folklore essay

An illustration from Russian Wonder Tales (1912) by Poet Wheeler; illustrated by Ivan Bilibin. Photo by Getty

Folklore is philosophy

Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world.

by Abigail Tulenko   + BIO

The Hungarian folktale Pretty Maid Ibronka terrified and tantalised me as a child. In the story, the young Ibronka must tie herself to the devil with string in order to discover important truths. These days, as a PhD student in philosophy, I sometimes worry I’ve done the same. I still believe in philosophy’s capacity to seek truth, but I’m conscious that I’ve tethered myself to an academic heritage plagued by formidable demons.

The demons of academic philosophy come in familiar guises: exclusivity, hegemony and investment in the myth of individual genius. As the ethicist Jill Hernandez notes , philosophy has been slower to change than many of its sister disciplines in the humanities: ‘It may be a surprise to many … given that theology and, certainly, religious studies tend to be inclusive, but philosophy is mostly resistant toward including diverse voices.’ Simultaneously, philosophy has grown increasingly specialised due to the pressures of professionalisation. Academics zero in on narrower and narrower topics in order to establish unique niches and, in the process, what was once a discipline that sought answers to humanity’s most fundamental questions becomes a jargon-riddled puzzle for a narrow group of insiders.

In recent years, ‘canon-expansion’ has been a hot-button topic, as philosophers increasingly find the exclusivity of the field antithetical to its universal aspirations. As Jay Garfield remarks, it is as irrational ‘to ignore everything not written in the Eurosphere’ as it would be to ‘only read philosophy published on Tuesdays.’ And yet, academic philosophy largely has done just that. It is only in the past few decades that the mainstream has begun to engage seriously with the work of women and non-Western thinkers. Often, this endeavour involves looking beyond the confines of what, historically, has been called ‘philosophy’.

Expanding the canon generally isn’t so simple as resurfacing a ‘standard’ philosophical treatise in the style of white male contemporaries that happens to have been written by someone outside this demographic. Sometimes this does happen, as in the case of Margaret Cavendish (1623-73) whose work has attracted increased recognition in recent years. But Cavendish was the Duchess of Newcastle, a royalist whose political theory criticises social mobility as a threat to social order. She had access to instruction that was highly unusual for women outside her background, which lends her work a ‘standard’ style and structure. To find voices beyond this elite, we often have to look beyond this style and structure.

Texts formerly classified as squarely theological have been among the first to attract significant renewed interest. Female Catholic writers such as Teresa of Ávila or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, whose work had been largely ignored outside theological circles, are now being re- examined through a philosophical lens. Likewise, philosophy departments are gradually including more work by Buddhist philosophers such as Dignāga and Ratnakīrti, whose epistemological contributions have been of especial recent interest . Such thinkers may now sit on syllabi alongside Augustine or Aquinas who, despite their theological bent, have long been considered ‘worthy’ of philosophical engagement.

On the topic of ‘worthiness’, I am wary of using the term ‘philosophy’ as an honorific. It is crucial that our interest in expanding the canon does not involve the implication that the ‘philosophical’ confers a degree of rigour over the theological, literary, etc. To do so would be to engage in a myopic and uninteresting debate over academic borders. My motivating question is not what the label of ‘philosophy’ can confer upon these texts, but what these texts can bring to philosophy. If philosophy seeks insight into the nature of such universal topics as reality, morality, art and knowledge, it must seek input from those beyond a narrow few. Engaging with theology is a great start, but these authors still largely represent an elite literate demographic, and raise many of the same concerns regarding a hegemonic, exclusive and individualistic bent.

As Hernandez quips: ‘[W]e know white, Western men have not cornered the market on deeply human, philosophical questions.’ And furthermore, ‘we also know, prudentially, that philosophy as a discipline needs to (and must) undergo significant navel-gazing to survive … in an ever-increasingly difficult time for homogenous, exclusive academic disciplines.’ In light of our aforementioned demons, it appears that philosophy is in urgent need of an exorcism.

I propose that one avenue forward is to travel backward into childhood – to stories like Ibronka’s. Folklore is an overlooked repository of philosophical thinking from voices outside the traditional canon. As such, it provides a model for new approaches that are directly responsive to the problems facing academic philosophy today. If, like Ibronka, we find ourselves tied to the devil, one way to disentangle ourselves may be to spin a tale.

Folklore originated and developed orally. It has long flourished beyond the elite, largely male, literate classes. Anyone with a story to tell and a friend, child or grandchild to listen, can originate a folktale. At the risk of stating the obvious, the ‘folk’ are the heart of folklore. Women, in particular, have historically been folklore’s primary originators and preservers. In From the Beast to the Blonde (1995), the historian Marina Warner writes that ‘the predominant pattern reveals older women of a lower status handing on the material to younger people’.

Folklore has existed in some form in every culture and, in each, it has brought underrepresented groups to the fore. As we look to expand the canon, folklore is a rich source of thought on topics of philosophic interest with the potential to uplift a wide range of voices who have thus far been largely overlooked.

Folktales puzzle and surprise and haunt. They make us ask ‘Why?’ And they invite us to imagine new ways to respond

In his wry poem ‘The Conundrum of the Workshops’ (1890), Rudyard Kipling describes Adam’s first sketch scratched in the dirt of Eden with a stick:

… [It] was joy to his mighty heart, Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: ‘It’s pretty, but is it Art?’

And so we may ask: folklore may be inclusive, but is it philosophy?

To answer that question, one would need at least a loose definition of philosophy. This is daunting to provide but, if pressed, I’d turn to Aristotle, whose Metaphysics offers a hint: ‘it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin, and at first began, to philosophise.’ In my view, philosophy is a mode of wondrous engagement, a practice that can be exercised in academic papers, in theological texts, in stories, in prayer, in dinner-table conversations, in silent reflection, and in action. It is this sense of wonder that draws us to penetrate beyond face-value appearances and look at reality anew.

Given this lens, it is unsurprising that one solution to philosophy’s crisis might be found in a childhood pastime. In childhood, we literally see the world with new eyes; here, wonder is most keenly felt. We’ve all heard a child ask ‘Why?’ and realised not only that we don’t know the answer, but that we’d forgotten how miraculously puzzling the question was to begin with. Wonder and folktales are likewise linked. Wundermärchen – the original German word for fairytale – literally translates to ‘wonder tale’. Perhaps this is why children love folktales. In most cultures, folktales predate broad social distinctions between adult and children’s entertainment. But as other flashier diversions have largely overtaken the adult sphere, folktales have maintained their spell over children. They speak the child’s language. They puzzle and surprise and haunt. They make us ask ‘Why?’ And they invite us to imagine new ways to respond.

Aristotle’s wonder-based view of philosophy hasn’t been accepted by all. The late Harry Frankfurt rejected this analysis of what makes a question philosophical, countering in The Reasons of Love (2004):

It is hardly appropriate to characterise these things merely as puzzling. They are startling. They are marvels. The response they inspired must have been deeper, and more unsettling, than simply – as Aristotle puts it – a ‘wondering that the matter is so.’ It must have been resonant with feelings of mystery, of the uncanny, of awe.

But wonder, fear and awe are old friends. Like any Catholic schoolchild, I learned that ‘fear of God’ was just another name for ‘wonder and awe’. It seems that folklore and philosophy meet at this intersection, where wonder and fear converge into something both unsettling and marvellous. The folklorist Maria Tatar writes that, in the world of the folktale, ‘anything can happen, and what happens is often so startling … that it often produces a jolt.’ Folklore and philosophy are both in the business of startling us. Philosophy demands that we confront humanity’s deepest anxieties and longings. Whether we disguise them with phis and psis , it is deeply concerned with our shudders and sighs. And folklore, with its forests and phantoms, is perhaps the largest-scale historical inventory of these fears.

The folklorist Reet Hiiemäe goes as far as to argue it is ‘human fear’ that ‘induced the emergence and formation of folkloric phenomena’. Folklore is an imaginative attempt to make sense of the inexplicable. By tuning into what frightens us, we learn who we are. And if we want to find out what frightens us, the Black Forest is the first place we should look.

P hilosophy and folklore both elicit this sense of wondrous fear, startling awe. They also share a dual aim, well articulated by Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment (1976). For him, the purpose of folklore is to help us ‘live not just moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence.’ Here, as in philosophy, there is the search for the truth, which is to meaningfully attend to the structures of reality we so often take for granted, to perceive the world as more than mere scenery.

Second, there is the aim of a life well lived, the desire that our intellectual enquiry serve our lived experience, that we live and breathe our philosophy as well as contemplate it. The most obvious philosophical application of folklore is to ethics. Most of us are familiar with the parting moral lesson found at the end of familiar childhood tales. Warner argues that one of the most valuable aspects of the medium is its centring of marginalised voices in moral debates. She writes that ‘alternative ways of sifting right and wrong require different guides, ones perhaps discredited or neglected.’ If indeed philosophy is in crisis in part because of a narrowly circumscribed demographic of ‘guides’, folklore is a rich place to look for new ones. Bettelheim also suggests that folktales are normatively laden at their most fundamental level:

Tolkien addressing himself to the question of ‘Is it true?’ remarks that ‘It is not one to be rashly or idly answered.’ He adds that of much more real concern to the child is the question: ‘“Was he good? Was he wicked?” That is, [the child] is more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear.’

Before a child can come to grips with reality, he must have some frame of reference to evaluate it. When he asks whether a story is true, he wants to know whether the story contributes something of importance to his understanding, and whether it has something significant to tell him in regard to his greatest concerns.

Combing through folklore, it is easy to find stories that map well on to our contemporary concerns – many even mirror the structure of core ethical thought-experiments. For instance, in the traditional Russian tale Ilya Muromets and the Dragon, the hero must choose between aiding a king in a distant land whose kingdom is plagued by dragons, and returning to serve his home nation, which is in less dire need. In this tale, themes of partiality, community and nationalism arise. Does great need override one’s partiality toward one’s own family, nation, community? Parallels can be seen in many well-known thought-experiments in contemporary ethics. Whether one is jumping off a pier to save a drowning woman, steering a trolley, or ruining their new shoes in a pond to save a child, philosophers have long been concerned with whether and how our obligations to the familiar and the strange diverge. When mutually exclusive, should one save the life of one’s friend or of a stranger?

Another potent example arises in the Haitian folktale Papa God and General Death. There is a wide ethical literature on the nature and value of death: Fred Feldman’s Confrontations with the Reaper (1992) provides a useful introduction to the many facets of the debate. Is death a great evil? Is it a form of injustice? This tale offers an argument in defence of death. Papa God claims that people love him better than Death because he gives them life, while Death only takes it away. To prove this is so, Papa God asks a local man for water. The man, upon hearing that He is God, refuses Him a drink. When questioned, the man explains that he prefers Death over God:

Because Death has no favourites. Rich, poor, young, old – they are all the same to him … Death takes from all the houses. But you, you give all the water to some people and leave me here with 10 miles to go on my donkey for just one drop.

This tale turns our assumptions on their head, vividly arguing against the common presupposition that death is a moral evil. In its universality, death is actually a form of justice in a way that life never can be.

I n many cultures, folklore has even greater ethical import. For instance, the scholars Oluwole Coker and Adesina Coker argue that in Yoruba culture folklore plays a large role in ‘generating the laws governing intra and interpersonal relationships, communal cohesion, ethical regime and the justice system’. They term this relationship ‘folklaw’, explaining that folklore functions as a law-like ethical system that underlies social practices. They also emphasise that folklore is a ‘pathway for existential philosophy among the Yoruba’, as ethical quandaries are primarily explored through story. The Yoruba have long taken folklore seriously as a source of ethical reasoning.

From Gaki-Zoshi (The Hungry Ghosts Scroll). Late 12th century. Courtesy the Kyoto Museum .

Beyond ethics, folklore touches all the branches of philosophy. With regard to its metaphysical import, Buddhist folklore provides a striking example. When dharma – roughly, the ultimate nature of reality – ‘is internalised, it is most naturally taught in the form of folk stories: the jataka tales in classical Buddhism, the koans in Zen,’ writes the Zen teacher Robert Aitken Roshi. The philosophers Jing Huang and Jonardon Ganeri offer a fascinating philosophical analysis of a Buddhist folktale seemingly dating back to the 3rd century BCE, which they’ve translated as ‘Is This Me?’ They argue that the tale constructs a similar metaphysical dilemma to Plutarch’s ‘ship of Theseus’ thought-experiment, prompting us to question the nature of personal identity:

The story tells the tale of a traveller’s unfortunate encounter with a pair of demons, one of whom is bearing a corpse. As the first demon tears off one of the man’s arms, the second demon takes an arm from the corpse and uses it as a transplant. This sport continues until the man’s whole body has been replaced, torn limb from limb, with the body-parts of the corpse. The man is given to ask himself: ‘What has become of me ?’

