Forms Of Folklore Research Articles

Folk games as a tool of formation of artistic and creative competence of primary school children in music classes

The article describes the features of acquiring artistic and creative competence, as a child's elementary awareness of the specifics of art forms (artistic and productive, musical, theatrical); valuable attitude to art and artistic activity, the desire to perceive folklore art. Folkloric forms of the heritage of Ukrainian culture are considered. Teaching and methodical material and practical recommendations are offered, which in music classes will be useful both to experienced teachers of preschool institutions and to those workers who are starting to work with the smallest brains. Normative documents in the field of preschool education were studied and play competence was considered as a child's ability to free, emotionally saturated, spontaneous activity on his/her own initiative, in which the possibility of applying existing and assimilating new knowledge and personal development is realized due to the child's desire to participate in the life of adults through the realization of interests in game and role-playing actions in a generalized form. The necessity of using folk games for the formation of artistic and creative competence in preschool children is substantiated. Peculiarities of knowledge of the surrounding world of preschool children and themselves in it are determined. The work proposes to create a basis for the natural formation and development of musical abilities in preschoolers through a folk game by encouraging children to play folk games. It has been emphasized that raising children is based on love and respect for Ukrainian musical folklore. The secrets of conducting music classes using folk games and working with preschoolers are recommended to teachers of primary schools, music teachers, teachers of children's vocal ensembles of extracurricular and club institutions, scientists, graduate students, students of pedagogical and art educational institutions, parents and the general public

Animal predators as a characterising element in short folklore forms

Animal predators as a characterising element in short folklore forms

Theory-building in the social, material and postdigital worlds of play: Participatory research and multimodal discourse analysis

This article is about using participatory research and multimodal discourse analysis to scaffold theory-building, with a focus on how children draw on their lifeworlds, folkloric imagination, and media experiences to generate meanings in, and through, their play. It draws on a tradition of research which employs a multimodal semiotic lens to analyse interaction and communication between social actors in combination with sociocultural theory to generate hypotheses about a phenomenon. The focus is on how multimodal discourse analysis operates when partnered in research designs with other interpretive constructs, drawn from sociocultural, socio-material and postdigital frames. Examples are featured from two research projects centred on children’s play, and the central argument here is that play, with its reference points in media, popular culture and traditional folkloric forms is a particular location for theory-building on the postdigital nature of contemporary lived experience.

Redefining the Nation and Exploring the Self: Reading Contemporary Kirant Poetry

This paper critically analyzes how the poets belonging to the indigenous Kirant ethnic background perceive and interrogate the narratives of Nepali national identities and nationalism in their creative expressions. Six different poets belonging to Rai and Limbu communities––Shrawan Mukarung, Bhupal Rai, Upendra Subba, Swapnil Smriti, Chandrabir Tumbapo, and Heman Yatri–– are purposefully selected for this study who embrace the Kirant as their common identity. Most of the poems selected here are composed against the backdrop of People's Movement II in 2006 and reflect the marginalized ethnic perspectives about nation, nationalism, cultural identity, and indigenous consciousness. The theoretical notion of nationalism is employed in the study, drawing upon theorists like Ernest Renan, Ernest Gellnar, and David Steven. A critical analysis of the selected body of poetry offers the findings that the contemporary Kirant poets attempt to redraw the discourse of Nepali nationalism in two different ways: 1) by exposing the gaps and fissures inherent in the national narratives; and 2) by exploring and incorporating their unique selves in their composition­s–– in the forms of local myths, folklore, ritualistic elements, indigenous symbols, socio-cultural values, and ethnic concerns. The study concludes that literature helps redress the crises created by the state in the past, and contemporary Nepali poetry, particularly those composed by the Kirant ethnic community, is a response that voices sentiments of the margin.

The Secret Lives of Bouki: Louisiana’s Creolized Folkloresque

This article historicizes the character of Bouki in the context of Creole Louisiana, showing how the story of Bouki has evolved to become the story of Kouri-Vini, Louisiana’s native and endangered Creole language. This historicization takes place in three distinct periods; those periods are defined by their relation to Kouri-Vini. The first period aligns with the Antebellum period; the second aligns with the early 20th century; and the final coincides with the present day. Moving across these periods, Bouki finds himself demoted, at which point he enters the ‘creolized folkloresque.’ The folkloresque is a larger mosaic of folkloric forms detached from the material conditions of their production and available to popular culture; for the folkloresque to be creolized designates the same process but under vastly unequal social and material conditions. In short, Bouki enters the creolized folkloresque, becoming a folkoresque figure available to all who find themselves subject to creolized conditions. In the pre-American part of Louisiana’s history, creolized conditions included slavery and colonization; post-Americanization, linguistic discrimination plays an outsized role. Where such conditions persist in Louisiana, there Bouki can be found.

