Folklore
Authors: Bronner Simon J. 
Published: February 2014

Folklore as a scholarly term is used in a broad sense to refer to manifestations of traditional knowledge: that is, cultural practices and expressions learned through word of mouth, imitation and demonstration, and custom. In the narrower sense of popular usage, it often refers to oral expressions such as legends, folktales, songs, and proverbs, while social and material traditions such as architecture, crafts, rituals, and festivals are associated with folklife. One reason for this distinction is that oral expression construed as “verbal art” draws attention to itself because of its imaginative or performative features. Houses and crafts often are presented as tangible or subsistence parts of “everyday life”; further, the suffix of “life” more than “lore” is often attached to rituals, customs, and festivals as part of the “round of life.” Most university programs and public centers devoted to the subject connect the two approaches in a shared concern for vernacular or heritage practices and in North America often use a singular label of folklore studies, folk studies, or folkloristics. In Europe, the commonly used rubrics of ethnology and ethnography typically include studies of folklore and folklife, and give special attention to traditional practices and community studies. The professionals who study folklore are called “folklorists.” The use of “folklore” to signify traditions and their study dates back to 1846, when the British editor William John Thoms inspired by the works of the Brothers Grimm on Volkspoesie (literature of the common people) in the early 19th century suggested the old English term “folklore” for what had previously been referred to as “popular antiquities” or “popular literature” and the reference caught on in the press. In the Victorian period, “folk” represented the common people (often construed as peasants or isolated, uneducated, or lower-class groups), whereas “lore” referred to their inherited wisdom and expressions. In the 20th century, scholars revised this view with a more elastic definition emphasizing the emergence and agency of folklore by pointing to the use of expressive traditions or “artistic communication” by anyone interacting in groups. Another development from folklife studies was to consider repeated human practices, or cultural behavioral processes within a community context, as traditional, or emerging as traditional, and therefore inviting folkloristic analysis in relation to the individualism, commercialism, and novelty of modernity or popular culture. Folk culture was differentiated from popular culture because of the former’s frequent localization, as well as participatory and variable nature. Scholars found folklore active and significant enough in modern life to assign social identity, negotiate collective memory, deal with cultural anxieties, and legislate social behavior. In the 21st century, folklorists further revised pre-digital concepts of folklore as face-to-face communication to represent electronic and visual transmission in light of the rise of vernacular practices and global transmission on the Internet and cyberculture. Scholars, particularly in North America and Europe, investigated ways that technology gave rise to traditions and the means by which these traditions differed from other social contexts. In the sections that follow, the concentration of titles is on English-language scholarship conducted in North America and Europe while drawing attention to notable folkloristic activity outside these continents.