Call It Tradition

Abstract

EACH OF THESE THREE BOOKS PLACES BEFORE US THE CONCEPT OF and endeavors to explore the role that concept has played in specific realms of American history and culture. All three books were published in 1998, and yet each author approaches the subject from a different angle and with a distinctive writer's stance. Simon Bronner, distinguished professor of folklore and American studies at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, writes as an intellectual historian and surveys through six hundred pages many of the leading figures in folklore scholarship, tying their work to the emergence of the concept of tradition as a hallmark of the discipline. Jane Becker, writing as a social historian and museum scholar, seeks to illuminate the process by which the value attributed to tradition and its association with Appala-