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ALAN DUNDES
The
American
Concept
of
Folklore
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ALAN DUNDES
comparesthe much greaterattentiondevotedto studiesof Englishfolksongs in America(e.g., the Child balladin the United States)to studies
of Americanimmigrantfolksongs.
The second "folk"in Newell'slist refersto the Negro in the southern
portionof the United States. The lore of Negroesis still an important
area of researchin Americanfolklorecirclesand, interestinglyenough,
the emphasisupon the lore of southernNegroes has persistedup until
veryrecently. It is onlyin the last decadethatcollectionshavebeenmade
from northernNegroes,notablyby Dorson,7and only in 1964was there
an intensivestudy made of northernurbanNegroes.8 Yet even Dorson
claimsthat AmericanNegrofolklorebelongsprimarilyto the plantation
cultureof the Old Southand he goes so far as to say that "FreeNegroes
living north of the Ohio Riverpossessedno traditions."9The difficulty
hereis that some Americanfolkloristshave consideredonly the folklore
of the ruralsouthernNegro. While Dorson is undoubtedlycorrectin
observingthat ruralNegroeswho move northtendto lose many of their
traditions,it does appearthat the urbannorthernNegro does have a folklore of his own, muchof it probablyrecastfromwhitefolklore,as Abrahams'studyof Negro folklorein Philadelphia,Pennsylvania,abundantly
demonstrates.10
The lore of the AmericanIndian is still a legitimatesubjectfor the
Americanfolklorist. However, the collection and study of American
Indianfolklorehas for the most part been left to anthropologicalfolklorists.Comparativelyfew literaryfolklorists have worked extensively
with AmericanIndianmaterials. (StithThompsonis probablythe most
notable exception.) In the division of "folks"betweenanthropological
and literaryAmericanfolklorists,it is the Negro who has providedthe
common ground. Literaryfolkloristsare concernedwith European-defolkloristsstudyAsianrivedfolkloreandNegrofolklore;anthropological
and
folklore
derived(i.e., AmericanIndian)
Negro folklore. One reason
for this may be the fact that AmericanNegro folkloreis a combination
of Europeanand Africanelements. Thusthe literaryfolkloristinterested
in Europeanfolklore and the anthropologicalfolklorist interestedin
Richard M. Dorson, AmericanFolklore (Chicago, 1959), p. 180.
Roger D. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle ... Negro NarrativeFolklorefrom
the Streets of Philadelphia(Hatboro, Pennsylvania,1964).
9 Dorson, p. 181.
7
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THEAMERICAN
CONCEPT
OF FOLKLORE
231
African folklore both find important sources in the rich American Negro
oral traditions.
The fourth folk category of Newell's outline, the lore of French
Canada and Mexico, has only recently begun to branch out into the field
of American immigrant folklore. Because there have been so many waves
of immigration to the United States, from so many different parts of the
world, it is possible to collect the folklore of almost any European or Asian
country within the confines of the United States. Once again, Newell
urged in 1895 that immigrant folklore be collected and he expressed
the hope that local or regional folklore societies would undertake
this task.11 Nevertheless, the American immigrant as a folk source
remained largely untapped for some time, as Stith Thompson observed.12
Only in the last twenty years has this folk begun to be seriously studied.13
It is probably American immigrant folklore which offers the greatest
challenge to the American folklorist, and it is important to realize that
this type of folklore is bound to result in changes in American concepts
of folklore.
This is because American immigrant folklore is alive. Whereas the
nineteenth-century American concept of folklore was limited to dead or
dying survivals - relics of Old English lore, southern Negro animal tales,
the last remains of a moribund American Indian tradition - the twentiethcentury American concept of folklore includes vital and dynamic traditions, ranging from the lore of schoolchildren to the songs of social protest
of labor unions and American Negro civil rights workers. American
immigrant groups often live in a formally or informally bounded geographic area. They frequently form a community, or perhaps a small
community within a larger community. Many immigrant groups are
held together by a church (e.g., the Greek Orthodox Church), or by an
official organization or association (e.g., the German-American Club).
Members of these groups hold weekly or monthly meetings at which
original native languages are spoken and folklore transmitted. Sometimes
these immigrants become quite nationalistic, much more so than they
were at home "in the old country." They may become nostalgic about
their country of origin. Even their children may be influenced. Second11 William Wells Newell, "Folk-lore Studies and Folk-lore Societies," JAF, VIII
(1895), 238.
12
"American Folklore After Fifty Years," JAF, LI (1938), 6-7.
13
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15
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ALAN DUNDES
folk materials, inasmuch as they have never been in oral tradition and
have never actually been sung by any member of the folk. (However, such
a text could go into oral tradition and be accepted by a folk group, in which
case fakelore would become folklore!) The reason for this conscious
composition is partially aesthetic, but ultimately capitalistic. The popularizer is not interested in scholarship, but in selling many copies of his
book of "folklore." In contrast, one finds in the Soviet Union (and also
in China), that folklore is consciously altered for quite another reason.
The goal is not financial profit, but ideological propaganda. Folklore
is supposed to demonstrate the validity and correctness of a particular
political point of view.16
In the United States, the falsification of folklore serves the purposes
of capitalism while in the Soviet Union and China, its distortion serves
the purposes of dialectical materialism. One assumes that the scholarly
folklorists in both the United States and the Soviet Union deplore this
exploitation of folklore. But whether folklorists like it or not, the evolution of man is moving in a direction towards more, rather than less,
consciousness and awareness of culture. This may even be a good thing.
In the treatment of mental illness, cures are sometimes effected by making
the unconscious conscious. Consciousness affords,if not requires,control.
Man is no longer the mere passive end product of an evolutionary process.
With increased knowledge of the process, man obtains the opportunity
to influence the process. More and more, man controls the direction and
degree of his own evolution. Within this theoretical framework, it becomes obvious that the conscious manipulation of folklore is not really so
extraordinary. Rather it is part of a growing tendency among peoples
with complex cultures to actively mold their cultures, instead of simply
being passively molded by them. Eventually, the American concept of
folklore will have to take account of this self-conscious interference vith
the folk process.
Another striking example of the conscious interference with folklore
is the folklore revival. Folklore revivals are quite distinct from folklore
survivals. A survival, by definition, is marked by a continuity of tradition.
It is the result of an unbroken historical chain through time. A revival,
however, may well follow a break in tradition. It may even occur after
the item has, for all practical purposes, died out. The point is that the
16 Richard M. Dorson, "Current Folklore Theories," Current Anthropology, IV
(1963), 93-112.
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THEAMERICAN
CONCEPT
OF FOLKLORE
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lore, one finds very, very few articlesdevoted to these aspectsof folklore. Anotherstrikingdifferencebetweenthe Americanconceptof folklore and the various conceptionsof folklore found in Europeis the
omissionof festivals. Thereare a numberof Americanfestivalsor ritual
days, e.g., Christmas,Easter,Halloween,and birthdays,but few folklorists studythem. In contrast,the Europeanfolklorejournalsare filled
with studies of festivals. The usual argumentpresentedby American
folkloristsis that folk dance,folk art,andfolk festivalsarenot as important in Americancultureas theyarein most Europeancultures.And it is
a fact that few Americansweartraditionalcostumes(withthe exception
of a few groupslike the Amish). On the other hand, this does not fully
explainwhyAmericanfolkloristshaveneglectednonverbalfolklore. Even
in the case of folk arts and crafts,one could find amplematerialfor research among Americanimmigrantgroups. Yet, there has been little
work in this area and thereare unfortunatelyvery few folk museumsin
the United States. Exceptfor a smallnumberof institutionssuch as the
Farmer'sMuseumat Cooperstown,New York, one findsnothingreally
comparableto the Europeanfolk museums.
23
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50 (1966), 505-516.
