Folklore. Washington Irving and Mark Twain used it in their
fiction; Sigmund Freud and William James incorporated it into their
work; Henry Ford and Franklin Roosevelt promoted it. Their efforts
were set against the background of folklorists who brought
collections of traditional tales, songs, and crafts to the
attention of a modernizing society. The ideas of these folklorists
influenced how Americans thought about the character of their
society and the directions it was taking.
Here for the first time is a history of American folkloristic
ideas and the figures who shaped them. Simon Bronner puts these
ideas in cultural context, showing the interconnection of folklore
studies with historical events, social changes, and intellectual
movements. He follows the beginnings of American folklore studies
in the antiquarian literature of the 1830s through the rise of
folklore societies in the 1880s to the emergence of an independent
discipline in the 1950s. In this progression, Bronner identifies
several major themes tying folklore studies to intellectual
history: first, the unearthing of a hidden, usable past; second,
the charting of time and space; and third, the structuring of
communication. More than a chronological or biographical history,
this book is an interpretation of folkloristic ideas and their
relationship to American society.
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