Folklore

Historical Background

The use of folklore to signify traditions and their study dates back to 1846 when the British antiquarian William John Thoms coined the term for what had been previously been referred to in English as “popular antiquities” or “popular literature.” Thoms described folklore both as a connected whole—”The Lore of the People”—and as separable parts—”manners, customs, observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs.” These were the genres of primary interest in the early history of folklore studies. Notably absent from his list were humor genres such as jokes, pranks, and parodies, which began drawing attention from folklorists in the latter half of the 20th century. Thoms wanted to accomplish for Britain what the Brothers Grimm had done for Germany since the early 19th century in their use of das Volk (“the folk” or “the people”) and their collections of folk narratives. In response to his call, the magazine Athenaeum established a department of folklore and during the 1850s, books began to appear using folklore in their titles. In 1878, the Folklore Society was established in Great Britain, followed 10 years later by the American Folklore Society, thus institutionalizing the term describing the broad subject area of folklore.

Early approaches to folklore suggested attention to isolated, marginalized groups as the kind to perpetuate folklore. Many of these supposedly primitive or peasant groups were thought not to have humor, either because it was an attribute of higher civilization or because these “folk” groups were too engaged in subsistence and superstition to engage in the leisure of humor. In the United States, 20th-century folkloristic collections from marginalized groups such as Jews, mountaineers, and African Americans included narratives described as “tales” that were distinguished from legends and fairy tales by their humorous content or by the appearance of trickster figures. Rather than dismissing the humor, folklorist Richard Dorson (1956), who later became influential as head of a degree-granting folklore department at Indiana University, noted the significance of humor's social functions in folk stories of “Old Marster and John.” In these tales set in the slavery era, the slave John outsmarts with cunning the physically imposing and symbolically repressive Old Marster. The frame of humor allowed for suggestions of protest that would not be condoned in everyday conversation. Dorson also entered into folkloristic analysis and debate with other folklorists as to whether such tales have an African or European genesis. Such comparative work also led him to posit that many hero legends told in America differ from European counterparts in their comical characterizations. He suggested that the humor in “tall tales” of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone merited analysis for its relationship to national as well as regional identity.

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