Metafolkloristic Additions to Stories by the Artistic Narrator

Abstract

IT WAS Alan Dundes who first proposed the term metafolklore. He saw it mainly as a vehicle of literal-verbal criticism, or in other words as a 'folkloristic explanation of folklore genre.' Dundes brings as an example proverbs about proverbs and jokes about jokes, i.e. the explanation which the speakers of the language themselves propose as a means of expression. Thus: 'A proverb is like a horse: When truth is missing, we use a proverb to find it' (Yoruba tribe, Western Africa); or: a salesman knocks at the door of a farmer's house on a stormy night and says: 'I'm a salesman, my car broke down and I need a place to stay.' The farmer replies: 'That's all right, but there is one thing; we have no extra room to spare, so you will have to sleep with my son,' and the salesman says 'O my God, I must be in the wrong joke.' However, the term metafolklore yields itself semantically to a further extension. Metafolklore can be understood to mean the conception a culture has of its own folklore communication as it is represented in the distinction of forms, the attribution of names to them, and the sense of the social appropriateness in their application in various cultural situations.2 It is the transmission in folklore as a connection of a mutual exchange of terms, which has to be understood both by the transmittor and the addressee. This is to be managed with the aid of consistent rules of communication. The question arises, how does the storyteller (the informant) act when he transmits a message to his addressees (i.e. a literal folkloristic text) which is not in the natural and original cultural context? How does he bestow his ideology on it? How will he act if the expression is not necessarily understood by his audience? As an example of a narrator's method and of his meta-literary additions we shall bring a story narrated by Shlomoh Alfassi, born 1937 at Casablanca, Morocco, which was recorded in the framework of the 'Bet-Shean Project? The story was published in the anthology: Folktalesfrom Bet-Shean (edited by Aliza Shenhar and Haya Bar Itzhak, Haifa, 1981, no. 5). It was told at an evening of storytelling at the music centre of the town of Bet-Shean. The listeners were inhabitants of the town of Bet-Shean (mostly coming from Morocco), and of settlements of the surroundings (most of them originating from Kurdistan), plus members of the communal settlements (kibbutzim) of the region (most of whom were born in Israel), as well as a research group from Haifa University (students and researchers). Here is the version of the story which, as a single item, may exemplify the rules applicable in such a situation: