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105-527: Johann Karl August Musäus (29 March 1735 – 28 October 1787) was a German author. He was one of the first collectors of German folk stories , most celebrated for his Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1782–1787), a collection of German fairy tales retold as satires. Born in Jena on 29 March 1735, the only son of Joseph Christoph Musäus, a judge. In 1743 his father became a councillor and police magistrate in Eisenach , and

210-459: A street culture outside the purview of adults. This is also ideal where it needs to be collected; as Iona and Peter Opie demonstrated in their pioneering book Children's Games in Street and Playground . Here the social group of children is studied on its own terms, not as a derivative of adult social groups. It is shown that the culture of children is quite distinctive; it is generally unnoticed by

315-432: A binary: one individual or group who actively transmits information in some form to another individual or group. Each of these is a defined role in the folklore process. The tradition-bearer is the individual who actively passes along the knowledge of an artifact; this can be either a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, or an Irish dance troupe performing at a local festival. They are named individuals, usually well known in

420-408: A child's birthday party, including verbal lore ( Happy Birthday song ), material lore (presents and a birthday cake), special games ( Musical chairs ) and individual customs (making a wish as you blow out the candles). Each of these is a folklore artifact in its own right, potentially worthy of investigation and cultural analysis. Together they combine to build the custom of a birthday party celebration,

525-483: A community. Many objects of material folklore are challenging to classify, difficult to archive, and unwieldy to store. The assigned task of museums is to preserve and make use of these bulky artifacts of material culture. To this end, the concept of the living museum has developed, beginning in Scandinavia at the end of the 19th century. These open-air museums not only display the artifacts, but also teach visitors how

630-504: A problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife, we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife fests around the country. There are numerous other definitions. According to William Bascom major article on

735-505: A re-edited version of the tales, which he did as Die deutschen Volksmährchen von Johann August Musäus (1804–1805). It has been reprinted many other times in Germany, including 1787–8, 1795–8, 1912, 1965, and 1976. An abridged version edited by Moritz Müller for children, illustrated by Hermann Vogel , was published in Stuttgart by Thienemann in 1887. The first English translation

840-594: A scripted combination of multiple artifacts which have meaning within their social group. Folklorists divide customs into several different categories. A custom can be a seasonal celebration , such as Thanksgiving or New Year's . It can be a life cycle celebration for an individual, such as baptism, birthday or wedding. A custom can also mark a community festival or event; examples of this are Carnival in Cologne or Mardi Gras in New Orleans . This category also includes

945-509: A shift in purpose and meaning. There are many reasons for continuing to handmake objects for use, for example these skills may be needed to repair manufactured items, or a unique design might be required which is not (or cannot be) found in the stores. Many crafts are considered as simple home maintenance, such as cooking, sewing and carpentry. For many people, handicrafts have also become an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Handmade objects are often regarded as prestigious, where extra time and thought

1050-426: A small sampling of objects and skills that are included in studies of material culture. Customary culture is remembered enactment, i.e. re-enactment. It is the patterns of expected behavior within a group, the "traditional and expected way of doing things" A custom can be a single gesture , such as thumbs down or a handshake . It can also be a complex interaction of multiple folk customs and artifacts as seen in

1155-450: A social event during the winter months, or the gifting of a quilt to signify the importance of the event. Each of these—the traditional pattern chosen, the social event, and the gifting—occur within the broader context of the community. Even so, when considering context, the structure and characteristics of performance can be recognized, including an audience, a framing event, and the use of decorative figures and symbols, all of which go beyond

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1260-400: A swell in popular interest in folk traditions, these community celebrations are becoming more numerous throughout the western world. While ostensibly parading the diversity of their community, economic groups have discovered that these folk parades and festivals are good for business. All shades of people are out on the streets, eating, drinking and spending. This attracts support not only from

1365-553: A whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself. The term folkloristics , along with the alternative name folklore studies , became widely used in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. When the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 1976, to coincide with

1470-492: Is "not idle speculation… Decades of fieldwork have demonstrated conclusively that these groups do have their own folklore." In this modern understanding, folklore is a function of shared identity within any social group. This folklore can include jokes, sayings, and expected behavior in multiple variants, always transmitted in an informal manner. For the most part, it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition, or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge

1575-457: Is a distinct branch of folklore that deals with activities passed on by children to other children, away from the influence or supervision of an adult. Children's folklore contains artifacts from all the standard folklore genres of verbal, material, and customary lore; it is however the child-to-child conduit that distinguishes these artifacts. For childhood is a social group where children teach, learn and share their own traditions, flourishing in

