Jonathan Roper
Biographic Data
| ID | 77065 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan Roper |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan |
| FAMILY NAME | Roper |
| SIGNATURE | ROPER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tartu |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8807-2276 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Chugg’s Charms: Authenticity, Typicality, and Sources
This contribution describes the collection and contents of a set of charms from early twentieth century Devon, and takes that as a stepping stone toward questions about the reliability of the orally-collected data many charms scholars rely on
Conference Report on “The Materiality and Performance of Charms.” Singapore, 29th August – 1st September, 2023
Conference Report
Two Parallel Fields: An Interview with Daiva Vaitkevičienė
In the fourth of our series of interviews with charms scholars about their scholarly lives, we present an interview with Daiva Vaitkevičienė, a long-standing member of the ISFNR Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming. The interview was conducted by email in the autumn of 2025
A Degree Of Intertextuality: An Interview With Emanuela Timotin
In the third in our series of interviews with charms scholars about their scholarly lives, we present an interview with Emanuela Timotin, the new Chair of the ISFNR Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming. The interview was conducted remotely in February 2024, then subsequently by email
The Nature of the Sources: An Interview with Andrey Toporkov
In the second of our continuing series of interviews with charms researchers about their scholarly life and work, we present an interview with Andrey Toporkov conducted remotely (by e-mail) early in 2022 (subsequently updated in late 2023) by Jonathan Roper, who also made the translation from Russian. Andrey Toporkov is one of the earliest members of the Committee for Charms, Charmers and Charming, having first attended our meetings in London in …
Folklore in Regional Dictionaries: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Examples from England
Dictionaries are an increasingly acknowledged source of folklore data. For countries with early literacy, industrialization, and urbanization, such as England, this richness is evident for early modern and, especially, nineteenth-century dictionaries, such as those published by the English Dialect Society. Although not as numerous as before, regional dictionaries have, nevertheless, continued to be published in the twentieth and twenty-first cent…
The Folklore Buried in Dictionaries
Dictionaries are an unexpected, and underused, source of folklore data. In this introduction to a selection of articles addressing the virtues and peculiarities of such a repurposing of dictionaries, the authors raise some general issues and briefly sketch the wider intellectual and social historical background to the compilation of dictionaries, especially in Europe in recent centuries, that explains the presence of folkloric information. They a…
The Catalan–Valencian–Balearic Dictionary as a Source of Folklore Data
Decades of work enabled A. M. Alcover (and subsequent collaborators) to produce a monumental dictionary of Catalan. The work is rich in folklore due to the nature of its often oral sources and presumably also due to the predilections of Alcover, a collector of folk song and, especially, folktales. In Alcover we thus have a prominent example of a lexicographer-folklorist, but he also represents another class of folklorist, particularly important h…
The Folklore Period
Deixant de banda els casos de dedicació al llarg de la vida, hi ha un període de la vida en què és més probable que una persona conreï el folklore? Aquest article argumenta que n’hi ha, i és als anys vint i trenta d’una persona. Es donen diversos exemples històrics per donar suport a aquesta proposta. A continuació, es discuteixen aparents (i reals) excep- cions a aquesta generalització i es presenten una sèrie de possibles explicacions d’aquest …
Formulas in Folk Verse and Folk Prose: Overlap or Independence
The existence of formulas in traditional songs of various kinds has been long recognized by scholars, and the presence of formulas in traditional tales has increasingly become a subject of discussion too. This prompts the question whether an individual who has a substantial repertoire of both songs and tales would use some of the same formulas in both these two modes. Or would it be the case that, as tales and songs have their own separate norms …
Going Back to the Manuscripts: An Interview with Lea T. Olsan
In the first of what is to be hoped will be the first in a series of interviews with charms researchers about their scholarly life and work, we present an interview with Lea T. Olsan conducted remotely (via Skype) by Jonathan Roper in October 2020. Lea is one of the earliest members of the Committee for Charms, Charmers and Charming, having attended the first meeting in London almost twenty years ago. A medievalist and manuscript scholar, she mov…
The Complete Poems of William Barnes. Volume II. Poems in the Modified Form of the Dorset Dialect
The Complete Poems of William Barnes. Volume II. Poems in the Modified Form of the Dorset Dialect." Folk Life, 57(1), pp. 78–79
Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe
This encyclopedia documents the presence and impact of nationalized cultural consciousness in European nationalism. It tracks how intellectuals, historians, philologists, novelists, poets, painters, folklorists, and composers, in an intensely collaborative transnational network, articulated the national identities and aspirations that would go on to determine European history and politics, with effects that are still felt today. Edited by Joep Le…
Simple Forms: Essays on Medieval English Popular Literature
The first work with the title Simple Forms (or originally, Einfache Formen) was Andre Jolles’s 1930 study of various verbal genres, recently translated into English for the first time. This Simple
Medieval Oral Literature
Karl Reichl, the veteran researcher of both Middle English romances and Turkic oral epic, has assembled a dream team of international experts, including the late John Miles Foley, Joseph Harris, Th
Georgian Folk Traditions and Legends
The bear in Eurasian plant names: Motivations and Models
Ethnolinguistic studies are important for understanding an ethnic group's ideas on the world, expressed in its language. Comparing corresponding aspects of such knowledge might help clarify problems of origin for certain concepts and words, e.g. whether they form common heritage, have an independent origin, are borrowings, or calques. The current study was conducted on the material in Slavonic, Baltic, Germanic, Romance, Finno-Ugrian, Turkic and …
The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas’ev. Volume 1
Narrative in English Conversation. A Corpus Analysis of Storytelling
Alongside set-piece storytelling with its clear separation from other forms of human speech (not the least by its traditional openings and closings), there is a humbler and more widespread form of
The Complete Poems of William Barnes. Volume I. Poems in the Broad Form of the Dorset Dialect
The work under review is the first volume in a projected series of three, which are intended to form the standard critical edition of all of Barnes’ poems. The bulk of the verse in this volume come...
Performance and the Middle English Romance
Sternberg, the Second Folklorist
By rights, Vincent Thomas Sternberg (1831–80) should be remembered as the man to write the first book with ‘folklore’ in its title. Instead, he currently holds greater posthumous fame as ‘the Leeds Library ghost’. This is very much to be regretted, as his book The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire (1851) is not only of interest due to its historic title, but also prefigures some of the fault-lines that have marked folklore studies in Engl…
Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice
Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice." Folklore, 124(3), pp. 369–370
Stylistic Use of Phraseological Units in Discourse
The Oxford History of Popular Print. Volume 1: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660
Joad Raymond, Oxford: Oxford University, 2011, 672 pp. Illus. , £100.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-19928-704-8 This hefty work is itself only the first of nine volumes under the General Editorship of Gary K
Thoms and the Unachieved “Folk-Lore of England”: Topics, Notes and Comments
Early in 1850, an advertisement appeared at the back of issue 19 of Notes and Queries, beginning with the following words: “Preparing for immediate publication, in 2 vols. small 8vo. THE FOLK-LORE
The bear in Eurasian plant names: Motivations and Models
Ethnolinguistic studies are important for understanding an ethnic group's ideas on the world, expressed in its language. Comparing corresponding aspects of such knowledge might help clarify problems of origin for certain concepts and words, e.g. whether they form common heritage, have an independent origin, are borrowings, or calques. The current study was conducted on the material in Slavonic, Baltic, Germanic, Romance, Finno-Ugrian, Turkic and …
Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice
Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice." Folklore, 124(3), pp. 369–370
Charms, Change and Memory: Some Principles Underlying Variation
The following paper takes as its starting point the fact that renditions of the ‘same’ verbal charm may differ on separate occasions. It will suggest that this phenomenon, observed especially in longer charms, arises because non-literate charmers, even when they were particularly concerned with producing a verbatim repetition of longish charms, possessed no failsafe way of telling if they had produced a verbatim repetition or not. It argues that …
Towards a Poetics, Rhetorics and Proxemics of Verbal Charms
This article is intended as a first attempt to assemble and, where necessary, to newly devise, a series of terms which can be used to indicate the poetical features1 and rhetorical structures and devices typically present in the words of a charm, and also the proxemic manoeuvres employed in the “performance ” of charms.2 In the Eng-lish-speaking world academic investigations into individual verbal charms and into whole charm traditions have tende…
English Orature, English Literature: The Case of Charms
Traditional charms are a part of English orature; charms in literature are a part of English literature. This simple distinction does not, however, tell the whole story: charms, as is well known, are sometimes written down, rather than verbalized, in order to function as talismans; charms, no matter how traditionary, can feature motifs more commonly found in literature; and the transmission of charms may involve a written as well as an oral dimen…
Thoms and the Unachieved “Folk-Lore of England”: Topics, Notes and Comments
Early in 1850, an advertisement appeared at the back of issue 19 of Notes and Queries, beginning with the following words: “Preparing for immediate publication, in 2 vols. small 8vo. THE FOLK-LORE
Charms, Charmers and Charming: International Research on Verbal Magic
Bringing together many of today's key scholars of verbal charming, these essays cover vernacular magical texts and practice from Malaysia to Madagascar, and from England to Estonia. As the most compre
