HISTORY OF SAUDI FOLKLORE AND FACTORS THAT SHAPED IT

Abstract

Abstract. This study investigates history of Saudi folk heritage as well as different historical and cultural factors that shaped Saudi folklore. Based on studies by eminent scholars of folk literature, such as William John Thoms, Walter J. Ong, Campbell, James Wynbrandt and Zwettler Michael, this study explains how folk elements pass down from generation to another, how they function significantly as a vehicle to transmit nation's experience and demonstrate how such genres are relevant to present human life. Saudi Arabia is a rich country in folkloric elements represented by two most compelling folk genres of poetry and music. This research opens much-needed criteria of research on diverse heritage of a country that inherited from different cultures. Discussion in this study helps familiarize readers with history of this country because an account of modern Saudi Arabian folk heritage without discussing these realities would be incomplete. Keywords: Saudi Arabia, folklore, music, poetry, Najd, Hijaz, cultures ...folk tales, stories from tradition, are all of them most vital connection we have with imaginations of ordinary men and women whose labor created our world. Angela Carter 1. Theoretical frame Literature utters its voices in different forms for different functions. This encompasses written and forms of literature deviated from this broad and general category which, of course, includes unofficial and unrecorded literature of people. As a part of literature, folk literature is supposed to create spiritual edification, entertainment and beauty, broaden knowledge, reform personalities and refine our psyches. Further, folk literature has a wide range of functions on national levels. According to William R. Bascom, folk literature serves to sanction and validate religious, social, political, and economic institutions, and to play an important role as an educative device in their transmission from one generation to another (1953:284). The nonexistence of physical manifestation of literature, text, is what distinguishes folklore from other literature. Walter J. Ong differentiates between two discourses in a broader way by referring to folklore as Oral that often look to pragmatics while written discourse as [c]hirographic structures look more to syntactic: Written discourse develops more elaborate and fixed grammar than discourse does because to provide meaning it is more dependent simply upon linguistic structure, since it lacks normal full existential contexts which surround discourse and help determine meaning in discourse somewhat independently of grammar (Ong 1982:37). So, what is folklore and how is this genre created? The definition of folklore looks simple yet challenging. Since earliest systematic study of folklore, though not under this name, investigations had not resulted in a fixed and solidified definition, however it remained more critical. Before term was coined, William John Thoms (1802-1885) was first to investigate this area as a part of literature. Thoms, British writer and editor of tales started investigating his society's old poetry, music, magic, superstitions and tales. He was trying to find a simple term to replace many phrases given to same genre of literature such as oral sayings, popular antiquities, oral traditions, traditional art, the lore of people, etc. Thoms was mainly a clerk and a civil servant and had a tough workload but in his free time from what he described as onerous official duties he went on investigating several issues in work of Chaucer, Jeremiads and others. Though Thoms was not a folklorist and did not have a major work in literature he acquired fame in history of this genre. …