This tale tests our intuitions about the relationship between an entity’s parts and its whole. At what point does the mass of parts become the man? What sorts of material substitution entail an identity change?

Ancient tales have played a pivotal role in challenging previously unquestioned epistemic assumptions

The conclusion of the tale foregrounds an alternative approach to epistemology. Following the Buddhist Madhyamaka tradition of the ‘tetralemma’, the tale outlines four possible responses to the dilemma: is the replaced body the original man? 1) Yes it is the man. 2) No it is not the man. 3) It is both the man and not the man. 4) It is neither the man nor not the man. The tale progresses to reveal that each of these options leads to some absurdity. This functions as a reductio argument against the notion of personal identity altogether, suggesting that the concept was, from the start, empty or incorrectly defined. Other tales affirm the more radical notion that it is coherent to reject or accept all four responses simultaneously.

This heterodox approach to epistemology inspired the logician Graham Priest’s notion of ‘dialetheism’, which posits the coherence of ‘dialetheias’ – joint propositions that include a statement and its negation. The development of dialetheism provides an example of a case where ancient tales have already played a pivotal role in challenging previously unquestioned epistemic assumptions. What other philosophic insights might lie buried in folklore? What new questions might they ask, and how might they widen our understanding of the scope of answers available?

Then there is the question of methodology: when faced with a folktale, how would a sympathetic philosopher proceed? The tales generally aren’t going to give us arguments neatly pre-packaged in premise-conclusion form. We will need to put in the interpretive work to understand the contextual and stylistic features necessary to extract philosophic insights. There will be interpretive, literary and anthropological facts to consider. Perhaps philosophers are ill-equipped to do this work alone – and all the better! Cross-disciplinary engagement broadens our enquiry and leaves all involved enriched. How wonderful would it be if departments collaborated more often, if we saw papers co-published by folklorists and metaphysicians, if our search for truth transcended bureaucratic academic divisions and led us through the winding paths of stories, paths we shared in childhood, but have long since forgotten.

But before we sharpen our pencils to hunt for proofs, I would invite my fellow philosophers to be open to alternative approaches to engaging with philosophic ideas. Don’t get me wrong, I love premise-conclusion form as much as the next girl (and probably far more, unless the next girl is also a graduate student in metaphysics). But it would be patently irrational to assume that the whole of philosophic understanding is recorded in that form. (And we lovers of proofs famously detest irrationality.)

In folktales, we may not always find arguments, at least as typically construed. This is not a sign of philosophical impotence. The European bias of the canon tends to privilege a particular argumentative structure. However, stories are not new to philosophy: Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard were all vivid storytellers. Today, even the most methodologically rigid analytic philosophy is not immune to the lure of narrative. Just look at Bettelheim’s description of the function of fairy tales, which could be mistaken for a description of the contemporary thought-experiment:

It is characteristic of fairy tales to state an existential dilemma briefly and pointedly … [in order] to come to grips with the problem in its most essential form …

Storytelling is germane to the philosophic tradition, despite a general decline in recent times. (‘Recent’ in the long history of philosophy can mean a few centuries.) But the historical precedent for narrative in philosophy isn’t its only justification. Where the structure of folklore diverges from the philosophic tradition is perhaps where its impact can be most useful. Folklore is full of magical metamorphosis. It casts its spell, and I think we ought to let it. The most powerful canon-expansion will move beyond mere addition to methodological transformation.

F olklore provides a new model of enquiry that has the power to transform the discipline in exciting ways, re-enlivening it from the inside. What could philosophy look like beyond the assumptions of contemporary academia? How can folklore shed light on alternative ways of reasoning, raise new puzzles, and expand the range of answers in view?

Ludwig Edelstein, a scholar of Plato, argued that storytelling plays an important explanatory role: through stories, we ‘counteract sorcery by sorcery’. He contends that the human search for meaning is best realised when we engage both our rational and our emotive natures. Since ‘both these parts of the human soul must be equally tended by the philosopher’, stories are a valuable tool to impart ideas with maximal impact.

This value is instrumental as we seek to broaden philosophy’s reach beyond a narrow specialised few. Folklore is a medium of expansive inclusion – it transcends class and educational boundaries. As the fiction writer Karel Čapek noted: ‘a true folk fairy tale does not originate in being taken down by the collector of folklore, but in being told by a grandmother to her grandchildren’. It is intended for wide engagement, and its familiar and entertaining structure makes complex ideas accessible to a range of audiences throughout different disciplines, and beyond academe.

Another notable feature of folklore is its emphasis on collectivity. For most, the word ‘philosophy’ conjures a lineage of geniuses: your Aristotles, your Sartres, your Kants. The discipline has valorised individuals atomistically, framing their revolutionary contributions in a vacuum. In recent years, many have cast aspersions on this narrative. The sociologist Sal Restivo declares : ‘[I]f you give me a genius, I will give you a social network.’ Increasingly, there is a trend toward recognising progress as a matter of collaboration rather than atomistic ownership.

Storytelling engages with the messy and the real in a way that the pristine structures of philosophy struggle to do

Folklore has a long tradition in this spirit. In Sitting at the Feet of the Past (1992), a collection of essays on the North American folktale, Steve Sanfield writes: ‘Nobody owns these stories … They change each time they’re told.’ Tales are inherently communal, having no single author. Listeners alter the stories, misremember them, embellish them, and change their meaning with each retelling. In this manner, it is a mode of thinking collectively and through time, a collaborative enquiry that persists through centuries.

The generational model of folklore also contrasts with academic philosophy’s long-lamented blindness to its own historicity, to context and to contingency. As the literary scholar Karl Kroeber observed in Retelling/Rereading: The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times (1992):

[A]ll significant narratives are retold and are meant to be retold – even though every retelling is a making anew. Story can thus preserve ideas, beliefs, and convictions without permitting them to harden into abstract dogma. Narrative allows us to test our ethical principles in our imaginations where we can engage them in the uncertainties and confusion of contingent circumstance.

Folklore is openly historical, and openly in flux. Tales evolve with the contributions of successive tellers, and yet, in what persists, we are able to witness thought processes that approach timeless resonance. This method offers advantages over the European philosophical model, which can obscure the wider history of ideas in its insistence on abstracted and individual pursuit of the universal. Storytelling is unafraid to engage with the contextual, the messy and the specificity of the real in a way that the pristine structures of philosophy struggle to do. As such, it provides a more thoroughly examined path to what might be called the universal. Folklore is both a reflection of the Now from which it is being told, and a record of what persists throughout aeons of successive nows. To borrow Kroeber’s metaphor, folklore preserves ideas softly . It’s putting flowers in a vase rather than drying them – watery narrative is always moving, always in flux, so the ideas stay green and do not become brittle.

The ending of Pretty Maid Ibronka has always moved me. She stands at the village graveyard, a young girl facing down the devil in the guise of a sophisticated man. One expects her to scream, to run or to fight. Instead, she tells him a story, one that contains the truth. She begins at the start of the tale itself, hijacking the role of narrator, tying the story into a loop. It is only when she does so that the devil is vanquished, and his victim’s lives restored.

Political philosophy

C L R James and America

The brilliant Trinidadian thinker is remembered as an admirer of the US but he also warned of its dark political future

Harvey Neptune

Falling for suburbia

Modernists and historians alike loathed the millions of new houses built in interwar Britain. But their owners loved them

Michael Gilson

Thinkers and theories

Rawls the redeemer

For John Rawls, liberalism was more than a political project: it is the best way to fashion a life that is worthy of happiness

Alexandre Lefebvre

Anthropology

Your body is an archive

If human knowledge can disappear so easily, why have so many cultural practices survived without written records?

Helena Miton

Seeing plants anew

The stunningly complex behaviour of plants has led to a new way of thinking about our world: plant philosophy

Stella Sandford

Knowledge is often a matter of discovery. But when the nature of an enquiry itself is at question, it is an act of creation

Céline Henne

Definition of Folklore

Types of folklore, examples of folklore in literature, example #1: rudyard kipling, example #2: patrick henry, example #3: a. k. ramanujan, example #4: alan garner, function of folklore, post navigation.

University Library

What is Folklore?

What is folklore, defining folklore.

One of the best known explanations of folklore is found in Alan Dundes’ brief essay, “What Is Folklore?” Dundes disputes the notion that “folk” should be automatically identified with peasant or rural groups, or with people from the past. He argues that contemporary urban people also have folklore and suggests that rather than dying out, folklore is constantly being created and recreated to suit new situations (Dundes, 1965: 2).

Dundes asserts that “folk” can refer to “any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor. It does not matter what the linking factor is-it could be a common occupation, language, or religion-but what is important is that a group…have some traditions that it calls its own” (Dundes, 1965: 2).

Rather than offering a definition of folklore, Dundes provides a list of various types of folklore to demonstrate the large range of the field of study. His list includes the expected subjects of folktales, legends, myths, ballads, festivals, folk dance and song, but also offers examples of folklore that may not be as obvious, such as children’s counting out rhymes, food recipes, house, barn and fence types, latrinalia (informal writings in public restrooms), as well as the sounds traditionally used to call specific animals. Dundes stresses that his list is not exhaustive, but merely a sampling of the subjects that folklore scholarship can address, and which merit study for the insight that they provide into specific cultures (Dundes, 1965: 3).

Genres of Folklore

• Material culture: folk art, vernacular architecture, textiles, modified mass-produced objects
• Music: traditional, folk, and world music
• Narrative: legends, urban legends, fairy tales, folk tales, personal experience narratives
• Verbal art: jokes, proverbs, word games
• Belief and religion: folk religion, ritual, and mythology
• Foodways: traditional cooking and customs, relationships between food and culture

Folklore as an Academic Discipline

Folklorists focus on the study of human creativity within specific cultural and social contexts, including how such expressions (i.e. stories, music, material culture and festivals) are linked to political, religious, ethnic, regional, and other forms of group identity.

Suggested Books and Articles about Folklore and Folk Groups

398.03 F719 (SSHEL Stacks) Bauman, Richard (ed.). 1992. Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: A Communications-centered Handbook. New York: Oxford University Press.

398 D73FO (Main Stacks) Dorson, Richard (ed.). 1972. Folklore and Folklife, An Introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

398 D91s (Main Stacks and Oak Street) Dundes, Alan. 1965. The Study of Folklore. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

GR66 .D87 1980 (Main Stacks) Dundes, Alan. 1980. “Who Are the Folk?” In Interpreting Folklore . Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

398.05 JF (Main Stacks, Literature and Languages Reference, Online, Oak Street) Noyes, Dorothy. 1995. “Group.” Journal of American Folklore . 108 (430): 449-478.

398 F7183 (Oak Street) Oring. Elliott. 1986. Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.

Websites Defining Folklore

What is Folklore? (American Folklore Society) This site contains collective contributions from members of the American Folklore Society and others in the folklore community. Includes a “How Do Folklorists Define Folklore?” section that provides citations and quotes of folklore definitions from a variety of authoritative sources, including  the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the Journal of American Folklore. Other sections provide information about Folklore Studies programs, contact information for prominent scholars, and links to research resources for folklorists.

New York Folklore Society Provides some useful definitions and examples of folklore in modern contexts drawing for folklore scholars and documentation of community folklore by public folklorists.

• Harvard Library
• Research Guides
• Faculty of Arts & Sciences Libraries

Library Research Guide for Folklore and Mythology

Research in folklore studies, folklore studies at harvard.

• Theory and Methods
• Searching HOLLIS
• Databases & Bibliographies
• Encyclopedias
• Dictionaries
• Tale-Type and Motif Indices
• Archives & Special Collections
• Material Culture
• Audiovisual Materials & Musical Scores
• Requesting & Accessing Materials
• Organizing and Managing Your Resarch
• Learning With the Library

Ask a Librarian

Acknowledgements

Original Creator:  Claire K. Oldfather Editor, Updater, and Content Contributor:  Ramona Crawford, Library Liaison to Folklore & Mythology

Consultants: Dr. Joseph F. Nagy

What is folklore?

Narrowly, the term “folklore” has been traditionally considered the oral tales of a society. More broadly, the term refers to all aspects of a culture – beliefs, traditions, norms, behaviors, language, literature, jokes, music, art, foodways, tools, objects, etc. Folklore is, in essence, anything and everything in life.  

What is Folklore Studies?

Folklore Studies, also known as Folkloristics, is the study of all aspects of culture, particularly material culture or the products of a society. It developed as a discipline in the nineteenth-century in tandem with a number of other disciplines, including Literary Studies, History, Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology; and has followed similar theoretical trends.

