Alexander of Macedon in Georgian Folktales

In European and Eastern folklore, Alexander of Macedon (Alexander the Great) is an important figure, introduced through literature and subject to diverse interpretations in folklore, in line with patterns common in folk narratives. Alexander the Great never visited Georgia during his campaigns, yet is one of the most popular characters in Georgian folklore. The Georgian folktales featuring Alexander draw on literary influences from Antiquity and the Middle Ages, representing at the same time an integral part of national folklore. This article shows how a historical figure can be transformed in folk traditions and what role the genre specifics of folklore may have for the formation of the image of such a character.     

The Conte-en-vers: Expanding Stith Thompson's X-File of Obscene Motifs

The conte-en-vers is a narrative dealing with bawdy subjects presented in verse form and with a certain elegance of expression that contrasts markedly with its licentious content. La Fontaine's Contes, provide material through which to explore bawdy stories that were circulating during the seventeenth century. Furthermore, La Fontaine's followers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries afford a rich source from which to glean information about erotic folktales current in France during that period. The conte-en-vers genre is of special significance to folklorists because the authors incorporated current folklore motifs into their tales, making of them an important, though neglected, repository of folklore during three centuries. The conte-en-vers provides a corpus which facilitates the task of filling in Stith Thompson's blank category of obscene motifs, X700-749 “Humor Concerning Sex.”     

Fighting or Dancing: Archaeology and Folklore Traces

The connections between archaeology and traditions or folklore may be thought of as a dance, in which archaeological traces complement or constitute elements of folklore, and traces of folklore complement and constitute archaeological interpretation. On the other hand, archaeology and folklore may engage in competition about the “true” past(s). In this paper I will explore the tensions between these perspectives, and the tensions between archaeology and many forms of folklore.     

St Paraskeve in the Balkan Context

The cult of the great saints is usually much wider and involves more than their hagiographies alone. These, as a special literary genre, have to consider strict compositional principles and an even stricter church canon. Not even the apocryphal hagiographies, although they most often originate in oral tradition, can completely escape the influence of these norms, which come into play as soon as an oral legend starts gaining the form of a literary composition. The cult is rather freer and much less dependent on the Church. Once they become a part of popular religion, the officially recognised saints almost invariably enter a ready-made semantic field that acts as their natural surroundings. Here, by the working of many generations, they build up the multilayered, developed, often unexpected, but always logical connections with the tradition and the culture to which they belong. These fertile and inescapable interactions are reflected in elements of folklore, especially folk literature, from the major prose forms like folktales and epic poetry, to the so-called minor genres (nursery rhymes, incantations, proverbs, and so on). In association with other elements of material and spiritual traditional culture (such as rites, customs and beliefs), stories about the saints tended to spread everywhere, rendering their roots and influences difficult to elucidate.     

United with the Countrymen: Folklore Studies at Peking University, 1918–26

Late nineteenth and early twentieth century China faced a grave national crisis resulting from intense foreign pressure and a rigid political system that was incapable of adapting to the challenges of the modern world. China’s decline did, however, lead to a wave of nationalism that swept across Chinese society. Set against this backdrop, a new generation of patriotically minded intellectuals, one with relatively broad exposure to Western thinking and academic methods, turned its focus to enlightening the oppressed masses as a means of bringing about national salvation. These intellectuals pursued this forward-looking aim by looking to the past for inspiration. More specifically, they looked to folk culture as a means of connecting with the common people and weaving together a new discourse that promoted national unity. Under these circumstances, a group of professors at Peking University, including Zhou Zuoren, Liu Fu, and Gu Jiegang, began to search for vernacular works in folk culture. This article examines folklore studies at Peking University expanding from folksongs to folk customs and other forms of folk literature. It focuses on early folklorists’ activities, folklore organizations, and primary publications. Under the university’s influence, folklore studies appeared in various newspapers and other research institutions in Beijing and Shanghai in rapid succession.     

Waltz the Hall: The American Play Party

Spurgeon has provided the academic world with a superb exampleof how oral history has the power not only to supplement thehistorical and academic record but also to enlarge our understandingof a topic. These days, few know of the esoteric folklore genre,the play party, and those who do might well assume that it hasbeen defunct for several decades. Even nineteenth- to earlytwentieth-century folklorists wrote about it as an old and dyingform of childhood recreation. Vance Randolph wrote some     

西方世界的中国“歌谣运动”

以《中国评论》为中心的中国民俗搜集活动堪称西方世界的中国"歌谣运动":活动始于民俗及民间文学资料征集,以报刊为媒介扩散影响,继而引起广泛关注,并由社会各界共同参与,其中"歌谣"地位卓然,成果显著。更重要的是,它真正开启了西方现代中国民俗学研究,第一次用明确的学科眼光审视中国民俗。面对歌谣及其他民俗形式,中西心态的差异可以从"民间"和"街头"意义的错落中约略窥见。"民间"预设了上下层级,有"民间"便有"庙堂",有"民众"便有"眼光向下""到民间去"的"我们"。"街头"却展示了另一种构图:所有人位属同一平面,在同一条喧嚣的街上,没有层级,或者说没有内部的上下层级,因为"我们"始终是群体外泾渭分明的他者。西方这些早期起步于街头的中国民俗研究,或许资料性大于学理性,开风气多过立典范,在当下价值有限,但这段历史却是我们不应该遗忘的。     

世界社会的民俗协商:民俗学理论与方法的新生命

民俗学是随着现代性的全球扩张而发展起来的一门高度国际性的关于民族文化传统的学科,它在方法上采取集体主义,在理论上假设民族在民俗上的同质性。在现代性走向巅峰的时候,同质性人群和民俗传统的快速消逝带来民俗学的危机。面对危机,从日常生活来界定民俗的思潮兴起,却并不能解除危机。在人口流动、文化杂糅的世界社会,个人与小群体必须与他人协商安排日常生活的细节,这种世界社会的民俗协商正在成为广泛的事实。能够应对这种趋势的民俗学将会获得发展的生命力,这有赖于从业者带来理论与方法的创新。     

Brazilian boys riding Indonesian waves: orientalism and fratriarchy in a recent Brazilian surf movie

In this article, I discuss the 2016 Brazilian surf movie Um Filme de Surfe by Bruno Zanin and Leandro Dora, featuring surfers Yago Dora, Yuri Gonçalves and Lucas Silveira. This small group of Brazilian surfers and their camera crew travel on a chartered boat to an island in the Indian Ocean to catch an incoming swell, where they pretend to find an unknown surf paradise. While doing so, they orientalise the local Indonesian culture as an exotic, pre-modern ‘other’ who they, the ‘translocal’ modern surfers, encounter and teach about modernity. I will also examine how they perform a ‘bro’ masculinity that forms a ‘fratriarchy’ based on hijinks and pranks. In Um Filme de Surfe, the Brazilian surfers neglect to establish a dialogue with the local Indonesian islanders. They do not represent themselves as postcolonial subjects visiting a fellow culture from the global South; they are the cosmopolitan translocal surfers and the locals are mistaken for Polynesian islanders. I will then discuss how this film broadly reflects the challenge of representing non-white, non-Western surfers in the genre of surf films.     

区域民俗文化旅游资源的定量评价研究——九寨沟藏族民俗文化与江苏吴文化民俗旅游资源比较研究之二

区域民俗文化是旅游地旅游资源的组成因子。有关其专项定量评价目前尚不完善。本文以九寨沟藏族民俗及江苏吴文化民俗旅游资源为例,对民俗文化旅游资源评价进行尝试。针对已有固定结构权重评价模型适应性较弱的现状,本文尝试了具有能够反映主导民俗类型的可变权重的主成分优先法对两个地区的民俗旅游资源进行了评价。同时,本文利用游客态度调查结果,对九寨沟民俗旅游资源进行了公众体验性评价。     

区域民俗文化的旅游资源的类型及旅游业价值研究——九寨沟藏族民俗文化与江苏吴文化民俗旅游资源比较研究之一

民俗文化是文化景观的组成部分,本文对民俗文化类型及其旅游资源类型进行了研究和划分。本文认为民俗文化对自然景观、人文景观以及旅游地整体形象有着多方面的影响或贡献。"地方"的概念是阐释旅游地整体形象形成及特征的有效工具。论文对九寨沟藏族民俗和江苏吴民俗进行了实例比较研究,讨论了其形成与地理环境背景的关系、各自特征、现状及开发途径。     

民俗文物与民俗文献的价值研究

民俗文物逐渐得到学界与社会的重视,但目前还存在着重视物质类民俗文物,轻视非物质类民俗文物的倾向,而民俗文献尤不得重视。民俗文献类文物文化含量高,但容易流失,亟需保护。民俗文献类文物分为两个大类,一是记载民俗活动的文献,二是承担民俗功能的文献。本文以承担民俗功能的民俗文献之帖式为例,以见出这些文献所富含的文化价值。     

文本与理论:民间文艺学的双重建构(1949-1966)——以《民间文学参考资料》为中心的考察

1949-1966年民间文学被纳入现代民族国家建构的进程,成为文学领域接驳、实践国家话语的重要场域。1962-1964年中国民间文艺研究会研究部编纂了九辑《民间文学参考资料》,它们除了展示全国民间文艺实践外,还集中呈现了《一九五六-一九六七哲学社会科学规划纲要(修正草案)》对民间文艺发展规划、组织以及民间文艺学新体系的设想。一方面,它们呈现了新中国初期民间文艺的研究宗旨;另一方面,既有对民间文艺概念、范畴、价值以及基本特性之讨论,亦有对苏联民间文学理论的集中引入,同时译介欧美民间文学理论现状,形成了与苏联、日本等"新中国的民间文学研究"对话的局面。     

Oversimplifying the Supreme Court

I cannot tell you what a pleasure it is to be at the Supreme Court Historical Society. Of course, the Supreme Court is fortunate to have a Chief Justice who is also Chief Historian. I have read each of Chief Justice Rehnquist's books on the Court, and they are engagingly written narratives filled with a love and knowledge of this institution. The Chief Justice is steeped in the folklore of this remarkable Court as few have ever been. This is just one reason those of us throughout the federal judiciary admire and love the Chief. He has shown kindness to me ever since I was a young law clerk for Justice Lewis Powell. I don't know if it's appropriate or not to dedicate a speech, but I am going to do so anyway. This speech is for him.     

‘The Stone Axe from Way Back’: A Mutable Magical Object in Folklore and Fiction

Objects of ‘magic’ and folklore do not always begin their lives as such. Often, they are natural objects or mundane artefacts, crafted for utilitarian purposes, which become objects of magic through processes of re-utilization and redefinition. This is a process poignantly explored by fantasy writer Alan Garner in many of his works, but captured most overtly in his 1973 novel Red Shift. This article offers a commentary on this novel, exploring how Garner uses fiction and folklore to illustrate the mutability and multiple authorship of the magical object.     

Take me up,I want to go: Captivity,disorientation and affect in the neurosphere

ABSTRACT

Captivity narratives have been a core American genre for centuries. This paper suggests that some American captivity narratives are opening into emergent attempts to articulate social feeling at a moment of precarity. I treat captivity here not just as a narrative, genre or trope but also as an affect. I explore how neurodivergent young people evoke disorientation and captivity on Tumblr as an expression of identity. I show how the bloggers share a feeling with UFO abduction narratives in creating an atmosphere of difference.     

Romanian Folklore and Literary Representations of Vampires

This article presents nineteenth-century Romanian folklore about vampire-like creatures which is analysed in reference to two literary representations of the vampire Dracula. I argue that the folklore tradition establishes a body-oriented perspective, conducive to a feminist analysis of the role of vampire creatures in socializing the otherness of nature echoed in the sexualized powerful female body. The perspective emerging from the folkloric material is subversive in relation to the social and sexual controls enabled across the axes of gender and class by the use of vampire figures in industrial urban cultures of the late nineteenth century.     

Healthy discretion? Breastfeeding and the mutual maintenance of motherhood and public space

Although idealizations of motherhood are ever in flux, specific historical moments can be said to produce distinctive tropes of ‘good’ motherhood that have very real impacts on how women act and conceptualize themselves as mothers. This article examines good motherhood in its current iteration, and how now-common beliefs about breastfeeding are implicated in its construction. Furthermore, it looks at the ways in which idealizations of motherhood discipline the breastfeeding body so that it will fit into public space without disruption. I discuss the contradictory impacts of characterizations of the good mother as they appeared in the pro-breastfeeding dialogs that arose following a 2007 incident in which a mother was asked to cover herself up while nursing in a Kentucky restaurant. I posit that while these characterizations helped to make breastfeeding a more widely accepted public activity, they also had the effect of reifying a very narrow conception of what it means to be a good mother. I make this claim through an analysis of two common refrains heard in pro-public-breastfeeding arguments: breast milk is exceedingly healthy and mothers should not be persecuted if they nurse discreetly. Although these assertions together are compelling to the general public in that they provide a scientific justification for breastfeeding while at once assuaging fears of discomfort presented by a reproductive act being performed in a public space, I suggest that they also work to discipline women and maintain public-space-as-usual.     

Folk Narrative Research in Wales at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: The Influence of John Rhŷs (1840–1916)

Although published at the beginning of the twentieth century, John Rh?s's work on folklore remains an important source for the study of Welsh folk narrative. There exists, however, no overall assessment of his contribution, his concept of folk narrative, his sources, or his interpretation of his material either in terms of Welsh culture or in the wider context of folklore theory, then and now. This paper is intended as a platform from which some of those concerns can be addressed by bringing together primary material relating to Rh?s's folklore interests. Some of his letters at The National Library of Wales, plus material in the Archives of The Folklore Society and in the collection of the Bodleian and Taylorian Libraries at Oxford, can help to clarify Rh?s's interest in folk studies. These sources also indicate how his interest in language, archaeology, and folklore overlapped, and how these interests affected his attitudes to folklore and its uses.