REPOST from FOLK 201: Second and Third Classes

Unlike Folklore 101, this course is more framed by readings than by action. For Friday we read Bascom's "Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives." He advocates the reasonably-standard-but-not-without-its-detractors myth/legend/folktale split, and provides lovely rubrics and tables for starting to divvy them up. What must be borne in mind is that any analytic apparatus is ultimately a model which serves as an opportunity for insight into a concrete phenomena but is not an absolute representation thereof.

When we read of one way of distinguishing between the three genres being the groups 'belief' in the narrative, it allows a certain snapshot judgment to take place. But we impose a uniformity on the group that may not be present. The easiest example is of a parent narrating a tale to a child: the parent likely doesn't believe the events to be true, but the child might not be making the distinction between truth and falsity (especially given the authority of the storyteller). So we extrapolate from context what we imagine to be the position of belief of the group, and gloss over individual perspectives within said group. When one thinks of sacred narratives, one can easily imagine the same group of congregants maintaining their importance as narrative, but one considering them literal and the other metaphorical.

Today we talked about the difference between a type and a version. I hate to trot out first-year philosophy courses, but (I really shouldn't do this) think of good ol' Plato's discussion of 'forms': the form is the ideal of a thing - triangle, justice - against which all incarnate instances are measured and made determinate. (This is, of course, bullshit, and Aristotle quickly pointed out that just because we can contemplate an item both directly and abstractly does not mean that the two are separate.) So think of the Cinderella Type as the form, and the version told you by your gam-gam as the worldly manifestation.

Wow: was that a tangent. Oh well.

Next class: fun with Motif and Type.