1680-531: Is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. " This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view of the material, i.e., the lore, considered to be folklore artifacts . These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore are no longer considered to be limited to that which

1785-400: Is also transmitted within a group, remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. Tradition is initially remembered behavior; once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics,

1890-480: Is as close as folklorists can come to observing the transmission and social function of this folk knowledge before the spread of literacy during the 19th century. As we have seen with the other genres, the original collections of children's lore and games in the 19th century was driven by a fear that the culture of childhood would die out. Early folklorists, among them Alice Gomme in Britain and William Wells Newell in

1995-505: Is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at the undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. levels. The word folklore , a compound of folk and lore , was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms , who contrived the term as a replacement for the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the word, lore , comes from Old English lār 'instruction'. It

2100-404: Is enmeshed in a multitude of differing identities and their concomitant social groups. The first group that each of us is born into is the family, and each family has its own unique family folklore . As a child grows into an individual, its identities also increase to include age, language, ethnicity, occupation, etc. Each of these cohorts has its own folklore, and as one folklorist points out, this

2205-536: Is found in an issue of the Journal of American Folklore , published in 1975, which is dedicated exclusively to articles on women's folklore, with approaches that had not come from a man's perspective. Other groups that were highlighted as part of this broadened understanding of the folk group were non-traditional families , occupational groups, and families that pursued the production of folk items over multiple generations. Folklorist Richard Dorson explained in 1976 that

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2310-451: Is found in hex signs on Pennsylvania Dutch barns, tin man sculptures made by metalworkers, front yard Christmas displays, decorated school lockers, carved gun stocks, and tattoos. "Words such as naive, self-taught, and individualistic are used to describe these objects, and the exceptional rather than the representative creation is featured." This is in contrast to the understanding of folklore artifacts that are nurtured and passed along within

2415-559: Is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other. That said, each artifact is unique; in fact, one of the characteristics of all folklore artifacts is their variation within genres and types. This is in direct contrast to manufactured goods, where the goal in production is to create identical products, and any variations are considered mistakes. It is, however, just this required variation that makes identification and classification of

2520-520: Is not just any conversation, but words and phrases conforming to a traditional configuration recognized by both the speaker and the audience. For narrative types , by definition, they have a consistent structure and follow an existing model in their narrative form. As just one simple example, in English, the phrase "An elephant walks into a bar…" instantaneously flags the following text as a joke . It might be one you have already heard, but it might be one that

2625-411: Is old or obsolete. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously, and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic; it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, computer programmers ". In direct contrast to high culture , where any single work of a named artist

2730-434: Is protected by copyright law , folklore is a function of shared identity within a common social group. Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs, and objects for the group, since these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can, however, shift and morph; for example,

2835-578: Is spent in their creation and their uniqueness is valued. For the folklorist, these hand-crafted objects embody multifaceted relationships in the lives of the craftspeople and the users, a concept that has been lost with mass-produced items that have no connection to an individual craftsperson. Many traditional crafts, such as ironworking and glass-making, have been elevated to the fine or applied arts and taught in art schools; or they have been repurposed as folk art , characterized as objects whose decorative form supersedes their utilitarian needs. Folk art

2940-403: Is still transmitted orally and, indeed, continues to be generated in new forms and variants at an alarming rate. Below is listed a small sampling of types and examples of verbal lore. The genre of material culture includes all artifacts that can be touched, held, lived in, or eaten. They are tangible objects with a physical or mental presence, either intended for permanent use or to be used at

3045-660: Is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration. In Europe, prior to the Industrial Revolution , everything was made by hand. While some folklorists of the 19th century wanted to secure the oral traditions of the rural folk before the populace became literate, other folklorists sought to identify hand-crafted objects before their production processes were lost to industrial manufacturing. Just as verbal lore continues to be actively created and transmitted in today's culture, so these handicrafts can still be found all around us, with possibly

3150-430: Is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group frequently passed along by word of mouth. The concept of folk has varied over time. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor, and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk is a social group that includes two or more people with common traits who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk

3255-540: Is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community. The concept of cultural (folklore) performance is shared with ethnography and anthropology among other social sciences. The cultural anthropologist Victor Turner identified four universal characteristics of cultural performance: playfulness, framing ,

