Английский язык спецтексты для филологов
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Lesson 12. Increased Scope of FolkloreAny branch of study which is alive and deals with living material must change and expand with the passing years as knowledge and experience are gained. The scope of folklore has been widened in many ways since it was first lifted out of the hands of amateur antiquaries and casual observers. When Thoms first coined the word, he defined it as the lore (or learning) of the folk. By the latter term he meant the unlettered peasantry. The enthusiasm with which folklore studies were taken up in the middle and later 19th century was partly due to a sense of urgency arising from the changes then taking place in agricultural life and the consequent disappearance of age-old traditions. “Fast-perishing relics” was a phrase often ap- plied to survivals of rural custom and belief, the recording of which was deemed to be urgently necessary before they vanished forever. For anthropologists and folklorists alike, “the folk” were synonymous with the more backward inhabitants of rural districts, and one of the twenty definitions of folklore in Funk and Wag- nall’s Standard Dictionary of Folklore is “the anthropology of peasants.” The recognition that superstitious beliefs and usages were not confined to simple countrymen but could be found among the educated also, and in towns as well as in isolated villages, was the first step toward an important change of views in this matter. The word “folk” was broadened to indicate a certain level of thought and practice, wherever found. The study of relations between different strata of society had its effect upon this problem. One school of thought, which includes writers like R.S. Loomis, Lord Raglan and A.H. Krappe, holds that folk- lore, far from originating with the ordinary people (who, according to Krappe, never create anything but can only re-create), represents forms of culture original- ly in the aristocratic and scholarly classes and later brought down to the level of the peasant and the artisan. A more generally held view is that the different clas- ses in a single society do not so much imitate each other, consciously or uncon- sciously, as share, in greater or lesser degree, many beliefs and traditions common to their history and traditional way of life. A further alteration of earlier views concerned the nature of folklore survivals. These had hitherto been regarded as undatable relics of a remote antiquity, pre- served in the minds and memories of simple people and incapable of any change but that of disintegration and decay. This conception, with its strongly anthropo- logical bias, was modified by the realization that not all survivals are of equal age, and that, far from being mere fossil remains, they survive precisely because they still have life and so are able to grow and change. In his presidential address to the Folk-Lore society in 1914, R.R. Marret pointed out that such things have more than antiquarian value and that “old-fashioned stuff though folklore may be, it be- longs to the here and now, and may at any moment renew its youth.” For the modern student of the subject, folklore is a living and inextinguishable force, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of social life and, while carrying into the present the traditions of the past, constantly adapting itself to the changing conditions of the times. Old customs disappear and superstitions vanish with new techniques and knowledge, but ancient forms of thought are continually reappear- ing in a new guise. Thus, beliefs which follow a well-established folk pattern have attached themselves to such modern objects as railways, airplanes, motorcars, “flying saucers” and atomic bombs. Similarly, with the spread of towns, the ur- banization of what were originally rural practices can often be seen. Folklore ma- terial is no longer looked for solely in the country or in the records of the past. The products of the folk mind working under present conditions in urban as well as rural areas form an important part of the study today. In addition, certain aspects of material culture formerly excluded from the folklore field are now accepted as an essential cognate study. Domestic utensils, tools, agricultural implements and other accessories of folk life formed no part of it in the earlier period, except in so far as they might affect beliefs or be associat- ed with customs. Of late years, however, it has been appreciated that a knowledge of folk life in general, including its material background, is of great value in the interpretation of those traditions which are the true concern of the folklorist. An increased enthusiasm in the collection of folk life accessories and the rise of the modern folk museums in Scandinavia, Wales, Germany, Austria and elsewhere are indications of this change of viewpoint.
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