Folklore is a fundamental part of what it means to be human. Folklore covers a wide range of topics, including issues in the news, such as fake news , cryptozoology , legends , holidays , internet memes , traditional and world music , and the supernatural.
Folklorists are active in all areas of our society, studying topics such as education , healthcare , poverty , and immigration. Street art to commemorate George Floyd protests : folklore. New ways of commemorating death in a pandemic that alters our common rituals of honoring life like the Zoom Funeral : folklore.
Every group with a sense of its own identity shares, as a central part of that identity, folk traditions—the things that people learn to do largely through oral communication and by example: believe religious customs, creation myths, healing charms , do dance, make music, sew clothing , know how to build an irrigation dam, how to nurse an ailment, how to prepare barbecue , make architecture, art, craft, music , and say personal experience stories, riddles, song lyrics.
Their metaphors relate to nature, beliefs, and societies, and their songs celebrate victories and lament failures in the struggle for survival Often, similarities are even more striking when the same narrative episodes and verbal or visual images appear in the expressions of unrelated peoples.
The dual attributes of universality and communality are locked together and create an apparent paradox in the idea of folklore, converging the general and the particular into a single concep. Evidence supports both. The themes and forms of folklore appear to be universal, yet no other expression is so imbued with regional, local, and cultural references, meanings, and symbols.
There are two ways to resolve this contradiction. First, universality and communality can be viewed not as contradictory but ascomattributes. Universal are the relations that govern folklore; specific are the references to culture and history. If folklore were originally communal, then its properties would have achieved universality by historical processes, such as diffusion of themes through population contacts in migration, trade, or warfare.
Such an assumption would imply a single source, or place and time of origin, from which folklore features were universally diffused. But if folklore were first universal, then its basic forms and themes should have been formulated prior to any historical and evolutionary developments.
In such a case, folklore embodies the original homogeneity of the culture of man, before the diversity arose. Consequently, folklore also possesses the attribute of primariness, an attribute that makes the impact of folklore on modern thought and art so powerful.
According to the above premises, the mythology of all nations not only tells about but is the dawn of humanity. It incarnates the commonality in all communities and voices the primordial expression of man. In its fundamental forms folklore emerged before human diversity developed and thus embodies the most rudimentary forms of verbal and visual symbols.
The primariness of folklore has historical and evolutionary aspects. Historically, folklore allegedly dates to time immemorial, and, hence, at its original stage, preceded any known recorded history. When man hunted and gathered his food, or even when he began to farm the land and to herd his cattle, without quite mastering writing, he already narrated and sang tales and songs.
The folklore of the world, it is hence assumed, abounds with symbols, themes, and metaphors that pertain to the beginning of human civilization and could shed light on the dark corners of history which no other document could illuminate. The forms of folklore are thus regarded as the cores at the hearts of artistic forms. They are the primitive, crude expressions out of which the literary, visual, and musical cultural heritage of the peoples of the world has emerged.
Folklore comprises the symbolic forms at the base of the complex expressions of literate societies. None have claimed that current prose and poetry of peasants and non-literate cultures reflect human expression in its archaic, primordial form. Repeated recitations, loss of memorization, creative improvisation, and more general historical processes of cultural contacts and technical evolution have contributed to the alteration of particular themes and the general tenor of folklore. Hence, the oral nature of folklore had become one of its crucial attributes, the touchstone of authenticity and originality.
These attributes of traditionality, irrationality, and rurality; anonymity, communality and universality; primacy-and oral-circulation have consolidated in the idea of folklore. They cluster, implying each other and suggesting that intrinsic relations exist between them. Some examples of folk tales include:. Fairy tales are folk tales that include elements of fantasy stories, such as royalty and magic.
Several early collections of fairy tales include stories published by the Brothers Grimm in Germany and Hans Christian Andersen in Denmark. They are often told to children as early introductions to social rules and expectations. Many cultures explain everyday phenomena with tales of mythological figures. They range from stories about Greek gods, French pourquoi tales, and American tall tales.
Cultures often put their stories from folklore to traditional music. They range from everyday stories of common folk to heroic tales told in ballad form. Some folk songs you might recognize include:. They are traditional dances taught to each new generation in a specific culture.
These dances often require large groups of people and are performed at community gatherings and special events. Send us feedback. See more words from the same year.
Accessed 12 Nov. More Definitions for folklore. See the full definition for folklore in the English Language Learners Dictionary.
Nglish: Translation of folklore for Spanish Speakers. Britannica English: Translation of folklore for Arabic Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up.
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