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Folklore

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Ancient History,
Classical History and Mythology; Myths

   Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music,
   dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs,
   customs, material culture, and so forth, common to a particular
   population, comprising the traditions (including oral traditions) of
   that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices
   through which those expressive genres are shared. The academic and
   usually ethnographic study of folklore is sometimes called
   folkloristics.

History

   The concept of folklore developed as part of the 19th century ideology
   of romantic nationalism, leading to the reshaping of oral traditions to
   serve modern ideological goals; only in the 20th century did
   ethnographers begin to attempt to record folklore without overt
   political goals. The Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, collected
   orally transmitted German tales and published the first series as
   Kinder- und Hausmärchen ("Children's and Household Tales") in 1812.

   The term was coined in 1846 by an Englishman, William Thoms, who wanted
   to use an Anglo-Saxon term for what was then called "popular
   antiquities." Johann Gottfried von Herder first advocated the
   deliberate recording and preservation of folklore to document the
   authentic spirit, tradition, and identity of the German people; the
   belief that there can be such authenticity is one of the tenets of the
   romantic nationalism which Herder developed. The definition most widely
   accepted by current scholars of the field is "artistic communication in
   small groups," coined by Dan Ben-Amos a scholar at the University of
   Pennsylvania, and the term, and the associated field of study, now
   include non-verbal art forms and customary practices.

   While folklore can contain religious or mythic elements, it equally
   concerns itself with the sometimes mundane traditions of everyday life.
   Folklore frequently ties the practical and the esoteric into one
   narrative package. It has often been conflated with mythology, and vice
   versa, because it has been assumed that any figurative story that does
   not pertain to the dominant beliefs of the time is not of the same
   status as those dominant beliefs. Thus, Roman religion is called "myth"
   by Christians. In that way, both myth and folklore have become
   catch-all terms for all figurative narratives which do not correspond
   with the dominant belief structure. Sometimes "folklore" is religious
   in nature, like the tales of the Welsh Mabinogion or those found in
   Icelandic skaldic poetry. Many of the tales in the Golden Legend of
   Jacob de Voragine also embody folklore elements in a Christian context:
   examples of such Christian mythology are the themes woven round Saint
   George or Saint Christopher. In this case, the term "folklore" is being
   used in a pejorative sense. That is, while the tales of Odin the
   Wanderer have a religious value to the Norse who composed the stories,
   because it does not fit into a Christian configuration it is not
   considered "religious" by Christians who may instead refer to it as
   "folklore."

   Folk tales are general term for different varieties of traditional
   narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal,
   common to basic and complex societies alike. Even the forms folktales
   take are certainly similar from culture to culture, and comparative
   studies of themes and narrative ways have been successful in showing
   these relationships. Also it is considered to be an oral tale to be
   told for everybody.

   On the other hand, folklore can be used to accurately describe a
   figurative narrative, which has no sacred or religious content. In the
   Jungian view, which is but one method of analysis, it may instead
   pertain to unconscious psychological patterns, instincts or archetypes
   of the mind. This lore may or may not have components of the fantastic
   (such as magic, ethereal beings or the personification of inanimate
   objects). These folktales may or may not emerge from a religious
   tradition, but nevertheless speak to deep psychological issues. The
   familiar folklore, " Hansel and Gretel," is an example of this fine
   line. The manifest purpose of the tale may primarily be one of mundane
   instruction regarding forest safety or secondarily a cautionary tale
   about the dangers of famine to large families, but its latent meaning
   may evoke a strong emotional response due to the widely understood
   themes and motifs such as “The Terrible Mother”, “Death,” and
   “Atonement with the Father.” There can be both a moral and
   psychological scope to the work, as well as entertainment value,
   depending upon the nature of the teller, the style of the telling, the
   ages of the audience members, and the overall context of the
   performance. Folklorists generally resist universal interpretations of
   narratives and, wherever possible, analyze oral versions of tellings in
   specific contexts, rather than print sources, which often show the work
   or bias of the writer or editor.

   Contemporary narratives common in the Western world include the urban
   legend. There are many forms of folklore that are so common, however,
   that most people do not realize they are folklore, such as riddles,
   children's rhymes and ghost stories, rumors (including conspiracy
   theories), gossip, ethnic stereotypes, and holiday customs and
   life-cycle rituals. UFO abduction narratives can be seen, in some
   sense, to refigure the tales of pre-Christian Europe, or even such
   tales in the Bible as the Ascent of Elijah to heaven. Adrienne Mayor,
   in introducing a bibliography on the topic, noted that most modern
   folklorists are largely unaware of classical parallels and precedents,
   in materials that are only partly represented by the familiar
   designation Aesopica: "Ancient Greek and Roman literature contains rich
   troves of folklore and popular beliefs, many of which have counterparts
   in modern contemporary legends" (Mayor, 2000).

Categories of folklore

     * Genres
          + Ballad
          + Blason Populaire
          + Counting rhymes
          + Costumbrista
          + Craft
          + Custom
          + Folk play
          + Epic poetry
          + Festival
          + Folk speech
          + Folk art
          + Folk belief
          + Folk magic
          + Folk metaphor
          + Folk poetry and rhyme
          + Folk simile
          + Folk song
          + Folk tale
               o Animal tale
               o Fairy tale
               o Jocular tale
          + Games
          + Holiday lore and customs
          + Joke
          + Legend
               o Urban (or Contemporary) legend
          + Material culture
          + Myth
          + Memorate
          + Proverb
          + Riddle
          + Superstition and popular belief
          + Taunts
          + Weather lore
          + Xerox lore

     * National or ethnic (see romantic nationalism)
          + African-American folklore
          + Albanian folklore
          + Arab folklore
          + Austrian folklore
          + American folklore
          + Australian folklore
          + Brazilian folklore
          + Caribbean folklore
          + Chinese folklore
          + English folklore
          + Finnish folklore
          + Germanic folklore
          + German folklore
          + Indian folklore
          + Iranian folklore
          + Irish folklore
          + Italian folklore
          + Jewish folklore, which incorporates the Aggadah
          + Japanese folklore
          + Korean folklore
          + Kosovar folklore
          + Latin American folklore
          + Laz folklore
          + Mexican folklore
          + Native American folklore
          + Olrig folklore
          + Pakistani folklore
          + Philippine folklore
          + Portuguese folklore
          + Russian folklore
          + Scandinavian folklore
          + Scottish folklore
          + Slavic folklore
          + Swiss folklore
          + Turkish folklore
          + Venezuelan folklore
          + Welsh folklore

Other usages

   In mathematics and some related disciplines, the term folklore is used
   to refer to any result in a field of study which is widely known by
   practitioners of that field, but considered too trivial or unoriginal
   to be worth publishing by itself in the research literature. Such
   results often have to wait for a new textbook on the subject, or a
   survey article, before they appear in print.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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