In the early 19th century, with the nostalgic wistfulness of the Romantic movement and burgeoning nationalism in Europe and North America, scholars grew increasingly interested in collecting and cataloging material culture, particularly folklore. This time period produced a large number of folklore and fairytale collections and preserved a portion of oral culture. The term “folklore” was first used in 1846 by William Thoms. Originally, it was limited solely to oral peasant tales. It was not until the 20th century that Folklore Studies was recognized as both cultural studies and as a discipline.

Why study folklore?

Folklore helps us understand society, cultures, communities, groups, and individuals. Studying folklore develops analytical skills and cultural sensitivity. Most importantly, it engenders understanding of and respect for others, as well as better understanding of ourselves.

Folklorists are rarely ever just folklorists. A degree in Folklore Studies teaches a range of transferable skills which can be used in any career. Some folklorists continue in academia as teachers and researchers, often in literature, history, or anthropology departments. Most folklorists apply their cultural knowledge and analytical skills to the public field and work as mediators between institutions and society. Many folklorists work directly with communities in a variety of ways, such as:

• Ethnographers
• Researchers
• Anthropologists
• Conservators
• Social Workers
• Social Activists
• Entrepreneurs
• Film Producers
• Journalists
• Non-Profit Organizers  

Image: American School. Fraktur art: Ephrata Cloister tunebook, 1745. Watercolor and ink on paper, with cloth and leather binding. Harvard Fine Arts Library, Digital Images & Slides Collection.  

Founded in 1967, the degree concentration in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University is the oldest undergraduate Folklore degree program in the United States. At Harvard, students can study both past and present society through their cultural documents and artifacts, using a range of methodologies drawn from the humanities and social sciences.  

The program at Harvard

The concentration in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard provides students with a general knowledge of the materials of folklore and mythology, its genres and divisions, and the various kinds of intellectual approaches to the materials that have been, and still are, used to understand and interpret them. Additionally, students apply the various anthropological methods and analytical theories taught through field and ethnography work. Students in the concentration develop and practice folkloristic methods -- deep listening, observant participation, cross-cultural comparison, historical contextualization, collaborative interpretation, cultural documentation, empathetic engagement, and good storytelling. Moreover, each student chooses a special field to research in order to acquire an in-depth knowledge of folklore and mythology in one given area.   

Beck-Warren House

Since 1997, the Committee on Degrees in Folklore & Mythology has resided in the Beck-Warren House (also known as just the Warren House), a historic building near Harvard Yard, built in 1833 for Harvard Latin professor Charles Beck and owned from 1891 to 1899 by Sanskrit scholar Henry Clarke Warren. Offices for the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures and the Humanities Center are also located in the building.  

Harvard and Folklore Studies research

Students at Harvard who pursue a concentration in Folklore and Mythology conduct independent research on a particular aspect or field of folklore. These areas of study can be generic, cultural, or disciplinary. Some students research a genre of folklore, for example epics, music, folktales, legends, dramas, dance, rituals, beliefs, proverbs, customs, law codes, festival celebrations, wisdom literature, or one of the many other forms of expressive culture. Others research the various elements of folklore of a specific culture or language, including Yoruba, Celtic, African, Greek, Scandinavian, English, American, Japanese, Slavic, German, Brazilian, Near Eastern, Chinese, Indian, Maori. Still others examine folklore through the lens of specific disciplines or theories, such as Anthropology; Women and Gender Studies; Linguistics; Sociology; Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights; Ethnomusicology; Performance Studies; Folk Narrative; Internet Culture; or International Law.

• Click here to see records for a selection of folklore & mythology-related honors theses and dissertations authored at Harvard.

Image: Harvard University, Beck-Warren House, Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Image Source: The Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology website

• Next: Background >>

Except where otherwise noted, this work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , which allows anyone to share and adapt our material as long as proper attribution is given. For details and exceptions, see the Harvard Library Copyright Policy ©2021 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.

• Subject List
• Take a Tour
• For Authors
• Subscriber Services
• Publications
• African American Studies
• African Studies
• American Literature

Anthropology

• Architecture Planning and Preservation
• Art History
• Atlantic History
• Biblical Studies
• British and Irish Literature
• Childhood Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Cinema and Media Studies
• Communication
• Criminology
• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Renaissance and Reformation
• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Folklore

Introduction, general overviews.

• Reference Works
• Study and Theory of Folklore
• Applied and Public Folklore
• History of Folklore Studies
• Collections
• Standard Indices
• Oral Genres
• Ballad and Song
• Social Genres
• Custom, Ritual, and Festival
• Music and Dance
• Games and Play
• Material Genres
• Art and Craft
• Architecture
• Dress, Body, and Costume
• Groups, Identities, and Places
• Race and Ethnicity
• Region, Urbanism, and Locality
• Occupation and Organization
• Gender and Sexuality
• Technologies
• Themes and Symbols
• Performers and Artists

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• Anthropology of Language Contact and its Sociocultural Contexts
• Dance Ethnography
• Edward Sapir
• Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography
• Ethnomusicology
• Healing and Religion
• Material Culture
• Perspectivism
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Zora Neale Hurston and Visual Anthropology

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Landscape Archaeology
• Medical Activism
• Transhumance
• Find more forthcoming articles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Folklore by Simon J. Bronner LAST REVIEWED: 29 May 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 29 May 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0131

Folklore as a scholarly term is used in a broad sense to refer to manifestations of traditional knowledge: that is, cultural practices and expressions learned through word of mouth, imitation and demonstration, and custom. In the narrower sense of popular usage, it often refers to oral expressions such as legends, folktales, songs, and proverbs, while social and material traditions such as architecture, crafts, rituals, and festivals are associated with folklife. One reason for this distinction is that oral expression construed as “verbal art” draws attention to itself because of its imaginative or performative features. Houses and crafts often are presented as tangible or subsistence parts of “everyday life”; further, the suffix of “life” more than “lore” is often attached to rituals, customs, and festivals as part of the “round of life.” Most university programs and public centers devoted to the subject connect the two approaches in a shared concern for vernacular or heritage practices and in North America often use a singular label of folklore studies, folk studies, or folkloristics. In Europe, the commonly used rubrics of ethnology and ethnography typically include studies of folklore and folklife, and give special attention to traditional practices and community studies. The professionals who study folklore are called “folklorists.” The use of “folklore” to signify traditions and their study dates back to 1846, when the British editor William John Thoms inspired by the works of the Brothers Grimm on Volkspoesie (literature of the common people) in the early 19th century suggested the old English term “folklore” for what had previously been referred to as “popular antiquities” or “popular literature” and the reference caught on in the press. In the Victorian period, “folk” represented the common people (often construed as peasants or isolated, uneducated, or lower-class groups), whereas “lore” referred to their inherited wisdom and expressions. In the 20th century, scholars revised this view with a more elastic definition emphasizing the emergence and agency of folklore by pointing to the use of expressive traditions or “artistic communication” by anyone interacting in groups. Another development from folklife studies was to consider repeated human practices, or cultural behavioral processes within a community context, as traditional, or emerging as traditional, and therefore inviting folkloristic analysis in relation to the individualism, commercialism, and novelty of modernity or popular culture. Folk culture was differentiated from popular culture because of the former’s frequent localization, as well as participatory and variable nature. Scholars found folklore active and significant enough in modern life to assign social identity, negotiate collective memory, deal with cultural anxieties, and legislate social behavior. In the 21st century, folklorists further revised pre-digital concepts of folklore as face-to-face communication to represent electronic and visual transmission in light of the rise of vernacular practices and global transmission on the Internet and cyberculture. Scholars, particularly in North America and Europe, investigated ways that technology gave rise to traditions and the means by which these traditions differed from other social contexts. In the sections that follow, the concentration of titles is on English-language scholarship conducted in North America and Europe while drawing attention to notable folkloristic activity outside these continents.

A place to start with folklore scholarship is with a number of textbooks and sites that cover folklore globally or broadly within national boundaries. These summative texts typically make an effort to show “folklore” as an umbrella term for social and material traditions in addition to oral genres. They also strive to show a range of groups for which folklore is frequently used to mark identity: including ethnicity, religion, region, occupation, age, gender, and sexuality. Brunvand 1998 has gone through several editions and emphasizes definitions of different forms of folklore, while Bronner 2017 outlines folkloristic methodology. Oring 1986 contains essays on prominent genres and groups and includes a section on documenting folklore. Toelken 1996 and Sims and Stephens 2011 emphasize performance-centered approaches to modern folklore, whereas Georges and Jones 1995 is organized according to different perspectives, including historical uses of folklore. Materials issued by the American Folklife Center survey a diversity of cultures in the United States and encourage localized fieldwork on everyday life and folk arts in community contexts.

American Folklife Center .

Website of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress containing free publications giving an overview of folklife, including “American Folklife: A Commonwealth of Cultures” by Mary Hufford and “Folklife and Fieldwork: A Layman’s Introduction to Field Techniques.”

Blank, Trevor J., and Robert Glenn Howard, eds. 2013. Tradition in the twenty-first century: Locating the role of the past in the present . Logan: Utah State Univ. Press.

Tradition is not in the name of the discipline of folklore, but many folklorists cite it as essential to it. This important volume is spurred by questions of the role of tradition in a 21st-century technological world that is supposedly more individualistic and future-oriented. Some authors take opposing viewpoints as in the dialogue between Elliott Oring and Simon Bronner.

Bronner, Simon J. 2017. Folklore: The basics . New York: Routledge.

Organized around four-part folkloristic methodology—problem and practice, identification and annotation, analysis and explanation, implications and applications—this global introductory textbook emphasizes the understanding of folklore as practice and defines it as “traditional knowledge drawn from and put into practice.”

Brunvand, Jan Harold. 1998. The study of American folklore: An introduction . 4th ed. New York: W. W. Norton.

A widely used textbook focusing on American folklore, although the introductory chapters on “The Field of Folklore” and “The Study of Folklore” cover the field globally. The organization of the work is by genres—oral, social, and material—with basic definitions of each folkloric form.

Georges, Robert A., and Michael Owen Jones. 1995. Folkloristics: An introduction . Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.

A widely used textbook organized around scholarly approaches toward folklore: “Folklore as Historical Artifact,” “Folklore as Describable and Transmissible Entity,” “Folklore as Culture,” and “Folklore as Behavior.” Approaches are illustrated with sidebar “boxes” that contain examples of folklore documentation.

McNeill, Lynne S. 2013. Folklore rules . Logan: Utah State Univ. Press.

The concise introductory textbook with an orientation toward the folklore genres and folk groups is aimed at the beginning undergraduate student. It relates the idea that folklore is distinctive as “informal culture” in contrast to the formal culture of popular and elite culture.

Oring, Elliott, ed. 1986. Folk groups and folklore genres: An introduction . Logan: Utah State Univ. Press.

Introductory essays aimed at college students. After an overview chapter discussing various definitions of folklore, essays discuss the major ideas in work on ethnic, religious, occupational, and children’s groups followed by sections on narratives, ballads and folksongs, riddles and proverbs, folk objects, and documenting folklore (in a pre-Internet age).

Sims, Martha, and Martine Stephens. 2011. Living folklore, second edition: An introduction to the study of people and their traditions . 2d ed. Logan: Utah State Univ. Press.

The latest of the textbooks of folklore, this overview emphasizes the social interactive basis of folklore with sections on “groups,” “ritual,” and “performance.” Includes sections on the documentation of folklore through fieldwork and provides examples of student papers.

Toelken, Barre. 1996. The dynamics of folklore . Rev. ed. Logan: Utah State Univ. Press.

DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt46nrng

The first general textbook to emphasize the performative aspects of folklore and its social interactive basis. Examples are primarily from North America but discussion of folklore research and applications range globally. Toelken’s work stands out among the textbooks for its explication of aesthetics and cultural worldview in relation to folklore.

