A Theory for American Folklore Reviewed

Abstract

FOLKLORISTS IN THE UNITED STATES have puzzled over the content of American folklore ever since our subject took shape. Can a young nation have any traditions to call its own? Can it claim the traditions brought to its shores from the Old World? In so mobile and commercialized a society, what role can folklore play anyway? To attempt answers to these questions, I presented to the American Folklore Society in 1957 a paper, subsequently printed in the JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE along with commentaries by panelists and floor speakers, titled A for American Folklore.2 This theory provided the conceptual basis for my book American Folklore (Chicago, 1959). Eleven years later I should like to reassess the theory in the light of intervening criticisms and new publications that may challenge, strengthen, or alter certain of the contentions. The Theory was originally divided into two parts: a review of existing approaches to American folklore, of which seven were identified and considered oblique or limited in their premises; and the formulation of a new approach especially designed to grapple with the kinds of folk traditions present in the United States. The idea was to begin with American conditions and evolve a folkloristic perspective, rather than to begin with a priori conceptions from ballad theory or European or anthropological or literary scholarship and wrench them in an effort to meet the American situation. Which areas of American life and history seemed particularly productive of folklore? Again the magic number seven emerged, in a list of historical topics considered most fruitful for the folklorist: colonization, the westward movement, Negro slavery, regionalism, immigration, democracy, and mass culture. Instead of commencing with the genres of folklore