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3360-428: Is used to confirm and reinforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. It can also be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folk dance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in

3465-818: The Bicentennial Celebration , folkloristics in the United States came of age. "…[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction." Added to

3570-602: The Halloween celebration of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages and even gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration; the cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were originally good public health in a land with little water, but now these customs signify for some people identification as an Orthodox Jew. By comparison, a common action such as tooth brushing , which

3675-616: The Historic–Geographic Method , a methodology that dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century. When William Thoms first published his appeal to document the verbal lore of the rural populations, it was believed these folk artifacts would die out as the population became literate. Over the past two centuries, this belief has proven to be wrong; folklorists continue to collect verbal lore in both written and spoken form from all social groups. Some variants might have been captured in published collections, but much of it

3780-556: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrated each summer on the Mall in Washington, DC. A fourth category includes customs related to folk beliefs . Walking under a ladder is just one of many symbols considered unlucky . Occupational groups tend to have a rich history of customs related to their life and work, so the traditions of sailors or lumberjacks . The area of ecclesiastical folklore , which includes modes of worship not sanctioned by

3885-693: The Wilhelm-Ernst-Gymnasium in Weimar. He became a Freemason in July 1776 at the "Amalia" lodge in Weimar, and became a member of the Bavarian Illuminati in August 1783, taking the names " Priscillianus " and " Dante Alighieri ", and becoming presbyter that year. Musäus was an amateur actor, and introduced his nephew August von Kotzebue to the theatre, as well as acting alongside Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in

3990-551: The " Legenden von Rübezahl " ( ' Legends of Rübezahl ' ) in the Volksmärchen was said by Henry A. Pochmann and others to have inspired the Headless Horseman of Washington Irving 's " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " (1820). Another of the Volksmärchen , "Der geraubte Schleier" ("The Stolen Veil"), a tale about a Swan maiden , was used by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to provide the plot outline of Swan Lake (1876), though

4095-889: The "Legendary Tale of the Graf von Gleichen" (a partial translation of "Melechsala") in Rambles and Researches in Thuringian Saxony (1842), The Three Sisters: A Story (1842), "Libussa" in Tales from the German (1844), three stories in Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845), two in The Enchanted Knights; or The Chronicle of the Three Sisters (1845), seven in Select Popular Tales from

4200-933: The "Legends of Rübezahl" in The Spirit of the Giant Mountains (1864), and a new translation by Lemon of the "Chronicles of the Three Sisters" in Fairy Tales (1868). A few more followed, such as one in Wonder-World Stories (1877), Harriet Pinckney Huse's Roland's Squires (1891), "The Treasure Seeker" in Andrew Lang 's The Crimson Fairy Book (1903), the first Volksmärchen Rübezahl tale in The Brown Fairy Book (1904), two stories in Magic Casements: A Second Fairy Book (1907), and an abridged version of

4305-522: The "Legends of Rübezahl" was translated in the Ladies Companion and Literary Expositor (1837). The 1840s saw a revival of interest in German traditions following the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, which may have led to the subsequent new translations of Musäus's work. This included two of the "Legends of Rübezahl" in The Annualette (1841),

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4410-661: The 1830s, Julia Emily Gordon completed an unpublished translation of The Books of the Chronicles of the Three Sisters , one of the "Legends of Rübezahl" was translated by Henry Fox Talbot in Legendary Tales, in Verse and Prose (1830), new abridged translations of "The Spectre Barber" were published in the Royal Lady's Magazine (1831) and The Decameron of the West (1839), and another of

4515-489: The American Folklore Society brought the behavioral approach into open debate among folklorists. In 1972 Richard Dorson called out the "young Turks" for their movement toward a behavioral approach to folklore. This approach "shifted the conceptualization of folklore as an extractable item or 'text' to an emphasis on folklore as a kind of human behavior and communication. Conceptualizing folklore as behavior redefined

4620-520: The Dead (1813), including an abridged form of "Stumme Liebe" as "The Spectre-Barber". His collected folk tales continue to be adapted, such as the story of Libussa and Premysl in the 2009 film The Pagan Queen . An asteroid discovered on 6 April 1989 was named 10749 Musäus after him. Folk stories Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression . Just as essential as