Branje Jamnice v času socialnih sprememb

Prežih’s “neighbourhood novel” Jamnica (1945), which was written under the influence of foreign and Slovene literary classics as well as of the genre model of the rural novel, met with success on its publication. In this collective novel the village community retains above all the various folklore forms of sociability, but rather than simply being narrative ornamentation the descriptions of these forms are woven into the social message of the novel. Another characteristic is the attachment of the members of the community to the land, a kind of natural vitalism. In a time of economic crisis and on the brink of the Second World War, the survival strategy of the community leads to a “social experiment”, i.e., entering into a social pact between the landowners and the crofters.

“The Way It Is”: Land Preservation and the Culture of White Wealth in Lyme, Connecticut

Abstract: This essay is a critical folklore study of the culture of White wealth and its impact upon land preservation practices in the town of Lyme, Connecticut. On the one hand, it seeks to provide an example of research into White elite culture that Anand Prahlad recently called for in folklore studies. On the other hand, it is a contemporizing of research conducted in Connecticut in the 1950s by sociologist Frank Lee, and a contribution to allied scholarship that addresses problematic land preservation practices and their relation to “soft” racism. This article focuses especially on the public statements of the Lyme Democratic Town Committee and the Lyme Land Conservation Trust, arguing that such expressions should be considered viable forms of folklore. I provide an immanent critique of both organizations and criticize their failure and lack of accountability to perform values they publicly declare as essential to their core mission. I further critically analyze a specific case study that unfolded in 2021 in Lyme concerning open space. Although a study of folklore, this essay is composed with the non-specialist in mind and encourages organizations dedicated to social justice and equity to foster increased collaboration with folklorists.

Folklore Goes to War: Folksongs, Yangge and Storytelling in Communist Bases during the Second Sino-Japanese War

All across the world, folklore studies are often closely tied to the emergence of modern nation states and were used to (re)build national identities. In post-WWI China, a growing community of academics and enthusiastic amateurs began working on folklore projects as part of a larger cultural effort to stoke nationalist sentiment and, by consequence, encourage resistance to foreign encroachment. After Japan’s invasion in the 1930s threw the whole country into crisis, this campaign transformed from the abstract into a strategic component of the Chinese war effort. During China’s War of Resistance against Japan, folklore activities played a valuable role in boosting the national spirit and promoting the idea of China as home to a rich cultural legacy. In communist bases of the North China Plain in particular, a New Literature and Art Movement began with the collection and organization of folk literature and art, which was in turn remoulded into effective and highly politicized anti-Japanese and social reform messages to promote mass mobilization. This article examines folksongs, yangge and storytelling to reveal how folklore, reshaped by communist intellectuals, was designed to serve political aims and address peasants and soldiers in order to unite the masses against its enemies both foreign and demestic. The Chinese Communist Party used traditional forms of folklore with revised content to launch a mass movement that served its primary political needs: winning support of the masses and spreading revolutionary communist ideology to a broader audience. This wartime revolutionary folklore approach continued into peacetime and greatly affected the People’s Republic of China.

Farewells to the War and Military Magic in the Folklore of the Cossack Period: Relationship with the Funeral Rite

The articleis aimed at the studying the military magic of Zaporizhzhya, Register and Black Sea Cossacks, as well as the rituals associated with their farewell to a land and sea campaigns. Main research methods include descriptive, comparative and comparative-historical ones. The source base is formed with folklore texts of the 16th–18th centuries, in particular, Ukrainian folk dumas, songs, prayers and incantations, as well as ethnographic descriptions of rituals and magical practices related to war. The authoress uses both previously published materials and her own recordings made during the last decade. The theoretical basis for the article consists of the works of predecessors, Ukrainian scientists of the 19th–20th centuries Mykola Kostomarov, Mykola Sementovskyi, Vasyl Myloradovych, Dmytro Yavornytskyi, Kateryna Hrushevska, Prokop Korolenko, and others, who have published a number of primary sources and attempted to analyze them. The scientific novelty of the work concerns the fact that it is the first comprehensive folkloristic study where a comparative analysis of collective and individual magical practices of the Cossack period is carried out. They are supposed to ensure the victory of the Cossack army over the enemy and save the life of every Cossack. All available materials indicate that the ritual of the farewell to war in Cossack times belongs to the rites of passage and is most closely related typologically to the funeral ritual, namely to the symbolic funeral. It duplicates such key elements of the funeral as preparation for death (preparation of new clothes, confession and communion of the Holy Mysteries), a ritualized form of farewell to relatives and the whole community, the use of occasional folklore forms (wishes, blessings, formulas of reconciliation with neighbours), ritual bringing the Cossacks out of «their» cultural space (house, yard, village), mourning a Cossack who goes on a campaign, a joint meal. The same places of farewell also appear: a threshold, a gate, the border of a settlement. Thus, sending off to war can be considered one of the forms of a symbolic funeral.

Tamil Esthetic Tradition in a Foreign Genre: A Study of Jeyamohan’s Kaadu (2003)

In the second half of the twentieth century, the early modernist writers in Tamil, whose enthusiasm for the newly imported genre of the novel occupied most of their creative endeavors, felt the need to outgrow the confinements of their own literary tradition. However, after many decades of irreconcilable tensions with tradition, a new generation of novelists, in the last decade of the century, began to reengage with traditional esthetics through the genre of the novel itself. The advent of postmodernism into the Tamil literary scene prepared the ground for this new turn in the esthetics of Tamil writing. This paper argues that the result of this new engagement is a synthesis of traditional esthetic systems and the supposedly foreign literary genre, the novel. The argument is exemplified through a detailed analysis of a Tamil novel titled Kaadu (2003), written by Jeyamohan. Though the novel engages with modern Tamil life, it inherits multiple esthetic frameworks from the extensive Tamil literary tradition, including ancient Sangam poetics, bhakti literature, and different forms of folklore. It strings together these temporally distanced esthetic models on its narrative canvas through a multi-layered narrative structure. The analysis will show how the protagonist Giritharan’s perception of the world is mediated and shaped by different esthetic frameworks and how the novel, through a synthesis of those oppositional frameworks, creates a vision of life that belongs neither to the Tamil tradition nor to the Western esthetic models.

LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION OF GENDER DISTINCTIONS IN ENGLISH PROVERBS AND SAYINGS

The present study aims at investigating the linguistic expression of gender distinctions in English proverbs and sayings through the lens of paremiology. The investigation focuses on the classification of English proverbs and sayings according to their respective gender component. Our research hypothesis posits that proverbs and sayings, as forms of verbal folklore, have traditionally ascribed specific human traits and activities to individuals based on their gender. To test this hypothesis, over four hundred English proverbs and sayings have been analyzed. The methodology employed in the paper is based on historical research methods, which involve collecting and analyzing information in order to explain past phenomena. The analysis has also employed the data grouping method to organize proverbs and sayings into relevant categories. The data collection has utilized both primary and secondary sources of information. Primary sources include reviews and scientific articles, while in secondary sources are include encyclopedias and dictionaries of proverbs and sayings. The results show that proverbs and sayings reflect gender stereotypes and societal divisions which are often difficult to break. However, the deeper understanding of the ways in which gender roles have been constructed and perpetuated throughout history, can identify areas in which progress towards gender equality is made.

Kako pjeva stara ptica, nauči ptiće pjevati

Birds are present in everyday life, in forests, parks, cities, in fields and on playgrounds, by rivers and at entrances to stores, etc. Their ubiquity in human everyday life all through history leads to “birds” developing metaphorical meanings and producing powerful stereotypical images, which also motivate wider conceptual meanings. This article focuses on the lexeme ptica “bird” in Slovenian short folklore forms, its stereotypical representation and its metaphorical meanings. The ethnolinguistic approach will provide insight into the characteristics ascribed to birds as well as personifications and metaphorical transfers in short folklore forms, i.e., it will show what the bird symbolizes.

Folklore Activities of the Lithuanian Science Society: Utopian Goals or Insightful Ideas?

This article deals with two activities of the Lithuanian Science Society (LSS, 1907–1938) and the history of the folklore collections it accumulated. Its members encouraged people to record folk songs, fairytales, stories, riddles, and other forms of folklore, and they tried to gather in one place all the older manuscripts that contained folklore. This way, the LSS’s folklore archive was formed at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1908, Eduard Wolter, a member of the LSS, made the first folklore sound recordings with a phonograph apparatus. The chair of the Society, Jonas Basanavičius, knew about the Phonogram Archives of Vienna and Berlin; therefore, he encouraged the establishment of such an archive in Vilnius. Another idea of the LSS, initiated by Mykolas Biržiška, was to gather all the songs in one place and to publish a national songbook. Unfortunately, these goals were visionary and utopian for this period of cultural development in Lithuania. In this study, the birth of these ideas and the path to their realisation are chronologically reviewed. The author discusses the reasons why they were not accomplished in the first part of the twentieth century, and gives explanations for why they were successfully implemented in the second part of the twentieth – beginning of the twenty-first centuries. The historical-political context as well as the actual digitisation of intangible heritage archives help clarify the process.

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE FOR SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES: REFLECTIONS ON THE FOLKLORIC FORMS OF TEYYAM AND TOLU BOMMALATA

The inclusion of culture as the fourth dimension of the sustainable development model projected by UCLG (2010) affirmed that heritage, knowledge, creativity, and aesthetics are essential grounds for developing a holistic vision towards sustainability. Folklore as a significant aspect of human cognition, way of life and world view not only demonstrates the complex layers of human existence through generations but also paves the way for a sustainable future through its cultural dimensions, social functions, and ecological lessons. The current research examines how two unrelated folkloric forms from distinct geographic regions emerge as exemplars of sustainable values embedded within the community. Focusing on the ritualistic performance of Teyyam from Kolathunadu and the folk-art form called Tolu Bommalata from Nimmalakunta region, it argues on the inextricable association of indigenous knowledge systems with its natural and cultural landscape thereby demonstrating the case of a sustainable model. A cultic practice prevalent in the cultural region of Kolathunadu, Teyyam advocates a strong association with the tribal culture of the land in terms of its environmental, social, and cultural values. Tolu Bommalata of Nimmalakunta region, renowned for its distinct cultural expression of storytelling and entertainment is a living folk tradition of shadow puppetry that combines the elements of performing as well as visual arts. The research through a qualitative perspective focuses on ethnographic methods backed by the documentation and analysis of the tangible aspects of folklore. Apart from the reflections on the cultural plurality of Indian folklore and crafts, the study reveals its co-existence with the landscape embodying the environmental, social, and cultural values thereby demonstrating a sustainable model in Indian folklore.

Звукосимволический образный параллелизм в фольклорном тексте

The aim of the research is to determine the typological features of the morphogenesis of the sound-symbolic figurative parallelism of the macrocosm and microcosm, whose structural-semantic modifications reflect the evolution of the conceptual and linguistic foundations of one of the leading artistic forms of Russian folklore and the dynamics of the national perception of the world. The paper tests the author’s innovative methodology for the comprehensive study and description of dynamic processes in the language of Russian folklore and the artistic thinking of the people taking into account the heterogeneity and multilayering of the folklore-linguistic substance. The research is novel in that it is the first to use the material of various folklore genres (ritual and non-ritual songs, historical songs, lamentations, ballads, spells and charms, proverbs and sayings, epics, ditties, riddles, omens, bailichkas and byvalschinas, fairy tales, etc.) to carry out a systematic comparative analysis of the main stages of morphogenesis of sound-symbolic figurative parallelism in line with the idea of language anthropocentricity which is fundamental in modern linguistics. Thus, the regularities of form creation, identification markers, classification criteria for structural-semantic modifications were identified, the genre specificity of the device was determined. As a result, it was proved that the typology of sound-symbolic figurative parallelism developed using the material of different folklore genres reflects the morphogenesis of the device at three main stages of its development, each of which has clear identification indicators. At the first stage, symbolic sound complexes are implemented with form and content parallelism; at the second stage, symbolic sound complexes are presented with form parallelism and without content parallelism; at the third stage, symbolic sound complexes function with varying form parallelism and without content parallelism as a result of evolutionary processes occurring within the boundaries of the device.

