The figure of the fairy1 dances through the literary and oral history of the British Isles: goblins writhe around tithes to the Devil, and children battle fairy kings for freedom. Listed in Middle ...English law alongside witches, fairies took the blame for the inexplicable or unspeakable acts of humans and natures. These dark, demonic fay, not the kindly flower fairies or the petulant pixies popular in current children’s media, peppered the tales of rural England into the Early Modern Period, and here William Shakespeare likely first encountered the magical, liminal creatures. As Shakespeare moved from rural life to the urban stage, he brought the fairies with him and turned their devilish deeds to human-like antics, replacing menace with merriment and ill omens with good will. In his works, Shakespeare consistently returns to the folklore and legends of his youth, leaving “hardly a play which does not have allusions to some branch of folklore.”2 In many of his works, Shakespeare employs witches and the occult, as characters metamorphosize and omens shape narrative, thus driving action. Fairies themselves feature most prominently in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595) and The Tempest (c. 1610), as Oberon, Titania, Puck, and Ariel all appear on stage. Meanwhile, a colorful description of Queen Mab in Romeo and Juliet (c. 1591) also provides useful fodder for Shakespeare’s transformation of the fairy folk and later interpretations of the fay. In commercializing, shrinking, and then disembodying his fairies, Shakespeare comments on the excess wealth of the nobles and upper-class Elizabethans, as well as the growing disconnect with nature, while opening up the fairy world for future writers and poets.
A magyar nyelvterület peremvidékein, ahová az iparosodás és a polgárosodás később jutottak el, a közösségek jobban ragaszkodnak az egykori szokásaikhoz. Az anyaországtól leszakított részeken tovább ...élt, és sok helyen napjainkig fennmaradt számos korábbi gyakorlat és hagyomány. Az elszakított nemzetrész közösségei és tagjai védekezésként tartották meg az idők folyamán, és vallják ma is magukénak a bevett gyakorlatokat, kifejezve ezáltal az összetartozást és a közös gyökerekről való származást. Nem anyagi érdek vezérli a közösséget ezen a téren, csupán őseinek, elődeinek tisztelete, a közösség íratlan szabályainak, tradicionális kultúrájának, értékrendjének, szokásrendjének és mentalitásának kifejezője.
If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, ...evolved, and spread--or why so many people cannot resist its appeal, no matter how it changes or what form it takes. In this book, renowned fairy-tale expert Jack Zipes presents a provocative new theory about why fairy tales were created and retold--and why they became such an indelible and infinitely adaptable part of cultures around the world.
Drawing on cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychology, literary theory, and other fields, Zipes presents a nuanced argument about how fairy tales originated in ancient oral cultures, how they evolved through the rise of literary culture and print, and how, in our own time, they continue to change through their adaptation in an ever-growing variety of media. In making his case, Zipes considers a wide range of fascinating examples, including fairy tales told, collected, and written by women in the nineteenth century; Catherine Breillat's film adaptation of Perrault's "Bluebeard"; and contemporary fairy-tale drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that critique canonical print versions.
While we may never be able to fully explain fairy tales,The Irresistible Fairy Taleprovides a powerful theory of how and why they evolved--and why we still use them to make meaning of our lives.
In Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger analyzes six representative Indian folklore genres from a single regional repertoire to show the influence of their ...intertextual relations on the composition and interpretation of artistic performance. Placing special emphasis on women’s rituals, she looks at the relationship between the framework and organization of indigenous genres and the reception of folklore performance. The regional repertoire under examination presents a strikingly female-centered world. Female performers and characters are active, articulate, and frequently challenge or defy expectations of gender. Men also confound traditional gender roles. Flueckiger includes the translations of two full performance texts of narratives sung by female and male storytellers respectively.
Global in scope and multidisciplinary in approach,Creolization as Cultural Creativityexplores the expressive forms and performances that come into being when cultures encounter one another. ...Creolization is presented as a powerful marker of identity in the postcolonial creole societies of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the southwest Indian Ocean region, as well as a universal process that can occur anywhere cultures come into contact.
An extraordinary number of cultures from Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, the southern United States, Trinidad and Tobago, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Réunion, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Suriname, Jamaica, and Sierra Leone are discussed in these essays.
Drawing from the disciplines of folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, history, and material culture studies, essayists address theoretical dimensions of creolization and present in-depth field studies. Topics include adaptations of the Gombe drum over the course of its migration from Jamaica to West Africa; uses of "ritual piracy" involved in the appropriation of Catholic symbols by Puerto Ricanbrujos; the subversion of official culture and authority through playful and combative use of "creole talk" in Argentine literature and verbal arts; the mislabeling and trivialization ("toy blindness") of objects appropriated by African Americans in the American South; the strategic use of creole techniques among storytellers within the islands of the Indian Ocean; and the creolized character of New Orleans and its music. In the introductory essay the editors address both local and universal dimensions of creolization and argue for the centrality of its expressive manifestations for creolization scholarship.
7.–9. oktoobrini Viljandi Kultuuriakadeemias toimunud konverents on iga-aastane üritus, mida vaheldumisi korraldavad Tartu Ülikooli eesti ja võrdleva rahvaluule osakond ning Vilniuses asuv Leedu ...kirjanduse ja kultuuri instituut.
The Tar Baby Wagner, Bryan
2017, 2017., 20170412, 2017-04-10
eBook
A richly nuanced cultural history of an enigmatic and controversial folktale Perhaps the best-known version of the tar baby story was published in 1880 by Joel Chandler Harris in Uncle Remus: His ...Songs and His Sayings, and popularized in Song of the South, the 1946 Disney movie. Other versions of the story, however, have surfaced in many other places throughout the world, including Nigeria, Brazil, Corsica, Jamaica, India, and the Philippines. The Tar Baby offers a fresh analysis of this deceptively simple story about a fox, a rabbit, and a doll made of tar and turpentine, tracing its history and its connections to slavery, colonialism, and global trade. Bryan Wagner explores how the tar baby story, thought to have originated in Africa, came to exist in hundreds of forms on five continents. Examining its variation, reception, and dispersal over time, he argues that the story is best understood not merely as a folktale but as a collective work in political philosophy.0Circulating at the same time and in the same places as new ideas about property and politics developed in colonial law and political economy, the tar baby comes to embody an understanding of the interlocking processes by which custom was criminalized, slaves were captured, and labor was bought and sold. Compellingly argued and ambitious in scope, the book concludes with twelve versions of the story transcribed from various cultures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This thesis takes the form of a three-part podcast series that stems from ethnographic fieldwork with Takiri Folclor Latino (Takiri), a Durham-based dance group founded in 2004 by Columbian native ...Pilar Rocha-Goldberg. The thesis discusses how the group–which includes members from across Latin America and the Caribbean–uses dance to build community, heal, and transform. This collaborative project emerged from a year-and-a-half’s research with Takiri, during which I attended weekly rehearsals and eventually started dancing with the group.The first podcast explores the theme of ritual and healing; the second examines some of the members’ personal experiences; and the third delves into the layered meanings of one of Takiri’s songs, La Piragua. Unfolding at the intersection of Folklore, Performance Studies, and Documentary Studies, these podcasts address how dance can create a powerful collective and transnational identity, leading to a sense of family for a group experiencing dramatic cultural change.
Studies on group and transmission often omit the affective dimensions which imbue the process of community formation, maintenance, and continuity with purpose and pleasure. This case study on Olive ...(Fink) Risch’s involvement with the national, mail-based Cross Country Weavers from 1962 until at least 1967 provides an apt opportunity to mend this oversight. By applying collaborative ethnographic methodologies to her archival collection, this essay identifies seven qualities of relationality—reciprocity, presence, belonging, veneration, narration, stewardship, and remembrance—which indicate the co-constitutive processes of social connection and weaving scholarship. Furthermore, the wide geographic distance between group participants provides an example of effective distanced-learning practices, certainly relevant now due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The two-volume collection of Klechdy, starożytne podania i powieści ludu polskiego i Rusi (Fables: Ancient Legend and Folk Narratives of Poland and Russia) by Kazimierz Władysław Wójcicki, a writer ...and popularizer of folk tales, aroused interest in Poland and among lovers of Slavic folk culture. K. W. Wójcicki wrote his book in the 1830s, in an era of strong Slavophile sentiments and under the influence of Polish Romantics from Lviv. The author mentions earlier research by Julian Krzyżanowski, Julian Maślanka, Ryszard Wojciechowski and Violetta Wróblewska concerning the collection Klechdy, starożytne podania i powieści ludu polskiego i Rusi. In fairy tales in the collection by K. W. Wójcicki, apart from motifs and content from the Polish folk tradition, there are elements from other Slavic traditions. The author analyzes the presence of Serbian, Slovak and Ukrainian motifs, pointing to the sources, methods of Polonization and the author’s stylization of Slavic folkloric motifs.