4725-751: The Enchanted Knights (1850), The Stolen Veil; or, the Tale à la Montgolfier (1850), two in Libussa, Duchess of Bohemia; also The Man Without a Name (1852), and three of the "Legends of Rübezahl" in Hutchings' California Magazine (1859–1860). A number of new translations were published in the 1860s, including one of the "Legends of Rübezahl" in The Art-Journal (1861), The Three Sons-in-Law (1861), Mark Lemon 's Legends of Number Nip (1863), all five of

4830-756: The German of Musaeus (1845), one of the "Legends of Rübezahl" by Caroline M. Sawyer in the Universalist Union (1845), "The Elopement" in Sharpe's London Magazine (1846), two in The Nymph of the Well and The Barber's Ghost (1848), Melechsala (1848), a light-hearted free verse poem version of the "Chronicles of the Three Sisters" as The Arm! – the Sword! – and the Hour! Or, the Legend of

4935-603: The Germans ' ; original spelling: Volksmährchen der Deutschen ) is an early collection of German folk stories retold in a satirical style by Johann Karl August Musäus , published in five volumes between 1782 and 1787. Volksmärchen der Deutschen was first published in five volumes between 1782 and 1787 by C. W. Ettinger in Gotha , Thuringia. After Musäus's death in 1787, his widow requested Christoph Martin Wieland publish

5040-545: The History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society and concerned with the connections of folklore with history, as well as the history of folklore studies. Lacking context, folklore artifacts would be uninspiring objects without any life of their own. It is only through performance that the artifacts come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; the intergroup communication arises in

5145-889: The Northern Nations (1823), one of the "Legends of Rübezahl" in Endless Entertainment (1825), one story in Thomas Roscoe 's The German Novelists (1826), "The Elopement" in The Odd Volume: Second Series (1827), another translation of "The Elopement" in The United States Review and Literary Gazette (1827), three stories in Thomas Carlyle 's German Romance (1827), and two of the "Legends of Rübezahl" in The Pocket Magazine (1827). In

5250-572: The Second ), afterwards (in 1781–1782) rewritten and issued with a new title, Der deutsche Grandison ( The German Grandison ). The object of this book was to satirize Samuel Richardson 's hero Sir Charles Grandison , who had many sentimental admirers in the Holy Roman Empire . In 1763 Musäus was made tutor of the court pages in Weimar , and in 1769 he became professor of Ancient Languages and History at

5355-529: The Second World War, folklorists began to articulate a more holistic approach toward their subject matter. In tandem with the growing sophistication in the social sciences , attention was no longer limited to the isolated artifact, but extended to include the artifact embedded in an active cultural environment. One early proponent was Alan Dundes with his essay "Texture, Text and Context", first published 1964. A public presentation in 1967 by Dan Ben-Amos at

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5460-599: The United States, felt a need to capture the unstructured and unsupervised street life and activities of children before it was lost. This fear proved to be unfounded. In a comparison of any modern school playground during recess and the painting of "Children's Games" by Pieter Breugel the Elder we can see that the activity level is similar, and many of the games from the 1560 painting are recognizable and comparable to modern variations still played today. These same artifacts of childlore, in innumerable variations, also continue to serve

5565-413: The artifacts and turn them into something else; so Old McDonald's farm is transformed from animal noises to the scatological version of animal poop. This childlore is characterized by "its lack of dependence on literary and fixed form. Children…operate among themselves in a world of informal and oral communication, unimpeded by the necessity of maintaining and transmitting information by written means". This

5670-423: The business community, but also from federal and state organizations for these local street parties. Paradoxically, in parading diversity within the community, these events have come to authenticate true community, where business interests ally with the varied (folk) social groups to promote the interests of the community as a whole. This is just a small sampling of types and examples of customary lore. Childlore

5775-488: The choice of his godfather rather than his own), and was admitted into German Society around this time, a sign of more than ordinary merit. He received a Master's degree after the usual three and a half years of study, to add to the degree he had received honoris causa ten years earlier on 13 July 1747, and returned to Eisenach to wait for an appointment in the Church, which he was now licensed for. Despite preaching well, he

5880-556: The community as knowledgeable in their traditional lore. They are not the anonymous "folk", the nameless mass without of history or individuality. The audience of this performance is the other half in the transmission process; they listen, watch, and remember. Few of them will become active tradition-bearers; many more will be passive tradition-bearers who maintain a memory of this specific traditional artifact, in both its presentation and its content. Volksm%C3%A4rchen der Deutschen Volksmärchen der Deutschen ( ' Folktales of

