Folk Ideas as Units of Worldview

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2783136
AutoresAlan Dundes (autor de correspondencia)
Año1971
Volumen84
Número331
Páginas93
Fecha de publicación1971-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of American Folklore (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-8715 • E-ISSN: 1535-1882
EditorialUniversity of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/539737
OpenAlexW2319196221
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas50

FOR SOME TIME NOW, folklorists have become increasingly annoyed at what they regard as a nonprofessional and indiscriminately extended use of the term to apply to a wide variety of materials. Accordingly, folklorists are wont to shudder when they read discussions about the of capitalism or the of race by different social scientists, who often use simply as a synonym for error or fallacy. These definitely are not what the folklorist means by the term myth, folklorists carefully explain to questioning students. To the folklorist, a myth is first of all a narrative and that alone rules out most of what modern social scientists refer to under the rubric of myth. Generally speaking, social scientists' use of the term has little or nothing to do with traditional narrative forms. Rather it has to do with a belief or a belief system. Moreover, their use of the term nearly always carries an explicit negative connotation as in Ashley Montagu's book in which race or racism is referred to as man's most dangerous myth.' If folklorists wish to guard their own narrow definition of myth in the sense of a sacred oral narrative, explaining how the earth or man came to be in their present form, then they ought to offer some constructive terminological alternative to refer to those cultural phenomena that nonfolklorists persist in calling myths. The mere insistence by folklorists that such phenomena as political are not really true myths doesn't solve the problem. If these materials are not myths, then what are they? And should they, whatever they are, be studied by folklorists or not

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Folk religion · Sociology · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Philosophy · Religious studies