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About Anthropology »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• Africa, Anthropology of
• Agriculture
• Animal Cultures
• Animal Ritual
• Animal Sanctuaries
• Anorexia Nervosa
• Anthropocene, The
• Anthropological Activism and Visual Ethnography
• Anthropology and Education
• Anthropology and Theology
• Anthropology of Islam
• Anthropology of Kurdistan
• Anthropology of the Senses
• Anthrozoology
• Antiquity, Ethnography in
• Applied Anthropology
• Archaeobotany
• Archaeological Education
• Archaeologies of Sexuality
• Archaeology
• Archaeology and Museums
• Archaeology and Political Evolution
• Archaeology and Race
• Archaeology and the Body
• Archaeology, Gender and
• Archaeology, Global
• Archaeology, Historical
• Archaeology, Indigenous
• Archaeology of Childhood
• Archaeology of the Senses
• Art Museums
• Art/Aesthetics
• Autoethnography
• Bakhtin, Mikhail
• Bass, William M.
• Benedict, Ruth
• Binford, Lewis
• Bioarchaeology
• Biocultural Anthropology
• Biological and Physical Anthropology
• Biological Citizenship
• Boas, Franz
• Bone Histology
• Bureaucracy
• Business Anthropology
• Cargo Cults
• Charles Sanders Peirce and Anthropological Theory
• Christianity, Anthropology of
• Citizenship
• Class, Archaeology and
• Clinical Trials
• Cobb, William Montague
• Code-switching and Multilingualism
• Cognitive Anthropology
• Cole, Johnnetta
• Colonialism
• Commodities
• Consumerism
• Crapanzano, Vincent
• Cultural Heritage Presentation and Interpretation
• Cultural Heritage, Race and
• Cultural Materialism
• Cultural Relativism
• Cultural Resource Management
• Culture and Personality
• Culture, Popular
• Curatorship
• Cyber-Archaeology
• Dalit Studies
• de Heusch, Luc
• Deaccessioning
• Design, Anthropology and
• Digital Anthropology
• Disability and Deaf Studies and Anthropology
• Douglas, Mary
• Drake, St. Clair
• Durkheim and the Anthropology of Religion
• Economic Anthropology
• Embodied/Virtual Environments
• Emotion, Anthropology of
• Environmental Anthropology
• Environmental Justice and Indigeneity
• Ethnoarchaeology
• Ethnocentrism
• Ethnographic Documentary Production
• Ethnographic Films from Iran
• Ethnography
• Ethnography Apps and Games
• Ethnoscience
• Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
• Evolution, Cultural
• Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
• Evolutionary Theory
• Experimental Archaeology
• Federal Indian Law
• Feminist Anthropology
• Film, Ethnographic
• Forensic Anthropology
• Francophonie
• Frazer, Sir James George
• Geertz, Clifford
• Gender and Religion
• GIS and Archaeology
• Global Health
• Globalization
• Gluckman, Max
• Graphic Anthropology
• Haraway, Donna
• Health and Social Stratification
• Health Policy, Anthropology of
• Heritage Language
• House Museums
• Human Adaptability
• Human Evolution
• Human Rights
• Human Rights Films
• Humanistic Anthropology
• Hurston, Zora Neale
• Identity Politics
• India, Masculinity, Identity
• Indigeneity
• Indigenous Boarding School Experiences
• Indigenous Economic Development
• Indigenous Media: Currents of Engagement
• Industrial Archaeology
• Institutions
• Interpretive Anthropology
• Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity
• Laboratories
• Language and Emotion
• Language and Law
• Language and Media
• Language and Race
• Language and Urban Place
• Language Contact and its Sociocultural Contexts, Anthropol...
• Language Ideology
• Language Socialization
• Leakey, Louis
• Legal Anthropology
• Legal Pluralism
• Levantine Archaeology
• Liberalism, Anthropology of
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Relativity
• Linguistics, Historical
• Literary Anthropology
• Local Biologies
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude
• Malinowski, Bronisław
• Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology
• Maritime Archaeology
• Materiality
• Mathematical Anthropology
• Matriarchal Studies
• Mead, Margaret
• Media Anthropology
• Medical Anthropology
• Medical Technology and Technique
• Mediterranean
• Mendel, Gregor
• Mental Health and Illness
• Mesoamerican Archaeology
• Mexican Migration to the United States
• Militarism, Anthropology and
• Missionization
• Morgan, Lewis Henry
• Multimodal Ethnography
• Multispecies Ethnography
• Museum Anthropology
• Museum Education
• Museum Studies
• NAGPRA and Repatriation of Native American Human Remains a...
• Narrative in Sociocultural Studies of Language
• Nationalism
• Needham, Rodney
• Neoliberalism
• NGOs, Anthropology of
• Niche Construction
• Northwest Coast, The
• Oceania, Archaeology of
• Paleolithic Art
• Paleontology
• Performance Studies
• Performativity
• Philosophy of Museums
• Plantations
• Political Anthropology
• Postprocessual Archaeology
• Postsocialism
• Poverty, Culture of
• Primatology
• Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film: A Decolonial Re...
• Processual Archaeology
• Psycholinguistics
• Psychological Anthropology
• Public Archaeology
• Public Sociocultural Anthropologies
• Religion and Post-Socialism
• Religious Conversion
• Repatriation
• Reproductive and Maternal Health in Anthropology
• Reproductive Technologies
• Rhetoric Culture Theory
• Rural Anthropology
• Sahlins, Marshall
• Sapir, Edward
• Scandinavia
• Science Studies
• Secularization
• Settler Colonialism
• Sex Estimation
• Sign Language
• Skeletal Age Estimation
• Social Anthropology (British Tradition)
• Social Movements
• Socialization
• Society for Visual Anthropology, History of
• Socio-Cultural Approaches to the Anthropology of Reproduct...
• Sociolinguistics
• Sound Ethnography
• Space and Place
• Stable Isotopes
• Stan Brakhage and Ethnographic Praxis
• Structuralism
• Studying Up
• Sub-Saharan Africa, Democracy in
• Surrealism and Anthropology
• Technological Organization
• Trans Studies in Anthroplogy
• Transnationalism
• Tree-Ring Dating
• Turner, Edith L. B.
• Turner, Victor
• University Museums
• Urban Anthropology
• Virtual Ethnography
• Visual Anthropology
• Whorfian Hypothesis
• Willey, Gordon
• Wolf, Eric R.
• Writing Culture
• Youth Culture
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [185.66.15.189]
• 185.66.15.189

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Academia - Folklore and Folklife Studies: The Discipline of Analyzing Traditions
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library - What is Folklore?
• National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Folklore
• folklore - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

folklore , in modern usage, an academic discipline the subject matter of which (also called folklore) comprises the sum total of traditionally derived and orally or imitatively transmitted literature , material culture , and custom of subcultures within predominantly literate and technologically advanced societies; comparable study among wholly or mainly nonliterate societies belongs to the disciplines of ethnology and anthropology. In popular usage, the term folklore is sometimes restricted to the oral literature tradition .

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). Their aim was to trace preserved archaic customs and beliefs to their remote origins in order to trace the mental history of mankind . In Germany, Jacob Grimm used folklore to illuminate Germanic religion of the Dark Ages. In Britain, Sir Edward Tylor , Andrew Lang , 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. 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 myths (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, ballad , riddle , or other item was classified as to place and date of collection in order to study distribution patterns and reconstruct “original” forms. This method, more statistical and less speculative than that of the anthropological folklorists, dominated the field throughout the first half of the 20th century.

After World War II new trends emerged, particularly in the United States . Interest was no longer confined to rural communities , 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 class 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 adaptation 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 constitutes 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 social group , which fulfills some function and satisfies some need for both performer and audience. 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 community , his repertoire and artistry, the role of the audience, and the occasion on which the performance occurs all contribute to its folkloric meaning.

Also appearing in folklore studies in the mid-20th century was the concept of urban legend —stories about an unusual or humorous event that many people believe to be true but is not. Urban legends about media became as common as urban legends told through media, especially through mass media , such as the many tales about ghosts unexpectedly appearing in the background of movie scenes and photographs or satanic hidden messages that can be detected in rock or pop songs when played backward.

Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts

The Frog King by the brothers Grimm . A comparison of the versions of 1812 and 1857. Der Froschkönig von den Brüdern Grimm . A comparison, in the orignal German, of the versions of 1812 and 1857.

• Literary Terms
• Definition & Examples
• When & How to Use Folklore

I. What is Folklore?

Folklore refers to the tales people tell – folk stories, fairy tales , “tall tales,” and even urban legends . Folklore is typically passed down by word of mouth, rather than being written in books (although sometimes people write down collections of folklore in order to preserve the stories of a particular community). The key here is that folklore has no author – it just emerges from the culture and is carried forward by constant retelling.

Some stories, such as the Grimm’s fairy tales, are mistakenly referred to as folklore, but actually they are not: they have a specific author, and therefore don’t fit the definition of folklore. Such stories include Pinocchio, Hansel & Gretel, and Rapunzel. These are all fairy tales, but they aren’t folklore, because they have specific authors.

II. Examples of Folklore

It’s interesting to notice the way common themes run through the folklore of various cultures. For example, the story of the frog prince is of unknown western European origin; but there are many other similar stories, such as the Finnish tale “Mouse Bride.” In these stories, someone is looking for a spouse, but only finds a small animal. After showing kindness and love to the animal, the main characters are rewarded when the animal changes back into a human and reveals that their animal form was simply the result of a witch’s curse.

Modern-day folklore often takes the form of “urban myths .” Although these stories are usually not actually myths (see §6), they are very popular. One common urban myth tells of a couple travelling to a foreign country where there are many stray dogs roaming the streets. They see one sick puppy and decide to adopt him, but upon bringing him back home they soon discover that they’ve rescued a rat instead of a dog.

III. The Importance of Folklore

G.K. Chesterton, the famous philosopher and author, explains the importance of folk tales in this way:

[They] do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already because it is in the world already. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of evil. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St George to kill the dragon.

That is, folk tales speak to an innate psychological need shared by all human beings. As we encounter the world, we see pain, loss, and emptiness everywhere. How can we face such a world and not feel despair? Part of the answer is that we tell stories bout gods, heroes, and monsters – when the good guys win, we gain a psychological boost and learn valuable lessons about courage and perseverance.

IV. Examples of Folklore in Literature

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is a perfect example of an author making up folklore to enrich his fictional cultures. He wrote an entire book, The Silmarillion , giving the folklore/mythology of the Elves. Of course, the entire Lord of the Rings saga was heavily influenced by Nordic, Welsh, and Finnish folklore, so Tolkien had plenty of excellent source material to draw from.

The story of Beowulf has no known author, and was almost certainly a popular Anglo-Saxon folk tale before it was eventually written down. This story is an example of the “monster-slayer” story, one of the most common story types in the world. Nearly every culture has such stories, from Thor in Scandinavia to Hercules in Greece and the Hero Twins of Navajo mythology.

Thousands of books have been written with folk stories as their inspiration. Often, such books will take a character or situation from the folk story and expand on it. For example, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley is based on the Arthurian legends (folktales about King Arthur and the Round Table), but focuses more on the female characters rather than the male ones.

V. Examples of Folklore in Pop Culture

Monster-slayer stories were extremely common in ancient societies, and they have not declined in popularity – even as our storytelling technology has changed, our love of these stories has stayed the same. Think of how many video games have been made around this concept – the hero emerges and slays and increasingly difficult series of monsters before facing the “final boss.”

Popular culture is full of “cryptozoology,” which is a kind of folklore based on the supposed existence of mysterious creatures. Stories abound of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Chupacabra, the New Jersey Devil, and hundreds of other strange creatures. Although there is no scientific evidence to support any of these stories, they are fun to tell and retell, and survive in popular culture because of their psychological effect.

VI. Related Terms

Folklore and mythology are very similar terms, and the line between mythology and folklore is pretty subjective. The basic difference is that a myth is somehow held in sacred or religious reverence, whereas a folk tale is popular but not sacred. Some of the most famous myths are creation stories. For example, the Hindu creation myth holds that Vishnu was sleeping in the coils of a giant cobra when he was awakened by the sacred sound, ohm .

Unfortunately, the word “myth” is often used as a synonym for “falsehood,” which leads to serious problems when speaking across different religions – if myths are necessarily false, then one culture’s myths are another culture’s sacred truths. Thus, it’s important to remember that something can be a myth and still be “true,” at least in a metaphorical or non-literal sense.

A legend is a kind of folklore. Legends are typically thought to have some truth in them, but they may be highly exaggerated or distorted. For example, the legend of Robin Hood is a very popular piece of English folklore – it was probably based on a historical figure who lived at some point in the Middle Ages, but no one is exactly sure what the truth is.

Folk music, like folklore, emerges out of the cultures of everyday people. In fact, the two concepts are so closely related that folk music is often written about stories from folklore – for example, “The Ballad of John Henry” is a popular American tune that tells the story of the powerful steel driver John Henry. (This story is also a legend, since John Henry was probably a real person who lived in the 1860s or 70s.)

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

Folklore: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. Four volumes

William hansen , indiana university, bloomington. [email protected].

[Authors and titles included in the four volumes are listed within the review.]

Folklore is an extensive compilation of essays devoted to disciplinary history, scholarly pioneers, basic genres, and important theories and concepts in folklore studies, or folkloristics, the latter term distinguishing the study of folklore from the stuff of folklore. The collection appears in Routledge’s series Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. All titles in the series — Deconstruction, Modernism, Feminism, Postcolonialism, etc. — bear the same series subtitle.

Distributed over four cloth-bound volumes, the anthology consists of eighty-six essays by scholars from a great variety of lands and scholarly traditions. The papers range in date from 1861 to 2001, coinciding pretty much with the florescence of folkloristics as a modern field of study. Since the organization of the papers is thematic, the editor provides a useful chart in the first volume (xvi-xxiv) that chronicles the essays in the order of their actual publication. All the papers are written in, or have been translated into, English.

