slurs, what folklorists call the blason populaire, have always been a way for a community to build its cohesion, to define itself vis-à-vis another group, which can belong to a different race, country, village, or soccer team. Another example is provided by the antifeminist slurs so evident in jokes, proverbs, and riddles. It is difficult to estimate the extent to which this type of folkloric tradition has contributed to the formation of deep-seated prejudices.

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES

To some degree, folklore in a multicultural, globalized society still carries the elements of loss and nostalgia that were evident at the origin of the discipline in the nineteenth century, the time when the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and other collectors compiled customs and beliefs from rural areas or stories of oral traditions to prevent them from disappearing. The sense that heritage, which identifies a community, should be preserved, can be commercially or politically manipulated. Local traditions, crafts, or festivals become products that are sold to tourists and other consumers looking for images of authentic traditions. In 1950 Richard M. Dorson coined the word fakelore for this kind of manipulation, which began, in fact, at the origins of the discipline when the Scottish poet James Macpherson in the 1760s invented the legendary Gaelic bard Ossian. Fakelore, however, cannot simply be dismissed as inauthentic. It plays an important cultural role, especially in the elaboration of representations and myths that contribute to foster national or ethnic identity. One can mention the paraphernalia that accompanies the revival of Celtic culture or the many revival festivals with their parades of folkloric costumes, their dance performances, and their demonstrations of traditional crafts. These events try to keep alive traditions that are more or less accurately reconstructed, sometimes with the blessing of folklorists who work hand in hand with their promoters.

This connection between what one might call genuine research and the use of folkloric data for ideological or political ends has also been evident since the very beginning of the discipline. Its development during the nineteenth century was concomitant with the process of nation building in Europe. The best examples of this close relationship come from relatively small countries such as Finland, Hungary, and Ireland, known for their activity in collecting and studying folklore. This quest for the voice of one's people, for the soul of the folk that the German poet Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) found in folktales, songs, and national heroes, can be legitimate, especially among groups who feel a loss of identity because of oppression or colonization. During the 1930s, however, in a Germany demoralized after its defeat in World War I, the misuse of folklore, in continuity with the Herderian concept of the folk, contributed to the promotion of Nazi ideology. In the mass of folkloric literature produced at that time, fake anti-Semitic proverbs were published alongside genuine data. In the postnationalist multicultural societies of the twenty-first century, however, folklore can become a tool for the promotion of human rights. Working with groups of immigrants or grassroots movements, folklorists, both scholarly and amateur, have found ways to preserve these groups' identities, to give them voices and hence, political powers.

FOLKLORE AND WOMEN'S IDENTITIES

If one assumes that folklore is concerned with vernacular forms of culture, in the aesthetics of everyday life, women's traditions and the way they shape their identities should represent an important part of what is studied. Historically this has not been the case; men have been responsible for most of folklore's production and much of its content. Since Claire Farrer's collection of essays (1986 [1975]) and Francis A. de Caro's bibliographical survey (1983), women folklorists have raised this issue and have analyzed the relative absence of women's voices in the practice and study of their discipline. They refer to Herder and the founding fathers of Romantic nationalism as representing a worldview that has infiltrated folklore research. This worldview is based on the assumption that patriarchy reflects the inviolable natural order of the world and that the social organization of a nation is modeled on the nuclear family. Tradition, designed to preserve the social order, is seen as the expression of the forefathers' wisdom passing through the male line from father to son.

The result is that little attention has been paid to women's folkloric production in comparison to that of men; women were usually used as informants only when men were not available. When they have not been ignored, genres identified with women have been denigrated, as is evident from the expression old wives' tale. Even a cursory look at the forms of folkloric expression associated with women reveals their diversity and their importance for the communities in which they are produced. Some deal with issues that are specific to sexuality and family life. An important body of lore is related to women's reproductive functions from menstruation to menopause, including love magic, courtship and marriage customs, birth practices, and child care. Women act as healers and practitioners of folk medicine. Many of the traditional art forms created by women have often been neglected, regarded merely as aspects of their domestic activities, even if certain outstanding forms of needlework have attracted the interest of researchers—for example, quilts or folk costumes, a distinctive mark of identification in traditional societies. In addition to multiple forms of needlework, women's crafts that are accompanied by folklore include cheese making, soapmaking, butter churning, and gardening. Beyond the domain of daily activities, the important field of historical and heroic female figures has gained attention, with work on the Amazons, saints, the Virgin Mary and her cult, and the controversial topic of ancient goddess worship, among others.

As does any other group, women define themselves by their identification with different communities, some of them including men, others specifically female, such as nuns, nannies, waitresses, and female prostitutes. With the redefinition of gender identities, other ways of self-identification—as lesbian, trans-or bisexual, for example—are being explored and folklores are developing.

As mentioned some explanation for a lack of attention to the voice of women in folklore can be found in the theoretical assumptions of the discipline's founding fathers. On the one hand the nationalist bias tended to see cultures as homogeneous gender-neutral ethnic entities. On the other hand a model of performance based on public or formalized areas favored forms of expression proper to men, whereas those practiced by women, such as recipes, lullabies, and songs, are mostly confined to the private domain.

Fieldwork practices, generally based on the contributions and concerns of male informants, tended to neglect female forms of expression. Nevertheless, in spite of these shortcomings, folklore may offer theoretical grounds for addressing gender issues, mainly because it recognizes that categories, among them gender, are cultural constructions of reality and that they reflect the diversity of forms of collective identifications. Its interest, since its origin, in vulnerable communities under threat from majority cultures, can easily shift—especially now that more women folklorists work in the field—to give increased attention to forms of expression in relation or opposition to patriarchy.

THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO FOLKLORE

In the nineteenth century the first question that was asked about legends, customs, and other forms of folklore concerned their origin. Did a tale, a song, or a legend appear at several places at the same time or in just one place from whence it was disseminated? Related to this concern was the belief that fragments of lore had to be identified and collected in rural areas because they constituted survivals of earlier rituals. As folklore was seen as relics of ancient mythologies, one of the goals of the folklorist was to reconstruct the myths of gods and heroes from these fragments.

This belief in the possibility of retrieving the original form of a folkloric item underlies the historical-geographical approach, also known as the Finnish school of folklore. According to the premises of this method, a form, for instance a tale, originated at one time in a precise place and then spread from there. The folklorist then has to collect all the variants of this tale, find their common plot, and then, by comparing these variants, locate the place where the story appears in its purest form. This effort resulted in invaluable collections of folkloric items. In 1910 Antti Aarne published his catalogue of types of folktales, which was expanded by Stith Thompson, who also compiled and classified narrative units of stories in his Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. The critics of this approach express doubts about the possibility of finding all the possible variants of a tale and remark that it reduces the tale to an abstract plot, lacking the aesthetic and human components that make it relevant to the performer and the audience.

The diffusionist theory, which is likewise concerned with the ways items of folklore travel, does not look for sources but studies how cultures borrow from one another. Psychoanalytical folklorists used myths and folk-tales to find Freudian symbols. Sticks, knives, pencils, and trees represent the male genitals, whereas the female organs are symbolized by caves, bottles, boxes, jewel cases, and gardens. Attention has also been given to the structures underlying myths, legends. and folktales. In his Morphology of the Folktale (1928), Vladimir Propp shows that folktales revolve around a recurrent series of thirty-one types of action—functions in his terminology—themselves organized in sequential arrangements. The structuralist theory is most prominently represented by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966); he argues that similar invariant features can be found in myths around the world and that they can be related to the logical structure of the human mind.

In parallel to this work on the textual expressions of folklore, a number of folklorists in the second half of the twentieth century expressed less interest in genres and forms than in the role folklore plays in a given community. The functionalist theory looks at its role in educating the young, promoting values or censuring disapproved attitudes, fostering solidarity, or expressing protest. In this approach great importance is given to the environment in which a form takes on its meaning, with a shift from merely compiling collections of data to situating them in the cultural context of their performance. In this context, fieldwork and the development of ethical and honest relationships with informants become the cornerstones of the folklorist's work.

FIELDWORK AND ETHICAL ISSUES

It goes without saying that the first requirement for folklorists is to manifest a real appreciation for the traditions they are studying; dismissing them as backward survivals or romanticizing them with nostalgia are equally disrespectful. The ethical problem resulting from the tension between the right to information and the legitimate restrictions a group may put on the dissemination of their lore is a crucial aspect of folklore research. Some aspects of a ceremony may be taboo for outsiders, and publishing them might be seen as a religious offense. Such cases are normally dealt with through ethical and policy regulations applying to research involving human participants. In a context of freely available information, a question remains: Is it possible to protect and copyright folk materials? In certain communities some performers are seen as owners of the stories or songs they perform. Even when this is not the case, should not the community itself be considered the owner of its tradition, not the folklorist, or those who want to patent healing plants, or pop singers who earn considerable revenues with folk songs without recognizing their origins? Since the 1960s, developing countries have tried to regulate the use of folklore traditions, and UNESCO has begun to address these complex and difficult issues under the umbrella of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aarne, Antti, and Stith Thompson. 1961. The Types of the Folktale, ed. and trans. Stith Thompson. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.

Ben-Amos, Dan. 1971. "Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context." Journal of American Folklore 84(331): 3-15.

Ben-Amos, Dan, and Kenneth S. Goldstein, eds. 1975. Folklore: Performance and Communication. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.

Blacker, Carmen, and Hilda Ellis Davidson, eds. 2000. Women and Tradition: A Neglected Group of Folklorists. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Briggs, Charles, and Amy Shuman, eds. 1993. "Theorizing Folklore: Toward New Perspectives in the Politics of Culture." Spec. issue, Western Folklore 52 (2-4).

Collins, Camilla A., ed. 1990. "Folklore Field Work: Sex, Sexuality, and Gender." Spec. issue, Southern Folklore 47(1).

de Caro, Francis A., comp. 1983. Women and Folklore: A Bibliographic Survey. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Dorson, Richard M., ed. 1972. Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dundes, Alan. 1965. The Study of Folklore. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Dundes, Alan. 1989. Folklore Matters. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Farrer, Claire R., ed. 1986 (1975). Women and Folklore: Images and Genres. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Van Gennep, Arnold van. 1937–. Manuel de folklore français contemporain. Paris: Picard.

Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hollis, Susan Tower; Linda Pershing; and M. Jane Young, eds. 1993. Feminist Theory and the Study of Folklore. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Jackson, Bruce, ed. 1987. "Folklore and Feminism." Spec. issue, Journal of American Folklore 100(398).

Jordan, Rosan A., and Susan J. Kal?ik, eds. 1985. Women's Folklore, Women's Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Leach, Maria, ed. 1949–1950. Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. 2 vols. New York: Funk and Wagnalls.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1966. The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Propp, Vladimir. 1968. Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd edition. trans. Laurence Scott; ed. Louis A. Wagner. Austin: University of Texas Press. Originally published, 1928.

Radner, Joan Newlon, ed. 1993. Feminist Messages: Coding in Women's Folk Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Thompson, Stith. 1955–1958. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends. 6 vols. Rev. edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Toelken, Barre. 1979. The Dynamics of Folklore. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). "Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore." Available from http://portal.unesco.org.

Madeleine Jeay

Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Culture Society History