The folklore (of the English folk , people and lore , tradition) is the whole of the collective productions emanating from the people and being transmitted of one generation to the other by oral way (Conte S, Récit S and Croyance S) or for the example (Rite S, Savoir-faire).

History of the interest for the folklore

The interest for the folklore develops towards the end of the 18th century, in the context of the romantic Nationalisme and the emergence of the Nation S European.

For Johann Gottfried von Herder, the country class S are all at the same time the agents, the vehicles and the guardians of a “genious of the people”, which were modelled by the contact of the men with the ground and the climate and which was transmitted of one generation to the other, since the Antiquité, in the Langue, in particular in the popular linguistic productions of oral tradition, the such epopee S, the Conte S and the Légende S. In a vision universalist, Herder supports that each people has his single and singular “genius”, which appears as the base par excellence cultural revival which must make it possible to reunify the Germanic people. It is on the incentives of Herder that the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm engage, as pioneers, in vast companies of collection of oral traditions, having to lead to discovered gasoline of this “genius of the people”, that one conceives then like having to allow to join again with the authentic character of a national culture lost by the elites.

Quickly, the initiative of the Grimm brothers will be imitated in all Europe (Is and of the West) and in the Scandinaves countries. As of the 19th century, one undertakes to make the education of the people to his own folklore, which seems threatens of disappearance under the effects of the Modernité and the Urbanisation. The steps aiming to the diffusion of the folklore take the form of true Propagande S nationalists, primarily sticking to emphasize the originality and specific specificities of the folklore to each people, allowing to distinguish it from the close people and to attach it to those which, in the context of installation of the national identities, one indicates like his distances ancestors. The genius of the people having to be transmitted in the language, one understands that the search of this one will be restricted initially only with the facts of oral tradition. It is about the middle of the XIXe century that the field of the folklore widens and henceforth that the collectors start to also be interested in various productions emanating of the popular cultures (beliefs, traditional medicine, costumes, arts, techniques) and regarded as depending they also of the folklore.

The term folklore was introduced in 1846 by English William Thoms, to replace the old formula “ popular antiquities ”. The term was quickly translated in a literal way in the Scandinavian languages, like in German, by the expression volkskunde. The term was taken again such as it is in French, the use of the expression “traditionnism” proposed in the place of the term angais having quickly been abandoned. The meaning of the term in the various languages varied according to the authors, the areas and the times. For some, the folklore is the knowledge which hold the people, whereas for others, it is the knowledge which one (elites) has on the people, taken like object of knowledge. Wishing to reconcile the two prospects, some proposed that the term was to cover the two meanings.

Arnold Van Gennep was the first to be developed, in France, a methodological base for the scientific study of the folklore and more precisely to circumscribe the field of study of what was to be a new discipline, carrying itself the name of its object (the folklore then indicates the science of the popular knowledge as much as the popular knowledge itself). Although Van Gennep recognizes that the folk productions are always initially the fact of individual creations, it also suggests him, following the example Herder, to treat them like collective productions, insofar as they were largely adopted by the people and are the work of an anonymous author.

Although the folklore can contain religious or mythical elements, it concerns the daily life essentially. Esotericism and life practices frequently combine with it in the same narrative flood. It was often combined with the Mythologie, and vice versa, because it was presupposed that an account not raising of the dominant Croyance of time could have the same statute only they. Thus, the Roman Religion is described as “myth” by Christianity. In this way, the myth and the folklore became hold-all terms for all the accounts which do not correspond to the dominant structure of belief.

The folklore revêt sometimes a religious nature, as it is the case in the Mabinogion Welsh or the scaldic Poésie Icelandic. Several of the Conte S in the Golden Legend of Jacques de Voragine also incarnate elements of folklore in a Christian context: examples of such a Christian mythology are the topics embroidered around holy Georges or of Saint Christophe. In this case, the designation of the accounts as made folklore is employed in a quasi-pejorative direction. In the same order of ideas, whereas the tales of Odin have a religious value for their authors, as they do not adapt in a Christian configuration they are not regarded “monk”, but rather as folk.

In addition, the folklore can be employed to describe exactly a figurative account which does not have any contents theological or religious, but concerning a useful popular knowledge. This popular knowledge can or not have fantastic components (such as the magic, the beings éthérés or the personification of the inanimate objects). These legends can emerge from a religious tradition, but are primarily secular. Hansel and Gretel is a strong example of this thin limit. While the element of the Sorcellerie can probably contain a subjacent religious subject, or imply at least a certain pagan origin euro (like Margaret Murray or '' the branch of gold '' could describe it), one can rather surely say that the goal of the tale is mainly a popular instruction concerning the safety of the forest, as well as secondarily it warns the large families in connection with the famines. There is a moral range with this work, but not necessarily a religious range.

Our modern Western folklore was defined by some researchers like that of the urban legends and by the Théorie of the plot. Hansel and Gretel lives again today, more or less, in unequal and disputed achievements, such as the Projet Blair Witch.

Folklore, folk?

The word “folklore” and more still the “folk” adjective (without speaking about the abbreviation “folklo”) took today in French a pejorative direction, which does not relate to any more our subject. Thus it is preferable to rather speak about “traditional” musics than the “folk ones”, for example. In fact the words are specializing:

  • Folklore: dead tradition which survives only by the imitation of the old traditions,
  • Tradition: practical based on the old traditions, but always alive and evolutionary,
  • Jazz: (is used for the music) practical based a fusion of traditions with strong modernization.

The folklore in France

See also: French Folklore

Traditional legends and literature

Traditional music

Traditional demonstrations

The folklore in Belgium

Legends and traditional literature

  • the Bayard Horse and the four wire Aymon

  • the Legend of Ulenspiegel

Traditional music

  • [[Folknam Trad Music]] is the Namurian association of traditional music

Traditional demonstrations

Another direction

The word “folklore” is usually used in the financial field to define an element not bringing any added-value to an existing situation. For example: “Its nomination, it is for the folklore”. By this expression, one states here that the nomination of a person within a body of management or monitoring seems innapropriée have regard with its qualifications or the technical of economic environment and legal control in which a company evolves/moves. In the majority of the cases, the folklores generate “Pépinière S” ingérables with auditer taking into account the bad faith and the absence of competences certified of these people.

See too

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