Alliteration in Culture
Towards a Typology of Poetic Forms. From Language to Metrics and Beyond
Edited by Jean-Louis Aroui and Andy Arleo, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2009, 428 pp. £105.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-90-272-0819-4 The authors and editors of this book are well aware that v
English Purisms
William Barnes’ lifelong concern with restoring and renovating English was something of key importance to him. His work should not be dismissed as eccentricity, at least not before serious examination. But such examination need not involve taking him exclusively on his own terms. Indeed, he is better seen as one of a group of language reformers, and his work is best seen as one example, provisional and clumsy-beautiful, of the several English pur…
Synonymy and rank in alliterative poetry
This paper addresses the high sonic demands of alliterative metres, and the consequences of these demands for sense: the semantic stretching of common words and the deployment of uncommon (archaic, 'poetic') words. The notion of alliterative rank is discussed as an indicator of such consequences (examples are given from English and Estonian verse) and the range of onsets found for synonyms of key notions in verse traditions is remarked upon
Folk Tales, Tall Tales, Trickster Tales and Legends of the Supernatural from the Pinelands of New Jersey
By Herbert Halpert, Edited by J. D. A. Widdowson. Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2010, 646 pp, Illus, £89.95/$149.95 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-773-41323-8 “This fall,” wrote Stith Thompson
Culture and Language Use
Edited by Gunter Senft, Jan-Ola Ostman, and Jef Verschueren. Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights, Vol. 2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2009, 280 pp. £37.39 (pbk), ISBN 978-9-027-20779
Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice
Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice." Folklore, 124(3), pp. 369–370
Stylistic Use of Phraseological Units in Discourse
The Oxford History of Popular Print. Volume 1: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660
Joad Raymond, Oxford: Oxford University, 2011, 672 pp. Illus. , £100.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-19928-704-8 This hefty work is itself only the first of nine volumes under the General Editorship of Gary K
Sternberg, the Second Folklorist
By rights, Vincent Thomas Sternberg (1831–80) should be remembered as the man to write the first book with ‘folklore’ in its title. Instead, he currently holds greater posthumous fame as ‘the Leeds Library ghost’. This is very much to be regretted, as his book The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire (1851) is not only of interest due to its historic title, but also prefigures some of the fault-lines that have marked folklore studies in Engl…
Performance and the Middle English Romance
The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas’ev. Volume 1
Narrative in English Conversation. A Corpus Analysis of Storytelling
Alongside set-piece storytelling with its clear separation from other forms of human speech (not the least by its traditional openings and closings), there is a humbler and more widespread form of
The Complete Poems of William Barnes. Volume I. Poems in the Broad Form of the Dorset Dialect
The work under review is the first volume in a projected series of three, which are intended to form the standard critical edition of all of Barnes’ poems. The bulk of the verse in this volume come...
The bear in Eurasian plant names: Motivations and Models
Ethnolinguistic studies are important for understanding an ethnic group's ideas on the world, expressed in its language. Comparing corresponding aspects of such knowledge might help clarify problems of origin for certain concepts and words, e.g. whether they form common heritage, have an independent origin, are borrowings, or calques. The current study was conducted on the material in Slavonic, Baltic, Germanic, Romance, Finno-Ugrian, Turkic and …
Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe
This encyclopedia documents the presence and impact of nationalized cultural consciousness in European nationalism. It tracks how intellectuals, historians, philologists, novelists, poets, painters, folklorists, and composers, in an intensely collaborative transnational network, articulated the national identities and aspirations that would go on to determine European history and politics, with effects that are still felt today. Edited by Joep Le…
Simple Forms: Essays on Medieval English Popular Literature
The first work with the title Simple Forms (or originally, Einfache Formen) was Andre Jolles’s 1930 study of various verbal genres, recently translated into English for the first time. This Simple
Medieval Oral Literature
Karl Reichl, the veteran researcher of both Middle English romances and Turkic oral epic, has assembled a dream team of international experts, including the late John Miles Foley, Joseph Harris, Th
Georgian Folk Traditions and Legends
The Complete Poems of William Barnes. Volume II. Poems in the Modified Form of the Dorset Dialect
The Complete Poems of William Barnes. Volume II. Poems in the Modified Form of the Dorset Dialect." Folk Life, 57(1), pp. 78–79
History (27 works) · Art (26 works) · Literature (21 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · History (16 works) · Linguistics (15 works) · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies (12 works) · Folklore (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Sociology (9 works)