Folklore Midterm

Front 1

What is Folklore?

Back 1

Folklore is anything unofficial and not a part of mainstream society. It is defined as the speech, traditions ext of a group. Folklore is learned unofficially usually through oral tradition or observation.

Front 2

When studying folklore, is process more important or the end result?

Back 2

The process is the folklore not necessarily the end result.

Front 3

What are the three categories of folklore?

Back 3

Oral, Material, Customary

Front 4

What are folk groups, how do we define them?

Back 4

Any group of two or more who share a common interest or belief.

Informal, unofficial shared knowledge is a defining feature in folk groups and we all belong to them

Front 5

How do folk groups define themselves?

Back 5

A large part of the way they define themselves is by common values, traditions, and folklore. However, they also identify themselves by who they are not

Front 6

Social Construction Theory:

Back 6

knowledge and others beliefs as superstitions.

Front 7

What are memorates and why are they important?

Back 7

personal accounts of the supernatural, Important because they are reliable guides to the current state of a particular belief or tradition.

Front 8

What are the three essential elements of a folk tale/legend?

Back 8

1. Strong basic appeal.
2. Foundation in actual belief
3. Meaningful message and/or moral.

Front 9

What are the archetypes?

Back 9

There are three types of archetypes: Hero - Will always show up in a story; Male - All females have some male in them; Female: All males have some female in them.

Front 10

Anima/Animus

Back 10

In the unconscious of the male, it finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima; equivalently, in the unconscious of the female it is expressed as a masculine inner personality: animus.

Front 11

What is the Right of Passage model?

Back 11

1)Separation (from past self or community)
2)Liminal Stage (Between who you used to be and who you will be)
3)Reintegration (Who you became)

Front 12

Rituals: What are they? What must be included in them?

Back 12

A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community.
Rituals are repeated, habitual actions, but they are more purposeful than custom; rituals are frequently highly organized and controlled, often meant to indicate or announce membership in a group. Rituals are performances that are repeated, patterned and frequently include ceremonial actions that incorporate symbols, action, repetition and a time frame that indicates when the rituals begins and ends.

Front 13

What are the 3 stages of a ritual?

Back 13

1. separation (from oneself, your current self)
2. Liminal- this is an ambiguous stage in which you are neither this nor that. The transformation is not yet complete. (ludic Play)
3. Reintegration
(sources to come shortly)

Front 14

Rituals vs Customs:

Back 14

Rituals are repeated, habitual actions, but they are more purposeful than custom. (living folklore pg.95)

Front 15

Rituals vs Tradition

Back 15

Tradition is the context in which rituals take place

Front 16

Structuralism vs Functionalism:

Back 16

Structuralism is the study of key aspects of a folk text, such as themes, symbols, ideas, formats, etc.
Functionalism looks at the purpose of a folk text, to see why it is important to the group.

Front 17

Sacred vs Secular (include the hybrid version):

Back 17

Sacred rituals are associated with nearly every group that has beliefs about spiritual or supernatural worlds or phenomena. typically take place in the presence of a group or privately. all make belief visible.

Secular rituals are not overtly associated with any sacred or spiritual beliefs, can also have great significance for participants, and the question of belief may have just as much relevance.

Front 18

Define Traditions:

Back 18

* Both the lore we share and the process by which we share it.


(process of how its communicated)

* Something that creates and confirms identity.
* Something that the group identifies as a tradition.

Front 19

Can you describe the Rule of Threes

Back 19

In texts, everything happens in threes:
3 blind mice
3 little pigs
3 parts of time: past, present, and future
3 parts of a story: beginning, plot, and end
3 words in proverbs: “Stop, look, and listen,” or “Blood, sweat, and tears.”

*In Native-American cultures, this is often the case, but in fours.

Front 20

How do we analyze narratives (Jungian archetypes. type-index-motif):

Back 20

1) Type-Index organizes tales by the whole and the plot.
2) Motif-Index separates folktales, and myths by narrative legends (ex. what is other-worldly, what is of our world).
3) A combination of type-index and motif-index, combined, can be used to identify the sub-classes of folktales and myths.

Front 21

Grimm Brothers:

Back 21

(Jacob and Wilhelm) Out of Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries. These two compiled stories from around Germany because they were afraid that their culture was dying out and did not want to lose these stories. They did this to restore a sense of nationalism in Germany. The nationalist approach to folklore studies placed the emphasis on examining a “dying culture,” a culture’s scholars assumed was being consumed by the educated people.
Searched for meaning and pattern in folklore (fairy tales) of the German past, which would solve modern problems
Nationalist approach: the rural population has untampered connections with the past

Front 22

Franz Boas:

Back 22

Prominent (German-born) American scholar. He examined cultural diffusion- the way texts move from culture to culture. Asserted the fact that culture influences everything we know and experience.

Cultural Relativism: Whatever the influences, each cultural group is complete in and of itself. Cultural Relativism stressed the integrity of individual cultures, and often, the individual within the culture.

Front 23

William John Thoms:

Back 23

Coined the phrase "folklore" in 1846, and modeled his ideas for studying the expressive culture after the work of the Grimm Brothers. Focused on collecting material and verbal texts and customary behaviors of people in the British countryside.

(pg. 23, living folklore)

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Max Muller:

Back 24

Solar Mythology Theory- proponents of this theory saw connections between myths and mythological characters as expressions of beliefs about the sun and moon.

Muller developed the theory stating that European folktales all derived from solar myths and contained similar symbols related to night and day. This helped to explain the appearance of similar texts in different cultures or different parts of the world.

(living folklore pg.23-24)

Front 25

Why did it start in Germany?

Back 25

The romantic concept of "the folk" grew in the eighteenth century out of a sense that civilization separated humans from the natural world. It was thought that those who lived further away from civilized society had the truest elements for gathering, and had not been changed by elite culture. This was folk at its truest form. German scholars began to believe that members of the rural, lower-class communities held the knowledge of the country's Teutonic past and they feared it was going to get lost as the groups were being wiped out. German scholars decided it needed to be collected and documented before this happened.

Front 26

* Performance Theory:

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The lore of a group functions more obviously as an active transmission, a performed communication that allows members of a group to share and understand its identity.
(living folklore pg.36)

Focus on the performance of the lore rather than the text itself. Context is important, as well as who was involved.

Front 27

* “Vernacular” vs “Folk”:

Back 27

Vernacular refers to language. It is specific to certain regions i.e: localized. Vernacular is a more generalized term than folklore in that it can refer to anything that is locally or regionally defined, produced or expressed. (living folklore pg.6)
The term vernacular is preferred in some folk realms as it has a less demeaning connotation.

Front 28

Cultural Diffusion (Franz Boaz):

Back 28

Examines the way texts move and change from culture to culture. Boaz focused on cultures and the differences and similarities between them, and asserted the fact that culture influences everything we know and experience.

Front 29

Culture as a Web (Clifford Geertz):

Back 29

Culture (around the world) is a “web” of beliefs, concepts, rituals, etc. and as time goes on, people’s ideas change and evolve.
Very complex idea, and everybody is part of “the web”

Front 30

The role of Church for Slaves:

Back 30

Social Center
Only legitimate place to let out emotions