Because there are so many papers and because they are all previously published, I will describe the overall nature and content of the compilation, but not evaluate the individual essays.

Each volume is devoted to one of four broad topics. Volume 1 features articles on the concept of folklore and on the development and configuration of the discipline of folkloristics at different times and in different countries. Volume 2 deals with pioneers of the field. Volume 3 treats representative folkloric genres, and Volume 4 focuses upon important theories and methods.

The editor begins Volume 1 with a brief general introduction to the compilation as a whole (xxv-xxvi) and an equally concise introduction to the present volume (1-2), after which he allows each of the twenty-four essays in the volume to speak for itself. For all their brevity Alan Dundes’s introductions here and at the head of the three subsequent volumes do manage to summarize nicely the key concerns of the papers. An index to all eighty-six papers appears in the fourth volume (477-506).

The essays in the initial volume, which is subtitled From Definition to Discipline , wrestle with the difficulty of characterizing the materials and study of folklore. Defining folklore, which still plagues (or energizes) folklorists, is the primary topic of the initial selections, definitions tending to favor either the “folk” or the “lore” in folklore and therefore to emphasize either the nature of the transmitters or the nature of the materials. Subsequent papers are concerned mostly with the institutionalization of folkloristics in different lands, although many papers have something to say on both topics. Thus Boggs (1) presents a standard, mid-twentieth-century view of what folklore is. Folklore is a particular kind of traditional, orally-transmitted culture. It is patterned but not fixed in form, variation being normal and expected. Folk culture is to be opposed to learned culture. In contrast Jacobs (6) and Dick (7) focus less upon the lore than upon the folk. Several papers trace the history of terms such as popular antiquities, folklore, regional (or European) ethnology, folk life, and folkloristics. Still others discuss the development or present state of folkloristics in different places: Germany (16, 17, 18), Scandinavia (13, 14), Ireland (12), Greece (11), Palestine and Israel (19), the Soviet Union (15), North America, Latin America (8, 9), and India and Pakistan (10). After the problem of the authentic and the inauthentic is examined (20, 21, 22), the volume concludes with attention to the question of who owns folklore (23, 24).

The authors and titles of the papers in this volume are (1) Ralph Steele Boggs, “Folklore: Materials, Science, Art”; (2) Dan Ben-Amos, “The Idea of Folklore: An Essay”; (3) Alexander Fenton, “The Scope of Regional Ethnology”; (4) Jorge Dias, “The Quintessence of the Problem: Nomenclature and Subject Matter of Folklore”; (5) Brynjulf Alver, “Folkloristics: The Science about Tradition and Society”; (6) Joseph Jacobs, “The Folk”; (7) Ernest S. Dick, “The Folk and their Culture: The Formative Concepts and the Beginnings of Folklore”; (8) Américo Paredes, “Concepts about Folklore in Latin America and the United States”‘ (9) Lajos Vincze, “Theoretic Trends in the Argentine Folklore”; (10) Trilochan Pande, “The Concept of Folklore in India and Pakistan”; (11) Alke Kyriakidou-Nestoros, “The Theory of Folklore in Greece: Laographia in its Contemporary Perspective”; (12) Bo Almqvist, “The Irish Folklore Commission: Achievement and Legacy”; (13) Lauri Honko, “A Hundred Years of Finnish Folklore Research: A Reappraisal”; (14) Johana Micaela Jacobsen, “Creating Disciplinary Identities: The Professionalization of Swedish Folklife Studies”; (15) Felix J. Oinas, “The Problem of the Notion of Soviet Folklore”; (16) Christa Kamenetsky, “Folklore as a Political Tool in Nazi Germany”; (17) Mary Beth Stein, “Coming to Terms with the Past: The Depiction of Volkskunde in the Third Reich since 1945”; (18) Gottfried Korff, “Change of Name as a Change of Paradigm: The Renaming of Folklore Studies Departments in German Universities as an Attempt at ‘Denationalization'”; (19) Mun’im Haddad, “The Relationship of Orientalism to Palestinian Folklore”; (20) Richard M. Dorson, “Fakelore”‘ (21) Regina Bendix, “Diverging Paths in the Scientific Search for Authenticity”; (22) Guntis Smidchens, “Folklorism Revisited”; (23) E.P. Gavrilov, “The Legal Protection of Works of Folklore”; and (24) Lauri Honko, “Copyright and Folklore.”

The second volume, The Founders of Folklore , is a selection of essays upon persons who figure notably in the historical development of folkloristics. It begins with the late eighteenth-century romantic nationalist Johann Gottfried Herder (25), continues with the Brothers Grimm (26), and proceeds to others. Among the scholars treated here are the Britons Lawrence Gomme (30) and James George Frazer (33), the Germans Max Müller (31) and Wilhelm Mannhardt (32), the Italian Giuseppe Pitrè (34), the Hungarian Béla Bartók (40), the Frenchman Arnold van Gennep (41), the Dutchman Jan de Vries (42), and the Russian Vladimir Propp (44). Notice is also taken of the prodigious Danish collector Evald Tang Kristensen (38) and the gifted Irish informant Peig Sayers (39).

The essays in Volume 2 are (25) William A. Wilson, “Herder, Folklore and Romantic Nationalism”; (26) Jack Zipes, “Once There were Two Brothers Grimm: A Reintroduction”; (27) Bengt Holbek, “Grimm and Grundtvig: A Footnote”; (28) R. Troy Boyer, “The Forsaken Founder, William John Thoms: From Antiquities to Folklore”; (29) Harry Senn, “Folklore Beginnings in France: The Academie Celtique 1804-1813”; (30) Anon., “The Practical Use of Folk Lore: An Interview with Mr. G. Lawrence Gomme”; (31) Robert Jerome Smith, “The Creditable Max Müller”; (32) Tove Tybjerg, “Wilhelm Mannhardt — A Pioneer in the Study of Rituals”; (33) P.W. Filby, “Life Under The Golden Bough”; (34) T.F. Crane, “Giuseppe Pitrè and Sicilian Folk-Lore”; (35) Vilmos Voigt, “Primus inter Pares: Why was Vuk Karadzic the Most Influential Folklore Scholar in Southeastern Europe in the Nineteenth Century?”; (36) Jan Steszewski, “The Credibility of Oskar Kolberg’s Ethnomusicological Collection: A Contribution to the Problem of Historical Criticism”; (37) Ojars Kratins, “An Unsung Hero: Krisjanis Barons and his Lifework in Latvian Folk Songs”; (38) W.A. Craigie, “Evald Tang Kristensen, a Danish Folklorist”; (39) Seán Ó Súilleabháin, “Peig Sayers”; (40) Linda Dégh, “Bartók as Folklorist: His Place in the History of Research”; (41) Harry Senn, “Arnold van Gennep: Structuralist and Apologist for the Study of Folklore in France”; (42) James Danandjaja, “Jan de Vries: Netherland’s Foremost Folklorist (1890-1964)”; (43) Mikako Iwatake, “A ‘Postcolonial’ Look at Kunio Yanagita, the Founding Father of Japanese Folklore Studies”; and (44) Isidor Levin, “Vladimir Propp: An Evaluation on his Seventieth Birthday.”

As a discipline folkloristics is organized partly by folkloric genre, individual scholars typically specializing in one or two geographical regions and one or more genres, much as most classical scholars are either Hellenists or Latinists and have particular subspecialties within their region of preference. The third volume, The Genres of Folklore , consists of papers on a selection of folkloric genres. The editor’s discretion is really two-fold here, for he had to choose first the genres to be represented and then a single essay (in most cases) to represent each one, rather like a classicist’s deciding to include, say, tragedy in a collection of essays on classical literature and being obliged to select a single published essay to speak for it. The first essay deals with folkloric theories of genre generally (45), and the remaining thirteen treat one or another aspect of particular genres, most of them quite familiar: ballads (46), folk dances (47), proverbs (48), riddles (49), superstitions (or folk-beliefs, as folklorists usually prefer to say) and popular religion (51), rituals (52), myths (53), folktales, including fairytales (54), legends, including urban legends (55), epics (57), and games (58). But Dundes also includes a couple of papers on little-known genres such as one on traditional bird-scaring rhymes (50), as a nod to the many minor genres that could not be treated. Volume 3 contains (45) Lauri Honko, “Folkloristic Theories of Genres”; (46) Natascha Würzbach, “An Approach to a Context-Oriented Genre Theory in Application to the History of the Ballad: Traditional Ballad — Street Ballad — Literary Ballad”; (47) Theresa Buckland, “Definitions of Folk Dance: Some Explorations”; (48) Wolfgang Mieder, “‘Proverbs Bring it to Light’: Modern Paremiology in Retrospect and Prospect”; (49) Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, “Riddles and Their Use”; (50) J.B. Smith, “Chew-Hallaw and Buckalee: A Comparative Study of Some Bird-Scaring and Herding Rhymes”; (51) Nicole Belmont, “Superstition and Popular Religion in Western Societies”; (52) Pertti J. Anttonen, “The Rites of Passage Revisited: A New Look at van Gennep’s Theory of the Ritual Process and its Application in the Study of Finnish-Karelian Wedding Rituals”; (53) Robert A. Segal, “In Defense of Mythology: The History of Modern Theories of Myth”; (54) Dan Ben-Amos, “Folktale”; (55) Bengt af Klintberg, “Do the Legends of Today and Yesterday Belong to the Same Genre?”‘ (56) Joe Graham, “The Caso : An Emic Genre of Folk Narrative”; (57) Isidore Okpewho, “Does the Epic Exist in Africa? Some Formal Considerations”; and (58) Alan Dundes, “Traditional Male Combat: From Game to War.”

The longest of the four volumes is the last, Folkloristics: Theories and Methods , which attempts to give a sense diachronically of important folkloric theories and concepts. The selection begins with an anonymous paper, thought to be by Max Müller, that illustrates a comparative Indo-European philologist’s approach to folkloric materials (59). Early comparative approaches to folk customs are exemplified in papers on or by Wilhelm Mannhardt (60), Lawrence Gomme (62), and James George Frazer (63). The unilineal evolutionary theory of the early anthropologists, with its doctrine of survivals, underlies the essay by Andrew Lang (61), as it also does the work of many other nineteenth-century scholars. Considerations on the collecting of folklore are addressed in essays by Bartók (64), Nutt (65), and Fhloinn (66), and cartographic mapping of the distribution of folklore is the subject of two essays (67, 68). Next follows a classic paper by Bogatyrv and Jacobson, “Folklore as a Special Form of Creativity” (69). It is followed by a paper on the notion of the text (70) and two papers on the equally important concept of the motif, one by Ben-Amos (71), the other by Bremond (72). This leads easily into Uther’s survey of recent type- and motif-indices (73), a paper on the concept of the type as applied to proverbs (74), and another on the typology of traditional plowing implements (75). Next come Goldberg’s reflections on the historic-geographic method in folklore (76), serving in effect as an introduction to Roberts’s summary of his historic-geographic investigation of the international folktale known as The Kind and the Unkind Girls (77). Shifting attention from text to context, Ramanujan’s paper on storytelling in India focuses upon live performance (78). Two papers treat important reference works, the monumental Enzyklopädie des Märchens , extending now to eleven volumes (79), and the International Folklore Bibliography (80). The remaining essays touch upon a miscellany of topics, including the influence of the notion of cultural evolution on folkloristics (81), the devolutionary model in folklore theory, according to which folklore is presumed always to be dying out or degenerating (82), biological metaphors in folklore theory (83), the contributions of Antonio Gramsci to folklore theory (84), and the use of folkloric materials in sex education (85), an instance of what folklorists call applied folklore.

The concluding papers are (59) anonymous, “Folk Lore: How it Arose, and What it Means”; (60) W.R.S. Ralston, “Forest and Field Myths”; (61) Andrew Lang, “The Method of Folklore”; (62) G. Lawrence Gomme, “On the Method of Determining the Value of Folklore as Ethnological Data”; (63) Robert Ackerman, “Frazer on Myth and Ritual”; (64) Béla Bartók, “Why and How Do We Collect Folk Music?”; (65) Alfred Nutt, “Monsieur Sébillot’s Scheme for the Collection and Classification of Folk-Lore”; (66) Bairbre N Fhloinn, “In Correspondence with Tradition: The Role of the Postal Questionnaire in the Collection of Irish Folklore”; (67) Richard Weiss, “Cultural Boundaries and the Ethnographic Map”; (68) Robert Wildhaber, “Folk Atlas Mapping”; (69) Peter Bogatyrv and Roman Jacobson, “Folklore as a Special Form of Creativity”; (70) Paul Bouissac, “Poetics in the Lions’ Den: The Circus Act as Text”; (71) Dan Ben-Amos, “The Concept of Motif in Folklore”; (72) Claude Bremond, “A Critique of the Motif”; (73) Hans-Jörg Uther, “Type- and Motif-Indices 1980-1995: An Inventory”; (74) Kazys Grigas, “Problems of the Type in the Comparative Study of Proverbs”; (75) Branimir Bratanic, “A Note on the Typology of Ploughing Implements”; (76) Christine Goldberg, “The Historic-Geographic Method: Past and Future”; (77) Warren E. Roberts, “The Special Forms of Aarne-Thompson Type 480 and Their Distribution”; (78) A. K. Ramanujan, “Tell it to the Walls: Tales about Tales”; (79) Christine Shojaei Kawan, “The Enzyklopädie des Märchens”; (80) Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, “The International Folklore Bibliography”; (81) Gillian Bennett, “Geologists and Folklorists: Cultural Evolution and ‘the Science of Folklore'”; (82) Alan Dundes, “The Devolutionary Premise in Folklore Theory”; (83) Valdimar T.R. Hafstein, “Biological Metaphors in Folklore Theory: An Essay in the History of Ideas”; (84) Michael R. Marrus, “Folklore as an Ethnographic Source: A ‘Mise au Point'”; (85) Moyra Byrne, “Antonio Gramsci’s Contribution to Italian Folklore Studies”; and (86) Elissa R. Henken and Mariamne H. Whatley, “Folklore, Legends, and Sexuality Education.”

The late Alan Dundes (1934-2005) was a masterful and exhaustive bibliographer who compiled numerous scholarly anthologies in the course of his career. 1 What does he wish to achieve in the present compilation? He manifestly does not seek to make a gathering of current, cutting-edge work in folkloristics; indeed, many of today’s most influential folklore scholars are not directly represented here at all. Nor does he bring together a collection of classic essays, a showcase of the best that the discipline has produced over time, for only a few of the essays might so qualify (for example, 20, 69, 82). Rather he attempts a characterization of the discipline of folklore diachronically (its founders and pioneers, its institutionalization internationally, the important theories that have given impetus and meaning to its research) and synchronically (the major genres of folklore, the influential concepts, its dominant methods), and does so by letting folklorists and related scholars present and past, on this continent and abroad, speak for themselves. In my view he succeeds, for the work gives a realistic portrait of a relatively small but worldwide scholarly field that provides an engaging and honest sense of its range and variety, its struggles, its personalities, its issues and methods.

Some unevenness of presentation is inevitable in the compilation because the pieces are all found essays, as it were, and not commissioned for the present work, but what is lacking in consistency of format and style is perhaps balanced by the enjoyable variety and lack of predictability in the papers. The same cannot be said about unevenness of coverage. At most a passing mention is made of so important a genre as folk drama, and the vast subfield of material culture receives very little attention.

Every generation of classicists includes scholars who take a serious interest in aspects of Greek and Roman folklore (traditional narratives, oral poetry, proverbs, festivals, folk beliefs, etc.). Few of them have had an opportunity to take courses in folkloristics. Nor is it as easy nowadays as it once was for classical scholars to dip casually into the scholarly literature of folklorists. Earlier folkloristically-oriented classicists such as Ludwig Radermacher, Wolf Aly, W. R. Halliday, and H. J. Rose worked at a time when classical scholars and folklorists spoke the same language, all of them sharing a background in philology; that is no longer the case. But now the present generation of folklorist-classicists can turn to Dundes’s four-volume compilation for a basic introduction to the discipline, employing it as a sort of distance-learning text addressed to folklorists and non-folklorists alike.

A number of mostly minor typos, especially in foreign words, are found throughout the volumes. Some of them of course may reproduce errors in the original publications, but others (such as misspelled scholarly names) presumably do not.

1 . Of particular interest to classical scholars is Oedipus: A Folklore Casebook (New York and London: Garland, 1983), co-edited by classicist Lowell Edmunds and folklorist Alan Dundes.

Jeana Jorgensen, Ph.D.

Folklorist, Writer, Dancer, (Sex) Educator

• Curriculum Vitae

Subscribe to feed

‹ Be Constructive Before Destructive  •  Why I’m an Angry Feminist ›

Essay on Folklore and Power

June 27, 2012 in Folklore | 6 comments

In order to give y’all a glimpse into what it is that I do as a folklorist, I thought I’d share an essay that I wrote for a specific purpose (an application I’m very optimistic about) and have since revised a little. In it, I had to convey what we do in my field and some avenues of research I would like to pursue. Since it was for an application, it’s structured a little differently than my normal writing style, but as I was also trying to describe my scholarship to non-folklorists, I’m hoping it will be interesting and intelligible to my readers out there on the internet. Here goes.

Introduction

The concept of folklore as traditional and expressive culture is fundamentally intertwined with the notion of power. Folklore has been defined as artistic communication in small groups and as creativity in everyday life. As an academic discipline, folkloristics shares boundaries with anthropology, sociology, linguistics, literature, ethnomusicology, religious studies, and gender studies, among other fields that share our orientation towards group behavior, artistry, language, belief systems, social life, and narrative. Power weaves in and out of each of these ideas, for social life is structured by hierarchies dictating who has access to which resources and roles. Narratives depict the process of gaining the power to control one’s life. Artists have historically thrived under the patronage of the powerful—but artists also subvert dominant paradigms by illustrating inequalities.

My scholarship seeks to illuminate the ways in which folklore and power interact in social life and art, utilizing concepts of identity, belief, creativity, and access (strategies of gaining power) to guide the research process. These connections have not been properly investigated, due in part to the perception of folkloristics as a discipline with primarily festive and joyful topics. This could not be farther from the truth: there is folklore mourning death and dying, just as there is folklore celebrating birth and life. Sick joke cycles and urban legends mock current events and thus provide insights into a society’s collective anxieties, while traumatized refugees and rape survivors work through their experiences narratively.

However, another reason that the intersections of folklore and politics have been underexplored is that folklore and politics do indeed sometimes mesh well, too well, creating discomfort in both scholars and laypeople. For instance, the Nazi regime sanitized folklore in order to indoctrinate their followers, and this has contributed to the cautiousness with which German folklorists must proceed today. Alternately, oppressed nations have used their folklore as a rallying cry, as proof of shared identity and political legitimacy. Examples include the importance of the epic Kalevala to Finnish national identity, and the significance of folksong, folk dance, and national dress to the Estonian nationalist movement (Valk 2010). On top of all of this, scholars are not “supposed” to be political; we are not supposed to be activists, but rather, detached observers and analysts. The reality is, however, that merely choosing to turn one’s attention upon a topic is a political choice.

Much of the scholarship on folklore and power is indebted to the feminist movement. Feminist theory began to trickle into folkloristic research in the 1960s and 1970s (Jorgensen 2010). Feminist folklorists affirmed that the generations of mainly male folklorists primarily documenting men’s folklore rather than women’s folklore resulted in a skewed picture of the discipline (Young and Turner 1993). The study of women’s folklore is thus a corrective endeavor, to address the imbalances of power on an academic level.

Feminist folklorists also recognize that the exercise of power shapes folklore on multiple levels. For instance, an entire scholarly volume was devoted to the practice of “coding,” whereby a non-dominant social group must hide and subvert their messages in order to escape detection and punishment. Examples of women’s coding in folklore range from domestic disrepair to subversive quilting (Radner and Lanser 1993). Coding occurs in other contexts, and is but one instance of the ways in which power and folklore inform one another.

Theoretical Background

Power was, indirectly, a concern of early folklorists such as the Grimm brothers, who collected German folktales in a cultural context where Germany was not yet a nation-state and where Napoleon threatened German identities and proto-nationalist agendas. However, as discussed above, folkloristic works that explicitly address power are a fairly recent phenomenon.

One of the seminal works addressing the relationship of identity and power in folklore is Richard Bauman’s “Differential Identity and the Social Base of Folklore.” Bauman’s examples, drawn from genres such as taunts and jokes that bridge the communicative spaces between social groups, demonstrate that folklore is a response to and is inextricably wrapped up in the relationships among groups of people with differing access to control over their circumstances (Bauman 1972). Bauman’s essay initiated a shift in folkloristics towards performance as an orienting model. Rather than focusing on the folklore text, scholars began studying the context in which the text was situated, some going so far as to claim that there is no originary text, but instead that folklore is emergent, created in performance (Bauman 1984).

The shift toward performance helped illuminate many of the ways in which power structures folklore events. Patricia Sawin is one of Bauman’s students and one of the few folklorists to apply the power-oriented gender and identity theories of Judith Butler to performance theories of folklore, arguing that comprehensive studies of folklore and power must begin “by looking for evidence of a power imbalance and ask how the esthetic event impinges on and plays out for the less powerful participants” (Sawin 2002, 55). In her work with traditional singer Bessie Eldreth, Sawin demonstrates that “esthetic performance is a central arena in which gender identities and differential social power based on gender are engaged” (48). In other words, folklore performances—which range from song-singing and story-telling sessions to kinesthetic events such as folk-dances and festivals to the creation and consumption of material culture like holiday foods or customary garments—are fraught with power. Power can be contested or reinforced within a performance, and the power at stake need not be gender relations, but could also be ethnic or national tensions.

• Beliefs about power are an inherent structuring element of folklore because of the fact that folklore is circulated amongst groups of people whose lives are shaped on a daily experiential level by power. Thus any study of folklore must begin with a contextual accounting of the types of power—economic, gendered, racial, class-based, colonial, religious, and so on—that inform the groups from whence folklore springs and wherein it circulates.
• Every genre of folklore, from nursery rhyme to festival, is structured by power relations and will thus display some aspect of those power relations in their content, context, form, and/or function. However, since folklore does not always show a direct relationship with reality (e.g., fairy tales alter the real world by adding magic), the nature of the relationship with the power sources of the society may be artistically distorted. Therefore, one aim of this project is to note the differing relationships between folklore genres in how they address the distribution of power in society.
• Genres of folklore that explicitly address power relations will be particularly charged and creative in how they deal with the roles and rituals associated with power. For instance, folklore about gender roles, such as courtship rituals or jokes about sex, will be especially emphatic in their framing of identity. The more a genre is infused with roles of power, the more I expect to find creative strategies making it socially acceptable to address the topic of power, which is frequently taboo as power obscures its own discursive workings (Foucault 1972).
• The connections between beliefs about and access to power, as well as the creative strategies for debating and displaying power, will thus be visible to the analyst of folklore and identity, even if these relationships take different forms among different groups and between different genres.

Methodology

Historically, folkloristics has incorporated methods from both the social sciences and the humanities. Our discipline’s concern with the expressive aspects of social life makes it necessary to consider the quantitative and qualitative methods available. Culture is patterned—hence involves numbers and the relationships between them—but culture is also subjective, something that is experienced and felt in both conscious and unconscious ways. Thus, scholars of culture should incorporate both quantitative and qualitative methods where possible.

Folklore materials are generally flexible and adaptable in their forms. Unlike a literary work that is fixed in print once published, folklore materials display variation and multiple existence as part of their defining characteristics (Dundes 1999). For example, it is not uncommon to see legends and jokes that were once oral traditions now being transmitted by email and SMS, while folktales and fairy tales are transformed into films, books, poems, and games. The inherent instability of folklore makes it essential for researchers to be comfortable with a number of tools, methods, and theories.

In American folkloristics especially, there has been a divide between literary and anthropological approaches to folklore (Zumwalt 1988). As my training has been primarily in America (though I’ve benefited from the mentorship of numerous international folklorists), I have the ability to balance and negotiate these complementary research modes.

As I plan to investigate a number of genres, so must I be prepared to utilize various methods to examine them. I will use literary analysis and methodologies from the digital humanities (such as computer programs that allow for advanced text analysis) in order to study genres such as fairy tales and epics that have primarily existed in print in recent years. For those “living” folklore genres such as folk dance, belief, and gendered behavior, I shall utilize fieldwork methods (e.g., participant observation). The anthropological principles of ethical practices and reflexivity inform my fieldwork practices. I always emphasize studying folklore in its cultural context and treating the materials as respectfully as possible.

As my introduction and literature review demonstrate, my project addresses a gap in existing scholarship and thus makes a new and significant contribution to cultural knowledge production. While there are many ways to study folklore, placing power at the forefront of this investigation makes for an exciting and relevant research project. Though I am most drawn to genres such as dance and narrative, the multifaceted and timely hypotheses I propose here give me the flexibility to explore various folklore genres and folk groups depending on which avenues seem the most fruitful, as well as which topics will be conducive to collaboration.

With wars and economic crises afflicting numerous societies today, it is increasingly important to understand how power works, and how power structures both cooperate with and disrupt local traditional cultures. Understanding the dynamic interrelationship of power and folklore will help illuminate conflicts as well as the potential for their resolution in social microcosms and macrocosms.

