Towards an Atlas of British Folk Culture
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8933967 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stewart F Sanderson (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1971 |
| Volume | 82 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 89-98 |
| Publication date | 1971-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Folklore (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0015-587X • E-ISSN: 1469-8315 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0015587x.1971.9716715 |
| OpenAlex | W2327970417 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
THE study of folklore is usually regarded as a historical exercise. That was certainly the view of folklorists in the first half-century of the Folklore Society's existence, when debate revolved mainly around such topics as the origins of customs and beliefs, the interpretation of myths and folktales, and the survival, in brokendown vestigial forms, of ancient religions and rituals, whose primary force and meaning could be reconstructed, with luck and the use of the comparative method, and whose manifestations could then be organised into some kind of evolutionary sequence. Such ways of thinking remain widespread as our Society approaches the end of its second half-century. The number of people who, if confronted with a collection of kitchen ware, would automatically swoop on a pair of Scotch hands or a block of knife powder as being interesting 'bygones' thus demonstrating a basically historical cast of mind still vastly outnumbers those whose first impulse would be to consider how these items might be related in some kind of system to stainless steel steak knives and plastic dishes designed to hold half-pound packs of Danish butter. The latter turn of mind would demonstrate a basically structural or functional approach, and would very properly jettison the concept of 'bygones' if it turned out that the Scotch hands were still used for working little balls of butter to pile in crystal dishes for afternoon tea, if only on occasions when the family was entertaining impressionable guests. These two approaches, so sharply at variance with each other, represent two main trends in anthropological and sociological studies, in linguistic studies, and even in folklore studies, today. They are not, however, mutually exclusive approaches in practice: indeed I have an impression that the pendulum of fashion, which
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Folk culture · Folklore · Genealogy · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Literature · Luck · Meaning (existential · Mythology · Sociology · Anthropology · Classics · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,21 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2016 (5) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |