Oring’s
“On The Concepts
of Folklore”
Chapter One of the Introduction
‘Folklore’
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a common term
Clearly compound of ‘folk’ and ‘lore’
But whazzat? (whazzem?)
‘Folk’
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“any group of people whatsoever who
share at least one common factor”
(Dundes)
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Common factor creates ‘sense of identity’
E.g. ethnicity, occupation, kinship, religious
belief, gender, age, etc.
Fairly broad, so turn to ‘lore
‘Lore’
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Dundes’ lengthy quote
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Useful for providing sense of what folklorists
study
Not a definition of lore
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Individual terms not defined, not comprehensive
What is common factor of items listed?
AND, why are some items qualified by prefix
‘folk’?
History of the study
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Emerging from Romanticism
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Quasi-rejection of ‘civilisation,’ seen as artificial
and intellectual, in favour of the natural and
spiritual
‘Feeling’
Urban, educated people cut off from nature,
not so unlettered, rural ones
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Art (songs, poetry, etc.) of rurality
‘uncompromised’ by modernity
History of the study (cont.)
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Emerging from Nationalism
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Sense of a people’s identity, typically in response
to perceived threat/inferiority of others
In both England and Germany, the ‘other’ was
France and Italy (centers of the intellectual
world), privileging Greco-Roman culture over
Anglo-Saxon / Germanic
History of the study (cont.)
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“Romantic Nationalism”
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When modernity seen as ‘from outside,’ a
‘rediscovery’ of local traditions and a rejection of
‘higher culture’ occurs
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Germany: Wagner (e.g.) and Teutonic myths
China: Hu Shih and the New Culture Movement
USA: 1950s folk music revival (hippies, etc.)
Cape Breton(?)
Question to blow your minds
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Why are the places to study folklore in
Canada (Newfoundland, Quebec, Cape
Breton, Alberta) also places that have
historically seen themselves cut off from
the rest of Canada?
The actual word ‘folklore’
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William Thoms: suggested replacing the
term ‘popular antiquities’ (‘old things of the
people’) with “a good Saxon compound”
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Note the anti-Greco-Roman, romantic nationalist
tone in that comment
Word caught on like wildfire
Another perspective:
Cultural evolution
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Darwin’s Evolution of the Species was
thought to be a model for culture as well:
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Contemporary culture is to earlier cultures as
homo sapiens is to some kind of monkey-thing
There are vestiges of a “more primitive” time in
our lore (superstitions, etc.), the same way that
we have vestiges of stages biological
evolutionary development in our bodies
Cultural evolution (cont.)
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Lore seen as something to discover and,
essentially, eliminate as a hindrance to
development
But study of ‘primitives’ gives insights into
our past
Ridiculously racist/ethnocentric
Folklore as a ‘survival’
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But what about ‘new’ items, i.e. things not
attributable to a distant past?
Slowly redefining lore
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from ‘ancient’ to ‘old’ to ‘traditional,’ with
emphasis on its means of transmission (‘oral’)
Slow redefining folk
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From rural/illiterate/poor to urban blue collar to
any group, with emphasis on sense of identity
Whither the peasants?
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The absence of an indigenous ancestor
population for (white) North America
encourages move from peasant model to
one more broadly conceived
Don’t worry, peasants aplenty in Europe,
Asia, etc.
The folk society model
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A model in which a society’s members are mainly
similar (physically, behaviourally, ideologically),
change little over generations, economically
independent, isolated from other communities,
internally trade economy, etc.
The model is in contrast to the modern
cosmopolis
‘Folk’ becomes a relative term
Other attempts
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‘Verbal art’
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No reference to past, no assumptions about
kinds of groups
But limits to certain forms (excludes material
culture, ritual, etc.)
‘Interstitial culture’
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That which falls between the gaps of formal
institutions, centres of power, etc.
Conclusion
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Not simple, is it?
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Read “Herder, Folklore and Romantic
Nationalism” for Thursday
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If the Introduction is not in the bookstore by
Friday, copies of Chapter 2 will be available
outside my office