Introducing Folklore: A Review Essay

Abstract

Folkloristics: An Introduction. By Robert A. Georges and Michael Owen Jones. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Pp. ix + 336. $39.95 cloth, $19.95 paper) The Study of American Folklore: An Introducti By Jan Harold Brunvand. (New York: Norton, 1997. 4th Edition. Originally published 1968. Pp. xxiv + 640. $31.95 cloth) The Dynamics of Folklore. By Barre Toelken. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996. Revised and expanded edition. Originally published 1979. Pp. xiv + 439. $21.95 paper) Amerikanische Folkloristik. Eine Einfuhrung. By Regina Bendix. (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1995. Pp. 267. DM 44 paper) The fortunes of our discipline in American academy and in world of publishing seem to be moving in opposite directions. Witness appearance of one new and two revised introductory folklore textbooks joining other still standard, and still in print, texts compiled by Alan Dundes (1965), Richard Dorson (1972), and Elliott Oring (1986a), just as most graduate degree granting folklore programs come under increasing threat from university administrations. Perhaps these two phenomena are not unrelated. With de-institutionalization, undergraduate folklore curriculum will increasingly become a part-time occupation of faculty dispersed over a variety of departments. The comprehensive textbook serves this constituency well. Rather than keeping abreast of all current trends in folklore journals and of latest monographic studies, folklore instructor who must first answer to other disciplinary interests can rely on one of these outstanding overviews. Ironically, Richard Dorson answered question Is Folklore a Discipline? (Dorson 1973:199) in part by noting that surveys and textbooks indicate coming of age of a and the subject [of folklore] has sufficiently established itself so that several textbooks... have found ready markets in United States. Whether they mark establishment or re-ordering of a discipline, impact of such textbooks on defining our field should not be underestimated. Thus these new publications merit scrutiny, just as appearance of earlier readers generated professional discussion (cf. Goldstein, et al, 1966; Ketner 1980). We can only hope, however, that texts themselves do not too quickly become artifacts for a future archaeology of disciplines. In Folkloristics, Robert A. Georges and Michael Owen Jones, long-time denizens of Folklore and Mythology Program at UCLA, offer most ambitious attempt to date at synthesizing discipline. As such, volume belies goal, professed by its title,1 of serving as an introductory text; it is also an attempt to demarcate a field of study, with its own perspectives on expressive culture, as distinct from other forms of inquiry. Notably, this effort coincides historically with attrition of UCLA folklore faculty and discussions about re-defining and re-naming Program founded by Wayland Hand and D. K- Wilgus.' Georges and Jones begin with a brief overview and definition of materials studied by folklorists, methods employed in this study, and significance and situation of folklore in our world. To authors, The word folklore denotes expressive forms, processes, and behaviors (1) that we customarily learn, teach, and utilize or display during face-to-face interactions, and (2) that we judge to be traditional (a) because they are based on known precedents or models, and (b) because they serve as evidence of continuities and consistencies through time and space in human knowledge, thought, belief and feeling (1, italics in original). Folklore thus defined is pervasive-it crops up in everyday speech, in film, fiction, advertising, and comics-and varied. This means of defining folklore pervades text, even where approaches discussed might not rely on same definition. Study of these materials, Georges and Jones continue, relies on fieldwork, the act of inquiring into nature of phenomena by studying them at first hand in environments in which they naturally exist or occur (15). …