Ukrainian National Stylistics of Stage Vocabulary of Modern Children's Musical

The article is devoted to the issue of the reflection of Ukrainian national stylistics in the productions of children's musicals on the stages of domestic theaters in 2010-2020s. It was revealed that the appeal to the traditions of folk culture takes place in the context of the leading modern trends in stage art, thanks to the synthesis of which a unique color of the artistic image of the performance is achieved. The research revealed that the most important cultural and artistic principles of the Ukrainian national stylistics of the stage vocabulary of the modern children's musical are the reproduction of a living tradition and the author's directorial approaches to the interpretation of folklore forms. In some cases, the representation of the Ukrainian folk tradition in a historically authentic form is characteristic, but mostly the directors emphasize a certain stylization and conventionality of the national color - traditional elements are used to create the atmosphere of a folk tale in a modern interpretation. Characteristic stylistic coloring is achieved by using authentic material, folk chants, dances, elements of traditional Ukrainian decor, creating well-known folklore images.

Cake is Better than Sex: Pride and Prejudice in the Folklore of and about Asexuality

Abstract: In the past decades, great strides have been made in the increased visibility and official legitimacy for people across the spectrum of LGBTTQQIAAP identities in the United States. Within this groundswell of increased recognition, asexual people have struggled to gain acceptance because their identity exists outside the compulsory sexuality that largely defines identity in relationship to sexual desire and behavior. This essay explores how people across the asexual spectrum capitalize on folklore forms to create spaces, explore and come to understand their sexuality, express their emotions, and establish a means for esoteric and exoteric communication. Their use of folklore for gaining acceptance and for empowerment exists dialogically with the prejudicial folklore within mainstream and queer spaces that contributes to their marginalization and erasure.

Cake is Better than Sex: Pride and Prejudice in the Folklore of and about Asexuality

Abstract: In the past decades, great strides have been made in the increased visibility and official legitimacy for people across the spectrum of LGBTTQQIAAP identities in the United States. Within this groundswell of increased recognition, asexual people have struggled to gain acceptance because their identity exists outside the compulsory sexuality that largely defines identity in relationship to sexual desire and behavior. This essay explores how people across the asexual spectrum capitalize on folklore forms to create spaces, explore and come to understand their sexuality, express their emotions, and establish a means for esoteric and exoteric communication. Their use of folklore for gaining acceptance and for empowerment exists dialogically with the prejudicial folklore within mainstream and queer spaces that contributes to their marginalization and erasure.

Folklore in Social Networks (Using the Example of Twitter and Telegram)

Folklore is a very old phenomenon that has undergone great changes over the entire period of its existence. The telecommunications revolution has significantly changed our lives, and folklore has undergone the same changes, which has penetrated into the space of digital communications, social networks. This actualized the study of this topic in modern linguistic science. In accordance with the high relevance of this topic, folklore in social networks such as Twitter and Telegram became the object of the article's research. In the course of the work, general scientific methods of induction, deduction, synthesis, abstraction were used, as well as particular methods of linguistic research – descriptive method, typological method, method of formalization and method of logical comparison. Through the conducted research, it was found out that modern folklore has moved into the field of digital communications, where it has been actively developed, many new forms of folklore and channels for its dissemination have appeared. The results of the work can be used as a theoretical basis containing a systematic range of works on folklore, as well as as a basis for practical application when working in the field of Internet communications, public relations, mass media, journalism. Along with the development of society, language also develops, new forms of expression appear, thanks to the mass media it has become much easier to create and distribute them. Folklore is no exception in this sense – it has become one of the means of communication, expression of emotions to describe the current situation on the Internet, the pandemic is a vivid result of that. It has become the main theme of modern folklore since 2020.

Reality as Presented in Estonian Legends of Hidden Treasure

Stories of hidden treasure are different from other folkloric forms as in the Estonian folk tradition the motif of money is present in all genres. Monetary relations are discussed in proverbs and riddles. The problems of poverty and wealth are present in fairy tales. Opinions and dreams concerning money are verbalised in poetic forms in folk songs. People know and still practice various methods, partly based on traditional beliefs, that are known to bring good luck in money. The techniques of old magic meet modern recommendations of various kinds. In this article, the focus is on tradition relating to stories of hidden treasure. The legends and other stories (about 5,000 archive texts and recordings) are kept in the Estonian Folklore Archives and date back to the 19th and 20th centuries, although there are more recent materials. We can find three main fields in this tradition, depending on their connection with reality: 1) stories based in fact and on a real event, as evidenced by for example an archaeological find; 2) narratives that are part of local historical and toponymic traditions representing mental geography; 3) unlocalised stories that do not represent folk beliefs or legends and instead deal with more general questions such as what the real price of economic growth is, what consequences humans can face when luck smiles on them, what dangers – including supernatural sanctions – threaten people, and what consequences can be expected when they come into contact with treasures of unknown origin.