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ALAN DUNDES
ation of the lore from the folk is recognized. Thompson speaks of the
personal affection which an amateur collector may have for his informants and then observes that "The comparative folklorist is disturbed by
no such affection.... If he is interested in the people who tell the tale or
sing the song, such interest is purely incidental."39 The study of text
without context, of folklore without reference to folk, continues. The
logic is that if folklore is a superorganic phenomenon which can be
studied without reference to the folk, then there is obviously little need
of examining the psychology of that folk. By this reasoning, the study of
folklore does not require recourse to analyses of individual psychology.40
It is encouraging to note that in American anthropology, the importance of the individual and his psychology is now understood. However,
the subdiscipline in anthropology is termed "Culture and Personality,"
which clearly implies that personality is not part of culture but is something separate from it. In the study of folklore, the relationship of
individual and social psychology to folklore materials barely has been
hypothesized. Yet despite the strong historical-literal tradition and the
powerful influence of superorganicism in American folklore scholarship,
one can conjecture that the American concept of folklore will in time
become eclectic enough to utilize psychological theories.41
One of the most intriguing psychological approaches to folklore is
that employed by psychiatrist Abram Kardiner. Kardiner took Freud's
original notion that folklore, like religion, is a projective system derived
in part from infantile life (with specific reference to the relationship
between infant and parent), and added the necessary element of cultural
relativism. In other words, Kardiner saw that as child-parent relationships differed in various cultures, so the content of the folklore in these
cultures would vary.42 More recent studies have compared the results
of such psychological tests as the T.A.T. (Thematic Apperception Test)
with myths from the same culture. The similarity of themes is striking.43
The significance for folklorists is that a folktale or a folksong is a 'natural'
39
40
41
IV (1963),235-295.
42
Abram Kardiner, TheIndividual
and His Society(New York, 1939),and The
Frontiers
Psychological
of Society(New York,1945).
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ALANDUNDES
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
(Note: Not all of the items listed below are specificallymentionedin the paper. However, all of them are sources for the study of the Americanconcept of folklore.)
Abrahams,Roger D.
1964 Deep Down in the Jungle...Negro NarrativeFolklorefrom the Streets of
Philadelphia.Hatboro, Pennsylvania,Folklore Associates.
Arewa, E. Ojo, and Alan Dundes
1964 "Proverbsand the Ethnographyof SpeakingFolklore,"AmericanAnthropologist, 66, no. 6, part 2, 70-85.
Bascom, William R.
1953 "Folklore and Anthropology,"Journalof AmericanFolklore [henceforth
abbreviatedJAF], 66:283-290.
1954 "Four Functions of Folklore," JAF, 67:333-349.
1955 "VerbalArt," JAF, 68:245-252.
Bayard,Samuel
1953 "The Materials of Folklore," JAF, 66:1-17.
Beckwith, MarthaWarren
1931 Folklore in America: Its Scope and Method.Poughkeepsie,The Folklore
Foundation.
Benedict,Ruth
1931 "Folklore," Encyclopaediaof the Social Sciences, Vol. 6 (New York,
Macmillan),288-293.
Boas, Franz
1916 TsimshianMythology. 31st Annual Report of the Bureau of American
Ethnology. Washington, GovernmentPrintingOffice.
1940 Race, Languageand Culture. New York, Macmillan.
Brinton, Daniel G.
1868 The Myths of the New World:A Treatiseon the Symbolismand Mythology
of the Red Race of America. New York, Leypoldt & Holt.
CarvalhoNeto, Paulo de
1956 Conceptode Folklore. Montevideo, Editorial Livraria Monteiro Lobato.
1962 La InvestigacionFolklorica (Fases y Tecnicas). Quito, Editorial Universitaria.
Child, FrancisJames
1962 TheEnglishand ScottishPopularBallads,5 vols. New York, Cooper Square
Publishers.
Christiansen,Reidar Th.
1962 EuropeanFolklorein America(=Studia Norvegica,12). Oslo, Universitetsforlaget.
Crane, T. F.
1888 "The Diffusion of Popular Tales," JAF, 1:8-15
Davidson, Levette Jay
1951 A Guideto AmericanFolklore. Denver, University of Denver Press.
Dorson, Richard M.
1951 "Folklore Studies in the United States Today," Folklore, 62:353-366.
1955 "The Eclipse of Solar Mythology,"JAF, 68:393-416.
1959a AmericanFolklore. Chicago, Universityof Chicago Press.
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THEAMERICAN
CONCEPT
OF FOLKLORE
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1962
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Wildhaber,Robert
1965 "A BibliographicalIntroductionto AmericanFolklore,"New YorkFolklore
Quarterly,21:259-302.
Wilgus,Donald K.
1959 Anglo-American
FolksongScholarshipSince 1898.New Brunswick,Rutgers
UniversityPress.
Universityof California
Berkeley, California
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