Two Letters from Home

AN IMPRESSIVE BODY OF PEASANT LETTERS sent across the Atlantic was published by William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki in 1918. In the first two volumes of their monumental study, the authors examined the correspondence between Polish peasants in their home villages and their emigrated compatriots in America.' On the basis of a sample of 764 letters they attempted a characterization and an analysis of Polish peasant society. According to the critical comments of Herbert Blumer, the letters in themselves do not bear out the interpretation of the authors, who must have derived their profound knowledge of the Polish peasant from additional sources in order to establish the framework of their conclusions.2 Thomas and Znaniecki could have gained additional insights, had they examined the letters as documents of folklore communication in terms of content, form, and style, but they limited their concern to the distinction of some stylistic conventions in peasant correspondence.3 However, their discussion of letter formulas (bows), and their classification of ceremonial, informative, sentimental, literary, and business letters in themselves invite the folklorist to an important field of folk literacy; is to written folklore related to territorial mobility and migration. The letter appears, in their sense, as a substitute that merely takes the place of a personal immediate communication4 and may be subjected to a study of the

Archaeology · Art · Character (mathematics · Folklore · Folkloristics · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Literature · Order (exchange · Peasant · Sociology · Style (visual arts · Anthropology · Central European Literary Studies · European Cultural and National Identity · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Philosophy

• Introduction

  Pauline Greenhill, Peter Narváez•Journal of American Folklore•2002

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• Letters of love and loss in a time of revolution

  Vera Sheridan•The History of the Family•2014

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