Concept
Folklore
Overview
Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs, poems, and jokes. This also includes material culture, such as traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also encompasses customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, including folk religion, and the forms and rituals of celebrations such as festivals, weddings, folk dances, and initiation rites.
Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration.
The academic study of folklore is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at the undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. levels.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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The circle of sacred objects cannot be determined, then, once for all. Its extent varies infinitely, according to the different religions. That is how Buddhism is a religion: in default of gods, it admits the existence of sacred things, namely, the four noble truths and the practices derived from them.[65]
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
States what Folklore is.
A song or a dance, by demanding an attention which we have not to spare, would disturb, instead of heightening, the effect of the Music; they may often very properly succeed, but they cannot accompany it. That music seldom means to tell any particular story, or to imitate any {431} particular event, or in general to suggest any particular object, distinct from that combination of sounds of which itself is composed.
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Folklore is.
Our interpretation of vegetation cults is supported particularly by the conditions prevailing in the original home of totemism, Australia. These cults here occur chiefly in the northern districts, into which there were early Melanesian immigrations; towards the south, they have gained but a relatively small foothold. The more northerly regions, as we have seen, are the very ones in which plant totems also are…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Folklore is.
Philosophers who discussed Folklore
Related ideas
- Franz Boas
- High culture
- Industrial Revolution
- Ethnography
- Cultural artifact
- Modernity
- Library of Congress
- Culture
- Native Americans in the United States
- Neuroscience
- Ohio State University
- Orthodox Judaism
- Poetry
- Mughal Empire
- Narrative
- Ruth Benedict
- Social science
- Johann Gottfried Herder
- Tradition
- World War II
- Humanities
- Cultural anthropology
- Legend
- Anthropology
Place in the tradition
Part of Japanese philosophy.