A Tentative Essay

WHAT constitutes Folklore as a study? What are the objects towards which it is directed? What human activities are legitimately to be included in its scope ? How is it to be differentiated from Ethnology, Anthropology? Folk-Life Study? What place has literature and the written word in it? Does the term 'Folk' imply or insist on a class distinction? All these questions have been very much debated lately, in America and on the Continent as well as in England, where the inception of the new Folk-Life Society has perhaps given special impetus to the question. The conclusions reached by different types and nationalities of folklorists are very various, but on the whole 'tradition' is felt to be the operative word. I have lately had an opportunity to hear the matter canvassed, and I advance these rather vague and tentative ideas in the hope that other English folklorists will give us their opinion on the area and scope of Folklore. The meaning of 'Folk' is a good deal debated. One school of thought limits the term to people at a certain state of culture, and more specifically to small groups in a modern society cut off by some limitation from the civilization that surrounds them. An example of this might be the schoolchildren studied by Mr and Mrs Opie in The Language and Lore of Schoolchildren, a widespread and yet segregated community developing a characteristic set of catchwords, games, rhymes, and even to a certain extent of beliefs. It may be doubted, however, if folklore can be limited to those who are called 'Folk', and if the operative word should not rather be 'tradition

Aesthetics · Art · Civilization · Epistemology · Folk culture · Folklore · Literature · Meaning (existential · Scope (computer science · Set (abstract data type · Sociology · Anthropology · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Philosophy