Recentering Anglo/American Folksong
Subtitle: Sea Crabs and Wicked Youths
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: January 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 183
ISBN-13: 9781578063932
Subjects: United States; Music; Folk Music; Music/Songbooks; Genres & Styles - Folk & Traditional; History & Criticism - General; Folk songs, English; Great Britain; History and criticism
First sentence: As folklorists increasingly attempt to address their current crisis of identity by, for example, adopting the terminology of other disciplines (we seldom seem to "collect folklore" any more, for instance, but instead "do ethnography") and by striving mightily to be considered progressive (so that insistent "theorizing" of every aspect of our discipline is all the rage), we find ourselves paradoxically becoming less respected rather than more.
Description: "A wealth of texts of British and Anglo/North American folksong has long been accessible in both published and archival sources. For two centuries these texts have energized scholarship. Yet in the past three decades this material has languished, as literary theory has held sway over textual study. In this crusading book Roger deV. Renwick argues that the business of folksong scholars is to explain folksong.

Folklorists must liberate the material's own voice rather than impose theories that are personally compelling or appealing." "To that end, Renwick presents a case study in each of five essays to demonstrate the scholarly value of approaching this material through close readings and comparatives analysis."--BOOK JACKET.