Manuscripts and Broadsheets. Narrative Genres and the Communication Circuit among Working-Class Youth in early 20th-Century Finland

Abstract

This article explores the hazy boundary between folklore and literature, orality and literacy in relation to the individual and the community. How do people who belong to the first generation of active writers in their family and community express their own expe- riences through fictional narratives and the literary tradition? This question is explored in relation to the working-class youth in the small industrial community of Karkkila (Hogfors) in southern Finland. The most important research materials are the editions of hand-writ- ten newspapers written by these young people from 1914 to 1925. My theoretical background is derived from both folklore studies and book history. Inspired by the research of Robert Darnton, I have outlined the communication circuit of the work- ing-class youth during the early 20th century, discussing the position of the manuscript tradition (hand-written newspapers, manuscript songbooks, minutes) in relation to the printed texts (books, newspapers, broadsheets) and the oral tradition. In my article I focus on the narratives of love in the manuscripts written by the working-class youth. How do they work with the ideas and narrative genres and themes adopted from the printed media and the oral tradition? I outline fictionalization of personal experiences and localization of fictional, printed texts as two basic narrative strategies utilized in these processes. Narrative as a theoretical concept and as a methodological tool has been inten- sively discussed both by folklorists and literary historians. This article explores the hazy boundary between folklore and literature, orality and literacy, in rela- tion to the individual and the community. How do people who belong to the first generation of active writers in their family and community express their own experiences through fictional narratives and the literary tradition? My conclusions are based on a case study of the literary activities of young work- ing-class people in Karkkila (Hogfors) 1 , a small industrial community in south- ern Finland, in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the young men and women of this community produced a large collection of hand-written newspapers named Valistaja (The Enlightener). The paper was confiscated by the police in 1926 be- cause of the communist political orientation of its writers. It provided a medium for discussing political questions and practising literary genres. At the beginning of the 1980s, a pile of issues of The Enlightener was found in the attic of the local