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Folklore: An Obituary?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Margaret Alexiou
Margaret Alexiou*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham, Centre for Byzantine Studies and Modern Greek
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Extract

“As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end” (M. FOUCAULT).

With the minor substitution of ‘folk’ for ‘man’, Foucault’s comment on the discipline of anthropology, which concludes his Order of Things (1970: 387), provides an appropriate starting-point for a reappraisal of the present state and future prospects of Greek folklore studies. Kyriakidou-Nestoros (1978) and Herzfeld (1982) have already charted, from different perspectives, the major developments since the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is the intention of this paper to raise a series of questions relevant to folklore as an academic discipline in order to clarify some of the central issues, both theoretical and practical. First, what is folklore, and who are the folk? Why has it occupied such a prominent place in both the intellectual life and the educational system of Greece? Second, what factors have shaped its direction? Which features does Greek folklore share with European folklore, and which are peculiar? Third, what role can it play during the last decades of the twentieth century, when the very foundation of traditional life — the village community — is being rapidly eroded by the process of urbanisation and by the mechanisation of agriculture? Will it cease to exist except as an antiquarian pastime, just as in the many centuries prior to its ‘invention’? And finally, how can the relationship between ‘folk’ and ‘art’ culture be defined in the present Greek context? How can folklore be related to other disciplines, such as mythology, anthropology, literary history and criticism, history and sociology?

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 9 , 1985 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1985

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