Bibliography

Bauman, Richard. 1972. “Differential Identity and the Social Base of Folklore.” In Toward New Perspectives in Folklore , eds. Américo Paredes and Richard Bauman. Austin: University of Texas Press, 31-41.

Bauman, Richard. 1984 [1977]. Verbal Art as Performance . Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc.

Dundes, Alan. Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore . Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Foucault, Michel 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge . London: Routledge.

Jorgensen, Jeana. 2010. “Political and Theoretical Feminisms in American Folkloristics: Definition Debates, Publication Histories, and the Folklore Feminists Communication .” The Folklore Historian 27: 43-73.

Radner, Joan N. and Susan S. Lanser. 1993. “Strategies of Coding in Women’s Cultures.” In Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Cultures , ed. John N. Radner. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1-29.

Valk, Ülo. 2008. “Folk and the Others: Constructing Social Reality in Estonian Legends.” In Legends and Landscape: Articles Based on Plenary Papers from the 5 th Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium, Reykjavik 2005 , ed. Terry Gunnell. University of Iceland Press: Reykjavik. Pp. 153-170.

Valk, Ülo. 2010. “Folklore and Discourse: The Authority of Scientific Rhetoric, from State Atheism to New Spirituality.” In Handbook of Religion and the Authority of Science , eds. James R. Lewis and Olav Hammer. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 847-866.

Young, M. Jane and Kay Turner. 1993. “Challenging the Canon: Folklore Theory and Reconsidered from Feminist Perspectives.” In Feminist Theory and the Study of Folklore , eds. Susan Tower Hollis, Linda Pershing, and M. Jane Young. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 9-28.

Zumwalt, Rosemary Lévy. 1988. American Folklore Scholarship: A Dialogue of Dissent . Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Tags: feminism , folklore , politics , power

Comments feed for this article

Trackback link: http://jeanajorgensen.com/wordpress/essay-on-folklore-and-power/trackback/

Cat on July 2, 2012 at 2:46 pm

You know, I’ve always wanted to study how folklore and textiles have been interwoven (hee hee). Your essay makes me ponder how much the notion of power is part of the folklore/textiles combination, especially if the practice of coding is what pushed some of the expression of power (or lack of power) into textiles.

jeana on July 3, 2012 at 8:28 pm

Thanks for your insightful comment, Cat! I don’t mind the pun, either.

Yes, there have been many folklore studies specifically of textiles: quilting, sari weaving, and knitting all spring to mind. And since a lot of these arts are coded as “women’s work” you run into power issues straight away. You might be interested in a book called The Ribbon Around the Pentagon: Peace by Piecemakers by Linda Pershing, a folklorist I know who has done some excellent work on women’s folklore, often focused on fabric arts.

Brittany on July 7, 2012 at 4:26 pm

This was excellent Jeana, I really love where you’re going with this and hope that those reviewing the application love it too! I hope you don’t mind if I link this essay in the follow up post I’m working on re: cultural appropriation too, I think it’s quite relevant to the discussion.

Pingback from More on Cultural Appropriation » BrittanyWarman.com on July 7, 2012 at 5:23 pm

Jackie Fulmer on August 20, 2015 at 8:22 pm

Great job, Jeana!! I look forward to hearing more on what this was written for originally.

jeana on August 20, 2015 at 10:03 pm

Thanks, Jackie! This was actually for a fellowship application and since I didn’t receive the fellowship, it hasn’t gone anywhere… but I definitely have a lot of “folklore and power” stuff going on in the back of my brain.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Brittany Warman
• Jason Baird Jackson
• Scott B. Weingart
• Sharyn Emery
• Twice-Cooked
• Different Drummer Belly Dancers
• FatChance BellyDance®
• Indiana State Association of Middle Eastern Teachers and Dancers
• Indy Tribal

Archived Posts

• August 2024
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014
• December 2013
• November 2013
• October 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• October 2011

Powered by WordPress and Tarski

<strong data-cart-timer="" role="text"></strong>

Flickr user Keith Ewing, Creative Commons . Adapted by JoDee Scissors

• Myths, Legends, & Folktales

Writing Folktales What are the key characteristics of a folktale?

In this 6-8 lesson, students will analyze the characteristics of traditional folktales to write an original tale. They will use elements of folktales to develop their story and strengthen work through the writing process.

Get Printable Version   Copy to Google Drive

Lesson Content

• Preparation
• Instruction

Learning Objectives  

Students will: 

• Ask and answer questions about classic folktales.
• Recall details from a text and illustrations.
• Identify, examine, analyze, and evaluate folktales.
• Incorporate the elements of traditional folktales in original folktales.
• Write for literary purposes and for a variety of audiences: peers, teachers, parents, school-wide community, and beyond.
• Prewrite, draft, revise, and proofread as part of the strategic approach to effective writing.

Standards Alignment

National Core Arts Standards National Core Arts Standards

MA:Cr1.1.6 Formulate variations of goals and solutions for media artworks by practicing chosen creative processes, such as sketching, improvising and 

MA:Cr1.1.7 Produce a variety of ideas and solutions for media artworks through application of chosen inventive processes, such as concept modeling and prototyping.

MA:Cr1.1.8 Generate ideas, goals, and solutions for original media artworks through application of focused creative processes, such as divergent thinking and experimenting.

MA:Cr2.1.6 Form, share, and test ideas, plans, and models to prepare for media arts productions.

MA:Cr2.1.7 Discuss, test, and assemble ideas, plans, and models for media arts productions, considering the artistic goals and the presentation.

MA:Cr2.1.8 Generate ideas, goals, and solutions for original media artworks through application of focused creative processes, such as divergent thinking and experimenting

MA:Pr5.1.6c Demonstrate adaptability using tools and techniques in standard and experimental ways in constructing media artworks. 

MA:Pr5.1.6c Demonstrate adaptability using tools and techniques in standard and experimental ways to achieve an assigned purpose in constructing media artworks. 

MA:Pr5.1.6c Demonstrate adaptability using tools, techniques and content in standard and experimental ways to communicate intent in the production of media artworks.

MA:Pr6.1.6a Analyze various presentation formats and fulfill various tasks and defined processes in the presentation and/or distribution of media artworks.

MA:Pr6.1.7a   Evaluate various presentation formats in order to fulfill various tasks and defined processes in the presentation and/or distribution of media artworks.

MA:Pr6.1.8a Design the presentation and distribution of media artworks through multiple formats and/or contexts.

TH:Pr6.1.6.a Adapt a drama/theatre work and present it informally for an audience.

TH:Pr6.1.7.a Participate in rehearsals for a drama/theatre work that will be shared with an audience.

TH:Pr6.1.8.a Perform a rehearsed drama/theatre work for an audience. 

VA:Cr2.1.6a Demonstrate openness in trying new ideas, materials, methods, and approaches in making works of art and design.

VA:Cr2.1.7a Demonstrate persistence in developing skills with various materials, methods, and approaches in creating works of art or design. 

VA:Cr2.1.8a Demonstrate willingness to experiment, innovate, and take risks to pursue ideas, forms, and meanings that emerge in the process of artmaking or designing.

Common Core State Standards Common Core State Standards

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.A Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.C Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.D Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to convey experiences and events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.E Provide a conclusion that follows from the narrated experiences or events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. 

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.5 With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach. 

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of three pages in a single sitting.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.A Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.C Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.D Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.E Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1-3 above.)

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.5 With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1-3 up to and including grade 7 here.)

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.A Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, and reflection, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.C Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence, signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another, and show the relationships among experiences and events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.D Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.E Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1-3 above.)

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.5 With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1-3 up to and including grade 8 here.)

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

Recommended Student Materials

Editable Documents : Before sharing these resources with students, you must first save them to your Google account by opening them, and selecting “Make a copy” from the File menu. Check out Sharing Tips or Instructional Benefits when implementing Google Docs and Google Slides with students.

• Vocabulary: Folktales  
• Qualities of Folktales
• Types of Folktales
• Criteria for Success: Original Folktale
• Original Folktale Tips  
• Original Folktale Organizer
• Slide: Original Folktale Template
• Original Folktale Book Template
• HablaCloud: ChromeMP3 Recorder

Teacher Background

Teachers should be familiar with traditional folktales and be able to identify common elements. Preview and familiarize yourself with the digital tools related to the lesson. Display an example folktale text around the room or visit American Folklore for digital text examples. Explore Art and Life of William Johnson and Brothers Grimm . 

Book Recommendations:

Cole, Joanna. Best Loved Folktales of the World . Wilmington, NC: Anchor Publishing, 1983.

Mallet, Jerry and Keith Polette. World Folktales . Fort Atkinson: Alleyside Press, 1994.

Student Prerequisites

Students should have an understanding of the peer editing process. They should be familiar with basic story elements including characters (flat versus round), characterization, plot, setting, and dialogue. 

Accessibility Notes

Modify handouts and give preferential seating for visual presentations. Allow extra time for task completion.

• Begin by sharing a traditional folktale with students. You may use personal, school, or digital books. Read or even act out the folktale.
• Create a class generated summary to check for understanding.
• Without naming the characteristics, help students determine the story elements from the folktale: What were the characters like in the folktale I just read? Describe the lives lived by the characters. Did the characters seem to have depth? Would you say they were well developed? What was the characters ’ speech like? You may want to record answers and use the Qualities of Folktales resource.
• Now that students have been introduced or re-introduced to folktales, prepare to help them identify, analyze, and evaluate the genre. Introduce and display  Vocabulary: Folktales . Tell students to reference it, as necessary, throughout the lesson.
• Review the vocabulary terms as a group. Provide examples of each. An example of “traditional” might be an annual family reunion or baking cookies for a special occasion. Ask students to provide additional examples to demonstrate understanding. (Note: clarify the meaning of motif as it is closely related to the main idea. Main idea that it is the “main reason” a text is written. Asking questions can help students monitor and clarify their thinking. Why did the author write this? What does he or she want me to know? What patterns do you notice in the story? )
• Explain that folktales come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Define, discuss, and display the many Types of Folktales . 
• If time permits, share examples of the different types of folktales.  “The Princess and the Frog” is an example of a fairy tale, which is a type of folktale.
• Now explain to students that they will be writing original folktales; but before doing so, review the Criteria for Success: Original Folktale and Original Folktale Tips . 
• Allow students time to brainstorm original ideas for their folktales. Use the Original Folktale Tips resource for writing support. 
• Give students ample time to create their folktales using the Original Folktale Organizer . Confer with students to provide feedback on their writing. Encourage them to use the print and digital text folktales as references. 
• Once students have completed a rough draft, have partners revise and edit each other’s drafts. This process may repeat itself as students apply suggestions and revise their work. Remind students of the elements characteristic of a folktale. Have students refer to the Original Folktale Criteria for Success during peer edits.
• Have students make revisions as necessary and produce their final draft. Once students are finished, have them create a digital book using presentation software like Slide: Original Folktale Template or Powtoons . They can also create a book with original illustrations using the Original Folktale Book Template . They may use colored construction paper, white copy paper, crayons, markers, glue, scissors, watercolors, tempera paint, string, and a hole punch to create a book. Students can type or handwrite their folktales on a template. Then create a front and back cover using the colored construction paper. Compile the contents and covers, punch holes near the spine, and tie string through each hole to secure the book.
• Add music and voiceover to books made with media tools. Students can use royalty-free sites like Bensound to include music or add voiceover using the voice recorder or microphone tools on student devices. HablaCloud: ChromeMP3 Recorder is a Google Extension option if using a Chromebook.

Reflect  

• Ask students to share or perform their folktales for the class. As a group, provide positive feedback for each folktale.
• Lead a class discussion that summarizes the folktale lesson. Point out key points, orally assess understanding, and ask students to express their likes, dislikes, and any lingering concerns. 
• Assess students’ knowledge of folktales using the Criteria for Success: Original Folktale .

Original Writer

Andria Cole

JoDee Scissors

November 1, 2021

Related Resources

Article take two: teaching revision through the arts.

Find tips on how to use the arts to build writing revision skills and differentiate the writing process.

• English & Literature

Article Do Tell: Giving Feedback to Your Students

How can arts educators provide engaging and useful feedback? Here are seven suggestions to get you started.

Collection Myths, Legends, & Folktales

Greek and Egyptian mythology, the story of the Lion King, and the legend of King Arthus are just some of the ways these resources explore the different cultural interpretations of heroes. Then learn the stories of Cinderella, as well as American legends Paul Bunyan, John Henry and Pecos Bill.

Collection Storytelling

Lesson plans, activities, and other resources that focus on telling stories through theater, music, dance, writing, and visual arts.

• Visual Arts
• Literary Arts

Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning

Eric Friedman  Director, Digital Learning

Kenny Neal  Manager, Digital Education Resources

Tiffany A. Bryant  Manager, Operations and Audience Engagement

Joanna McKee  Program Coordinator, Digital Learning

JoDee Scissors  Content Specialist, Digital Learning

Connect with us!

Generous support for educational programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by the U.S. Department of Education. The content of these programs may have been developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education but does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education. You should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Gifts and grants to educational programs at the Kennedy Center are provided by A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation; Annenberg Foundation; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Bank of America; Bender Foundation, Inc.; Capital One; Carter and Melissa Cafritz Trust; Carnegie Corporation of New York; DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities; Estée Lauder; Exelon; Flocabulary; Harman Family Foundation; The Hearst Foundations; the Herb Alpert Foundation; the Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation; William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; the Kimsey Endowment; The King-White Family Foundation and Dr. J. Douglas White; Laird Norton Family Foundation; Little Kids Rock; Lois and Richard England Family Foundation; Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather; Dr. Gerald and Paula McNichols Foundation; The Morningstar Foundation;

The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Music Theatre International; Myra and Leura Younker Endowment Fund; the National Endowment for the Arts; Newman’s Own Foundation; Nordstrom; Park Foundation, Inc.; Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives; Prince Charitable Trusts; Soundtrap; The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust; Rosemary Kennedy Education Fund; The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates; UnitedHealth Group; The Victory Foundation; The Volgenau Foundation; Volkswagen Group of America; Dennis & Phyllis Washington; and Wells Fargo. Additional support is provided by the National Committee for the Performing Arts.

Social perspectives and language used to describe diverse cultures, identities, experiences, and historical context or significance may have changed since this resource was produced. Kennedy Center Education is committed to reviewing and updating our content to address these changes. If you have specific feedback, recommendations, or concerns, please contact us at [email protected] .

By using this site, you agree to our  Privacy Policy  and  Terms & Conditions  which describe our use of cookies.

Reserve Tickets

Review cart.

You have 0 items in your cart.

Your cart is empty.

Keep Exploring Proceed to Cart & Checkout

Donate Today

Support the performing arts with your donation.

To join or renew as a Member, please visit our  Membership page .

To make a donation in memory of someone, please visit our  Memorial Donation page .

• Custom Other

Pardon Our Interruption

As you were browsing something about your browser made us think you were a bot. There are a few reasons this might happen:

• You've disabled JavaScript in your web browser.
• You're a power user moving through this website with super-human speed.
• You've disabled cookies in your web browser.
• A third-party browser plugin, such as Ghostery or NoScript, is preventing JavaScript from running. Additional information is available in this support article .

To regain access, please make sure that cookies and JavaScript are enabled before reloading the page.

What happened in the Kolkata rape case that triggered doctors’ protests?

Activists and doctors in India demand better safeguarding of women and medical professionals after a trainee medic was raped and murdered in Kolkata.

Activists and doctors across India continued to protest on Wednesday to demand justice for a female doctor, who was raped and murdered while on duty in a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.

Feminist groups rallied on the streets in protests titled “Reclaim the Night” in Kolkata overnight on Wednesday – on the eve of India’s independence day – in solidarity with the victim, demanding the principal of RG Kar Medical College resign. Some feminist protesters also marched well beyond Kolkata, including in the capital Delhi.

Keep reading

Doctors across india protest rape and murder of medic in kolkata, india supreme court to monitor investigations into manipur sexual violence, goals not guns: how a girls football team in india’s manipur beats violence, four arrested after spanish blogger on india motorcycle tour gangraped.

While the protests were largely peaceful, a small mob of men stormed the medical college and vandalised property. This group was dispersed by the police.

This comes after two days of nationwide protests by doctors following the incident at RG Kar Medical College in West Bengal’s capital city. “Sit-in demonstrations and agitation in the hospital campus will continue,” one of the protesting doctors, identified as Dr Mridul, told Al Jazeera.

Services in some medical centres were halted indefinitely, and marches and vigils shed light on issues of sexual violence, as well as doctors’ safety in the world’s most populous nation.

What happened to the doctor in Kolkata?

A 31-year-old trainee doctor’s dead body, bearing multiple injuries, was found on August 9 in a government teaching hospital in Kolkata.

The parents of the victim were initially told “by hospital authorities that their daughter had committed suicide,” lawyer and women’s rights activist Vrinda Grover told Al Jazeera. But an autopsy confirmed that the victim was raped and killed.

Grover has appeared for victims in sexual violence cases in India in the past, including Bilkis Bano , a Muslim woman who was gang-raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots, and Soni Sori, a tribal activist based in Chhattisgarh state.

Thousands of doctors marched in Kolkata on Monday, demanding better security measures and justice for the victim.

On Tuesday, the Kolkata High Court transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA) called for a nationwide halting of elective services in hospitals starting on Monday. Elective services are medical treatments that can be deferred or are not deemed medically necessary.

On Tuesday, FORDA announced on its X account that it is calling off the strike after Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda accepted protest demands.

One of these demands was solidifying the Central Protection Act, intended to be a central law to protect medical professionals from violence, which was proposed in the parliament’s lower house in 2022, but has not yet been enacted.

FORDA said that the ministry would begin working on the Act within 15 days of the news release, and that a written statement from the ministry was expected to be released soon.

Press release regarding call off of strike. In our fight for the sad incident at R G Kar, the demands raised by us have been met in full by the @OfficeofJPNadda , with concrete steps in place, and not just verbal assurances. Central Healthcare Protection Act ratification… pic.twitter.com/OXdSZgM1Jc — FORDA INDIA (@FordaIndia) August 13, 2024

Why are some Indian doctors continuing to protest?

However, other doctors’ federations and hospitals have said they will not back down on the strike until a concrete solution is found, including a central law to curb attacks on doctors.

Those continuing to strike included the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA), Delhi-based All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Indira Gandhi Hospital, local media reported.

Ragunandan Dixit, the general secretary of the AIIMS Resident Doctors’ Association, said that the indefinite strike will continue until their demands are met, including a written guarantee of the implementation of the Central Protection Act.

Medical professionals in India want a central law that makes violence against doctors a non-bailable, punishable offence, in hopes that it deters such violent crimes against doctors in the future.

Those continuing to protest also call for the dismissal of the principal of the college, who was transferred. “We’re demanding his termination, not just transfer,” Dr Abdul Waqim Khan, a protesting doctor told ANI news agency. “We’re also demanding a death penalty for the criminal,” he added.

“Calling off the strike now would mean that female resident doctors might never receive justice,” Dr Dhruv Chauhan, member of the National Council of the Indian Medical Association’s Junior Doctors’ Network told local news agency Press Trust of India (PTI).

Which states in India saw doctors’ protests?

While the protests started in West Bengal’s Kolkata on Monday, they spread across the country on Tuesday.

The capital New Delhi, union territory Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow and city Prayagraj, Bihar capital Patna and southern state Goa also saw doctors’ protests.

Who is the suspect in the Kolkata rape case?

Local media reported that the police arrested suspect Sanjoy Roy, a civic volunteer who would visit the hospital often. He has unrestricted access to the ward and the police found compelling evidence against him.

The parents of the victim told the court that they suspect that it was a case of gang rape, local media reported.

Why is sexual violence on the rise in India?

Sexual violence is rampant in India, where 90 rapes were reported on average every day in 2022.

Laws against sexual violence were made stricter following a rape case in 2012, when a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern was brutally gang-raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi. Four men were hanged for the gang rape, which had triggered a nationwide protests.

But despite new laws in place, “the graph of sexual violence in India continues to spiral unabated,” said Grover.

She added that in her experience at most workplaces, scant attention is paid to diligent and rigorous enforcement of the laws.

“It is regrettable that government and institutions respond only after the woman has already suffered sexual assault and often succumbed to death in the incident,” she added, saying preventive measures are not taken.

In many rape cases in India, perpetrators have not been held accountable. In 2002, Bano was raped by 11 men, who were sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2022, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi authorised the release of the men, who were greeted with applause and garlands upon their release.

However, their remission was overruled and the Supreme Court sent the rapists back to jail after public outcry.

Grover believes that the death penalty will not deter rapists until India addresses the deeply entrenched problem of sexual violence. “For any change, India as a society will have to confront and challenge, patriarchy, discrimination and inequality that is embedded in our homes, families, cultural practices, social norms and religious traditions”.

What makes this case particularly prominent is that it happened in Kolkata, Sandip Roy, a freelance contributor to NPR, told Al Jazeera. “Kolkata actually prided itself for a long time on being really low in the case of violence against women and being relatively safe for women.”

A National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report said that Kolkata had the lowest number of rape cases in 2021 among 19 metropolitan cities, with 11 cases in the whole year. In comparison, New Delhi was reported to have recorded 1, 226 cases that year.

Prime Minister Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called for dismissing the government in West Bengal, where Kolkata is located, led by Mamata Banerjee of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). Banerjee’s party is part of the opposition alliance.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in parliament, also called for justice for the victim.

“The attempt to save the accused instead of providing justice to the victim raises serious questions on the hospital and the local administration,” he posted on X on Wednesday.

Roy spoke about the politicisation of the case since an opposition party governs West Bengal. “The local government’s opposition will try to make this an issue of women’s safety in the state,” he said.

Have doctors in India protested before?

Roy explained to Al Jazeera that this case is an overlap of two kinds of violence, the violence against a woman, as well as violence against “an overworked medical professional”.

Doctors in India do not have sufficient workplace security, and attacks on doctors have started protests in India before.

In 2019, two junior doctors were physically assaulted in Kolkata’s Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital (NRSMCH) by a mob of people after a 75-year-old patient passed away in the hospital.

Those attacks set off doctors’ protests in Kolkata, and senior doctors in West Bengal offered to resign from their positions to express solidarity with the junior doctors who were attacked.

More than 75 percent of Indian doctors have faced some form of violence, according to a survey by the Indian Medical Association in 2015.

What happens next?

The case will now be handled by the CBI, which sent a team to the hospital premises to inspect the crime scene on Wednesday morning, local media reported.

According to Indian law, the investigation into a case of rape or gang rape is to be completed within two months from the date of lodging of the First Information Report (police complaint), according to Grover, the lawyer.

The highest court in West Bengal, which transferred the case from the local police to the CBI on Tuesday, has directed the central investigating agency to file periodic status reports regarding the progress of the investigation.

The FIR was filed on August 9, which means the investigation is expected to be completed by October 9.

Bengal women will create history with a night long protest in various major locations in the state for at 11.55pm on 14th of August’24,the night that’ll mark our 78th year as an independent country. The campaign, 'Women, Reclaim the Night: The Night is Ours', is aimed at seeking… pic.twitter.com/Si9fd6YGNb — purpleready (@epicnephrin_e) August 13, 2024

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

After My Brother’s Overdose Death, Misinformed People Added to Our Grief

By John Woller

Dr. Woller is an internist in Baltimore.

On a crisp December morning in my small Southern hometown, my mother found my brother unresponsive in his bed. She knew she was too late. His body was cold, stiff and blue. Blood had pooled on one side of his face, causing it to swell. After her initial panic and calls to my father and 911, she was alone with my brother. She instinctively did what any mother would do: She covered him with blankets and lay down with him. She wanted to hold her son one more time.

When law enforcement officers arrived, they performed testing to confirm fentanyl overdose was the cause of death. When the test turned positive, they informed my parents that it was unsafe to enter my brother’s room. They instructed my parents to schedule expensive decontamination cleaning and provided contact information for a “bio cleaning” agency that deals with hazardous substances and environments.

The following day at the funeral home, where my brother’s body awaited cremation, my family and I were told that we would not be allowed to be in the same room with him because of the risk of fentanyl exposure and accidental overdose. It was unsafe for us to breathe the air in the room of someone who died “that way,” we were told. A funeral home employee told stories of family members who had lost consciousness after viewing loved ones who had died from fentanyl overdose, and of one family member who overdosed and died after visiting a deceased relative.

I was intent on seeing my brother. And as a physician who cares for patients who use fentanyl, I knew these claims were incorrect. I informed the employees that their policy was based on false information and incomplete anecdotes, and that they are needlessly depriving families of opportunities to see their loved ones. They relented only when we accepted responsibility for any potential exposure.

Spending time with my brother’s body was painful for all of us, but it was important for our grief process. We said goodbye through tears and held my brother’s hand one last time. Most important, it allowed my mother to see him resting peacefully, providing an alternative final image she can carry.

For the past few years, over 70,000 overdose deaths in the United States have involved synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl and its analogues. Most families grieving these deaths won’t have a doctor in the family to dispute misconceptions perpetuated by law enforcement, funeral homes and others. How many American families are being unnecessarily deprived of a somber, sacred moment based on stigma and rumors?

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .