FOLKLORE
FOLKLORE FOLKTALES RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Folklore Recycled
Long, Long Tales from the Russian North
OlD Traditions in New Contexts
Translated and edited by Jack V. Haney
Frank de Caro Folklore Recycled starts from the proposition that folklore—usually thought of in its historical social context as “oral tradition”—is easily appropriated and recycled into other contexts. That is, writers may use folklore in their fiction or poetry, taking plots, as an example, from a folktale. Visual artists may concentrate on depicting folk figures or events, like a ritual or a ceremony. Tourism officials may promote a place through advertising its traditional ways. Folklore may play a role in intellectual conceptualizations, as when nationalHow the study ists use folklore to promote symbolic of folklore has unity. moved beyond oral Folklore Recycled discusses the larger issue of folklore being recycled traditions and into into non-folk contexts and proceeds creative realm to look at a number of instances of where folklore is repurposing. Colson Whitehead’s novel John Henry Days is a literary text that repurposed and recycles folklore but does so in a mantransformed ner that examines a number of other uses of the American folk figure John Henry. The nineteenth-century members of the Louisiana Branch of the American Folklore Society and the author Lyle Saxon in the twentieth century used African American folklore to establish personal connections to the world of the Southern plantation and buttress their own social status. The writer Lafcadio Hearn wrote about folklore to strengthen his insider credentials wherever he lived. Photographers in Louisiana leaned on folklife to solidify local identity and to promote government programs and industry. Promoters of “unorthodox” theories about history have used folklore as historical document. Americans in Mexico took an interest in folklore for acculturation, for tourism promotion, for interior decoration, and for political ends. All of the examples throughout the book demonstrate the durability and continued relevance of folklore in every context it appears. Frank de Caro, New Orleans, Louisiana, is professor emeritus of
This volume of folktales from the Far North of European Russia features seventeen works by five narrators of the Russian tale, all recorded in the twentieth century. The tales, distinguished by their extraordinary length and by the manner in which they were commonly told, appear to have flourished only in the twentieth century and only in Russian Karelia. Although the tales are easily recognized as wondertales, or fairy tales, their treatment of the traditional matter is anything but usual. In these tales A collection of one encounters such topics as regicide, remarkable folk matricide, patricide, fratricide, premarital relations between the sexes, and more, narratives notable all related in the typical manner of the for their depth and Russian folktale. complexity The narrators were not educated beyond a rudimentary level. All were middle-aged or older, and all were men. Crew members of a fishing or hunting vessel plying the White Sea or lumberjacks or trappers in the vast northern forests, they frequently began the narration of a tale in an evening, then broke off at an appropriate moment and continued at a subsequent gathering. Such tales were thus told serially. Given their length, their thematic and narrative complexity, and their stylistic proficiency, one might even refer to them as orally delivered Russian short stories or novellas. Jack V. Haney, Seattle, Washington, is a retired professor of Slavic languages and literatures, University of Washington.
APRIL, 352 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, introduction, glossary, bibliography, index Printed casebinding $60.00S 978-1-61703-730-6 Ebook 978-1-61703-731-3 More books on folklore at http://www.upress.state.ms.us/category/folklore
English at Louisiana State University. He is the author or editor of eleven previous books, including An Anthology of American Folktales and Legends and Louisiana Sojourns: Travelers’ Tales and Literary Journeys.
JULY, 240 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, 17 b&w photographs, bibliography, index Printed casebinding $55.00S 978-1-61703-764-1 Ebook 978-1-61703-765-8 More books on folklore at http://www.upress.state.ms.us/category/folklore
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University Press of Mississippi
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