Folklore In The Modern World

Papers presented at the 9th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Chicago, 1973.

"[This book] is a contribution of considerable substance because it takes a holistic view of the field of folk music and the scholarship that has dealt with it." -- Bruno Nettl "... a praiseworthy combination of solid scholarship, penetrating discussion, and global relevance." -- Asian Folklore Studies "... successfully ties the history and development of folk music scholarship with contemporary concepts, issues, and shifts, and which treats varied folk musics of the world cultures within the rubric of folklore and ethnomusicology with subtle generalizations making sense to serious minds... " -- Folklore Forum "... [this book] challenges many carefully-nurtured sacred cows. Bohlman has executed an intellectual challenge of major significance by successfully organizing a welter of unruly data and ideas into a single, appropriately complex but coherent, system." -- Folk Music Journal Bohlman examines folk music as a genre of folklore from a broadly cross-cultural perspective and espouses a more expansive view of folk music, stressing its vitality in non-Western cultures as well as Western, in the present as well as the past.

The first book of its kind, Putting Folklore to Use provides guidance to folklorists but also informs practitioners in other fields about how to use folklore studies to augment their own studies. How can acting like a folklore fieldworker help a teacher reduce inter-group stereotyping and increase student's self-esteem? How can adopting a folklore fieldworker's point of view when interviewing patients help practitioners render health care more effectively? How can using folklore research help rural communities survive and thrive? Thirteen folklorists provide answers to these and other questions and demonstrate the many ways folklore can be put to use. Their essays, commissioned for this volume and edited by Michael Owen Jones, apply the methods and insights of modern folklore research to thirteen different professions and areas of practical concern. The authors, all of whom have themselves put folklore to use in the fields they describe, consider applications in detail and explain how folkloristic concepts and techniques can enhance the work of various professions. They explore applications in such areas as museums, aiding the homeless, environmental planning, art therapy, designing public spaces, organization development, tourism, the public sector, aging, and creating an occupation's image. In an extensive introduction to the volume, Jones provides an overview of applied folkloristics that defines the field, surveys its history in the United States, and scrutinizes its basic issues and premises. Part I of the book shows how to promote learning, problem solving, and cultural conservation through folklore and its study. Part II deals with folklorists helping to improve the quality of life. Part III reveals folklore's role in enhancing identity and community.

"This volume introduces a new concept to explore the dynamic relationship between folklore and popular culture: the “folkloresque.” With “folkloresque,” Foster and Tolbert name the product created when popular culture appropriates or reinvents folkloric themes, characters, and images. Such manufactured tropes are traditionally considered outside the purview of academic folklore study, but the folkloresque offers a frame for understanding them that is grounded in the discourse and theory of the discipline.Fantasy fiction, comic books, anime, video games, literature, professional storytelling and comedy, and even popular science writing all commonly incorporate elements from tradition or draw on basic folklore genres to inform their structure. Through three primary modes—integration, portrayal, and parody—the collection offers a set of heuristic tools for analysis of how folklore is increasingly used in these commercial and mass-market contexts.The Folkloresque challenges disciplinary and genre boundaries; suggests productive new approaches for interpreting folklore, popular culture, literature, film, and contemporary media; and encourages a rethinking of traditional works and older interpretive paradigms."

When this work – one that contributes to both the history and anthropology fields – first appeared in 1982, it was hailed as a landmark study of the role of folklore in nation-building. It has since been highly influential in reshaping the analysis of Greek and European cultural dynamics. In this expanded edition, a new introduction by the author and an epilogue by Sharon Macdonald document its importance for the emergence of serious anthropological interest in European culture and society and for current debates about Greece’s often contested place in the complex politics of the European Union.

A pioneering examination of the folkloric qualities of the World Wide Web, e-mail, and related digital media. These stuidies show that folk culture, sustained by a new and evolving vernacular, has been a key, since the Internet's beginnings, to language, practice, and interaction online. Users of many sorts continue to develop the Internet as a significant medium for generating, transmitting, documenting, and preserving folklore. In a set of new, insightful essays, contributors Trevor J. Blank, Simon J. Bronner, Robert Dobler, Russell Frank, Gregory Hansen, Robert Glenn Howard, Lynne S. McNeill, Elizabeth Tucker, and William Westerman showcase ways the Internet both shapes and is shaped by folklore

'Engaging, modern fables with a feminist tang' Sunday Times DARK, POTENT AND UNCANNY, HAG BURSTS WITH THE UNTOLD STORIES OF OUR ISLES, CAPTURED IN VOICES AS VARIED AS THEY ARE VIVID. Here are sisters fighting for the love of the same woman, a pregnant archaeologist unearthing impossible bones and lost children following you home. A panther runs through the forests of England and pixies prey upon violent men. From the islands of Scotland to the coast of Cornwall, the mountains of Galway to the depths of the Fens, these forgotten folktales howl, cackle and sing their way into the 21st century, wildly reimagined by some of the most exciting women writing in Britain and Ireland today. 'A thoroughly original package that has a hint of Angela Carter' The Times 'Sharp writing and cleverly done' Spectator