5985-457: The complexity of the interpretation, the birthday party for a seven-year-old will not be identical to the birthday party for that same child as a six-year-old, even though they follow the same model. For each artifact embodies a single variant of a performance in a given time and space. The task of the folklorist becomes to identify within this surfeit of variables the constants and the expressed meaning that shimmer through all variations: honoring of

6090-472: The continent is a single example of an ethnic group parading their separateness (differential behavior ), and encouraging Americans of all stripes to show alliance to this colorful ethnic group. These festivals and parades, with a target audience of people who do not belong to the social group, intersect with the interests and mission of public folklorists , who are engaged in the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folklife. With

6195-598: The custom, either as performer or audience, signifies acknowledgment of that social group. Some customary behavior is intended to be performed and understood only within the group itself, so the handkerchief code sometimes used in the gay community or the initiation rituals of the Freemasons. Other customs are designed specifically to represent a social group to outsiders, those who do not belong to this group. The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and in other communities across

6300-456: The defining features a challenge. While this classification is essential for the subject area of folkloristics, it remains just labeling and adds little to an understanding of the traditional development and meaning of the artifacts themselves. Necessary as they are, genre classifications are misleading in their oversimplification of the subject area. Folklore artifacts are never self-contained, they do not stand in isolation but are particulars in

6405-517: The developmental function of this childlore, the artifacts themselves have been in play for centuries. Below is listed just a small sampling of types and examples of childlore and games. A case has been made for considering folk history as a distinct sub-category of folklore, an idea that has received attention from such folklorists as Richard Dorson. This field of study is represented in The Folklore Historian , an annual journal sponsored by

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6510-410: The established church tends to be so large and complex that it is usually treated as a specialized area of folk customs; it requires considerable expertise in standard church ritual in order to adequately interpret folk customs and beliefs that originated in official church practice. Customary folklore is always a performance, be it a single gesture or a complex of scripted customs, and participating in

6615-434: The extensive array of other legislation designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States, this law also marks a shift in national awareness. It gives voice to a growing understanding that cultural diversity is a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. Paradoxically, it is a unifying feature, not something that separates the citizens of a country. "We no longer view cultural difference as

6720-471: The extent of Tchaikovsky's use of Musäus's story is challenged by some such as Russian ballet patriarch Fyodor Lopukhov, who argue the ballet is essentially Russian. One of the Volksmärchen translated into French (" Stumme Liebe " translated as "L'Amour Muet") was contained in Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès 's Fantasmagoriana (1812) along with seven other German ghost-stories. This collection

6825-496: The first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items that had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups, and epochs, giving rise to

6930-638: The first of the "Legends of Rübezahl" in The Greatest Adventure Stories Ever Told (1945). More recently, Fritz Eichenberg adapted the first of the "Legends of Rübezahl" as Poor Troll (1983), Janet Ritch translated The Elopement (1989) for the Victoria University Library , Jack Zipes translated "Libussa" in Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture (1991), and Piri Korngold Nesselrod retold

7035-416: The form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts . Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore

7140-411: The generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation" that are found in all folk artifacts. Folklorists are interested in the physical form, the method of manufacture or construction, the pattern of use, as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies

7245-404: The individual within the circle of family and friends, gifting to express their value and worth to the group, and of course, the festival food and drink as signifiers of the event. The formal definition of verbal lore is words, both written and oral, that are "spoken, sung, voiced forms of traditional utterance that show repetitive patterns." Crucial here are the repetitive patterns. Verbal lore

7350-417: The items were used, with actors reenacting the everyday lives of people from all segments of society, relying heavily on the material artifacts of a pre-industrial society. Many locations even duplicate the processing of the objects, thus creating new objects of an earlier historic time period. Living museums are now found throughout the world as part of a thriving heritage industry . This list represents just

7455-431: The job of folklorists..." Folklore became a verb, an action, something that people do, not just something that they have. It is in the performance and the active context that folklore artifacts get transmitted in informal, direct communication, either verbally or in demonstration. Performance includes all the different modes and manners in which this transmission occurs. Transmission is a communicative process requiring

7560-408: The language of a folklore performance. Material culture requires some moulding to turn it into a performance. Should we consider the performance of the creation of the artifact, as in a quilting party, or the performance of the recipients who use the quilt to cover their marriage bed? Here the language of context works better to describe the quilting of patterns copied from the grandmother, quilting as

7665-421: The latter's early verse comedy Die Mitschuldigen (1777). Due to his sociable nature, he was held in high regard in Weimar. His second book, Physiognomische Reisen , did not appear until 1778/79. It was directed against Lavater , and attracted much favorable attention. From 1782 to 1787 he published his best work, Volksmärchen der Deutschen , a collection of German fairy tales . Even in this series of tales,

7770-489: The magazine The German Museum (1801), and the "Legends of Rübezahl" published in three chapbooks by S. Fisher (1804–1805). In the early nineteenth century, some French translations of the Volksmärchen were translated into English. "The Lost Veil" and "Melechsala" were translated in Tales (1805) from Isabelle de Montolieu 's Recueil de contes (1803), an abridged version of " The Spectre-Barber " (" Stumme Liebe ")

7875-478: The most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects ( material folklore ), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs ( verbal folklore ), and beliefs and ways of doing things ( customary folklore ). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for children's folklore and games ( childlore ), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is particular to school yards and neighborhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes

7980-411: The necessary beat to complex physical rhythms and movements, be it hand-clapping, jump roping, or ball bouncing. Furthermore, many physical games are used to develop strength, coordination and endurance of the players. For some team games, negotiations about the rules can run on longer than the game itself as social skills are rehearsed. Even as we are just now uncovering the neuroscience that undergirds

8085-460: The next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects that have been created by hand for a specific purpose; however, folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as dreidels or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore because of their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. … [They are] transmitted across

8190-535: The past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm (first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings, and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By

8295-531: The performance and this is where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams has described it thus: "Folklore is folklore only when performed. As organized entities of performance, items of folklore have a sense of control inherent in them, a power that can be capitalized upon and enhanced through effective performance." Without transmission, these items are not folklore, they are just individual quirky tales and objects. This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in

8400-502: The period of romantic nationalism in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder , whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in the locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France , Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans, who systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them in their process of nation building . This process

8505-442: The revived interest in fairy tales (which had declined since their late-17th century peak) caused by the rise of romanticism and Romantic nationalism . This trend continued in the nineteenth century and included others, such as Benedikte Naubert and the Brothers Grimm . They had an important influence on Hans Christian Andersen . The Volksmärchen have been frequently reprinted ( Düsseldorf , 1903, etc.) and translated. Five of

8610-408: The rural poor as folk. The common feature in this expanded definition of folk was their identification as the underclass of society. Moving forward into the 20th century, in tandem with new thinking in the social sciences , folklorists also revised and expanded their concept of the folk group. By the 1960s, it was understood that social groups , i.e., folk groups, were all around us; each individual

8715-420: The same function of learning and practicing skills needed for growth. So bouncing and swinging rhythms and rhymes encourage development of balance and coordination in infants and children. Verbal rhymes like Peter Piper picked... serve to increase both the oral and aural acuity of children. Songs and chants, accessing a different part of the brain, are used to memorize series ( Alphabet song ). They also provide

8820-410: The second half of the 20th century, when the two terms " folklore performance " and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context

8925-521: The self-representation of a community. Different genres are frequently combined with each other to mark an event. So a birthday celebration might include a song or formulaic way of greeting the birthday child (verbal), presentation of a cake and wrapped presents (material), as well as customs to honor the individual, such as sitting at the head of the table and blowing out the candles with a wish. There might also be special games played at birthday parties, which are not generally played at other times. Adding to

9030-444: The sophisticated world of adults, and quite as little affected by it. Of particular interest to folklorists here is the mode of transmission of these artifacts; this lore circulates exclusively within an informal pre-literate children's network or folk group. It does not include artifacts taught to children by adults. However children can take the taught and teach it further to other children, turning it into childlore. Or they can take

9135-403: The speaker has just thought up within the current context. Another example is the child's song Old MacDonald Had a Farm , where each performance is distinctive in the animals named, their order, and their sounds. Songs such as this are used to express cultural values (farms are important, farmers are old and weather-beaten) and teach children about different domesticated animals. Verbal folklore

9240-412: The study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group. Beginning in the 1960s, a further expansion of the concept of folk began to unfold through the study of folklore. Individual researchers identified folk groups that had previously been overlooked and ignored. One notable example of this

9345-405: The study of folklore is "concerned with the study of traditional culture, or the unofficial culture" that is the folk culture, "as opposed to the elite culture, not for the sake of proving a thesis but to learn about the mass of [humanity] overlooked by the conventional disciplines." Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For

9450-470: The study of folklore. With the increasing theoretical sophistication of the social sciences , it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group; it is indeed all around us. Folklore does not have to be old or antiquated; it continues to be created and transmitted, and in any group, it is used to differentiate between "us" and "them." Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during

9555-465: The substance of which Musäus collected among the people, he could not refrain from satire. The stories, therefore, lack the simplicity of genuine folk-lore. In 1785 was issued Freund Heins Erscheinungen in Holbeins Manier by Johann Rudolph Schellenberg , with explanations in prose and verse by Musäus. He was prevented from completing a collection of stories entitled Straussfedern (though one volume

9660-551: The tales were translated into English by Thomas Beddoes as Popular Tales of the Germans (1791), and three were included in German Romance (1827) translated by Thomas Carlyle . They were also translated into French a number of times, including as Contes populaires des Allemands (1803) by J. Lefèvre, a translation of two of the stories by Isabelle de Montolieu (1803), and another complete translation with an introduction by Charles Paul de Kock (1826) among others. The last of

9765-420: The topic, there are "four functions to folklore": The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the original term "folklore" , was characterized by being rural, illiterate, and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with

9870-473: The totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology , using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as

9975-459: The turn of the 20th century, the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included

10080-432: The use of symbolic language, and employing the subjunctive mood . In viewing the performance, the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, or "what if?" It is self-evident that this fits well with all types of verbal lore, where reality has no place among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into

10185-680: The utility of the object. Before the Second World War , folk artifacts had been understood and collected as cultural shards of an earlier time. They were considered individual vestigial artifacts, with little or no function in the contemporary culture. Given this understanding, the goal of the folklorist was to capture and document them before they disappeared. They were collected with no supporting data, bound in books, archived and classified more or less successfully. The Historic–Geographic Method worked to isolate and track these collected artifacts, mostly verbal lore, across space and time. Following

10290-549: The young Musäus moved to live with his godfather and uncle Dr. Johann Weißenborn in Allstedt , who was entrusted with his education and treated Musäus like a son. He continued living with his uncle until he was nineteen years old, even when his uncle became general superintendent of Eisenach in 1744, a move which brought him to the same city as his parents again. Musäus entered the University of Jena in 1754 to study theology (probably

10395-577: Was Popular Tales of the Germans (1791) by Thomas Beddoes , which contained five of the stories: "Richilda", "The Book of the Chronicles of the Three Sisters", "The Stealing of the Veil", "Elfin Freaks" (" Legenden von Rübezahl "), and "The Nymph of the Fountain". This book was published anonymously, and the translation was traditionally attributed to William Beckford . Other early translations include "The Elopement" in

10500-437: Was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations, like Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbors. Folklore, as a field of study, further developed among 19th-century European scholars, who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity . Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residues and survivals of

10605-447: Was not especially devoted to religion, and received no appointment; when after several years he was offered a vacancy as pastor in the nearby countryside, the locals objected on the grounds that "he had once been seen dancing." This finished his hopes of a career in the church, and at the age of twenty-five he became an author of satire . From 1760 to 1762 Musäus published in three volumes his first work, Grandison der Zweite ( Grandison

10710-480: Was published in 1787) by his death on 28 October 1787 in Weimar, where he is buried in the Jacobsfriedhof . Musäus's Nachgelassene Schriften (1791) were published posthumously, edited by his relative, August von Kotzebue . The Straussfedern continued to be published by the bookseller Christoph Friedrich Nicolai , with contributions by Ludwig Tieck (1795–1798). Musäus's Volksmärchen were an early part of

10815-563: Was read by Lord Byron , Percy Bysshe Shelley , Mary Shelley , Claire Clairmont and John William Polidori in the summer of 1816 , and inspired them to try to write their own ghost-stories. Lord Byron wrote a fragment of a novel that is considered the first modern vampire story, Polidori wrote The Vampyre based on this, and Mary Shelley went on to write Frankenstein . Five of the eight stories in Fantasmagoriana were translated into English by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson as Tales of

10920-513: Was the original folklore , the artifacts defined by William Thoms as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century, these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published

11025-686: Was translated in Tales of the Dead (1813) from Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès 's Fantasmagoriana (1812), and another abridged translation of " Stumme Liebe ", by Isabelle de Montolieu, was translated as "The Dumb Lover" in La Belle Assemblée (1814). A number of direct translations were published in the 1820s, as part of an increased British interest in German Romanticist literature . This included two stories in Popular Tales and Romances of

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