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    On Being Human: Folklore of Mormon Missionaries
    On Being Human: Folklore of Mormon Missionaries
    On Being Human: Folklore of Mormon Missionaries
    Ebook41 pages37 minutes

    On Being Human: Folklore of Mormon Missionaries

    By William Wilson

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    About this ebook

    A collection of narratives, humorous stories, and songs from Mormon missionaries that has become a classic study of narrative folklore. The 64th annual Faculty Honor Lecture, in the Humanities, Utah State University.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUtah State University Press
    Release dateNov 1, 1981
    ISBN9780874218336
    On Being Human: Folklore of Mormon Missionaries
    Author

    William Wilson

    The author, William Wilson, is a writer living in New York. william.wilson@downthere.com

    Read more from William Wilson

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      Book preview

      On Being Human - William Wilson

      ON BEING HUMAN

      The Folklore of Mormon Missionaries

      by

      William A. Wilson

      64th Faculty Honor Lecture

      Utah State University

      Logan, Utah

      Copyright ©1981 Utah State University Press

      All rights reserved

      Utah State University Press

      Logan, Utah 84322-3078

      www.USUpress.org

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      ISBN: 978-0-87421-114-6 (paper)

      ISBN: 978-0-87421-833-6 (e-book)

      ON BEING HUMAN

      The Folklore of Mormon Missionaries

      Only a week before I received the invitation to write this introduction, two faculty members who are team-teaching an introductory class about world arts and cultures queried me. Their course concerns concepts and perspectives in the intercultural, interdisciplinary study of art, aesthetics, and performance. Among other matters, it examines the performative representation of cultural identity. The instructors sought articles outside their own fields that students should read. Immediately I recommended William A. (Bert) Wilson’s On Being Human: The Folklore of Mormon Missionaries. It deals as much with behavior, performance, and culture as it does with the lore of a particular religious identity. The piece is imminently readable; Bert is a marvelous storyteller and a fine writer. Based on a huge quantity of recorded data, personal experience, and years of reflection, this essay contains numerous insights about the nature of narrating and its impact on people’s emotions, behavior, and interactions.

      I met Bert Wilson at Indiana University. He was completing his graduate studies in the Folklore Department as I was beginning mine. His book Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland (1976a), which grew out of his dissertation, remains the best study of the use of folklore in nationalistic movements. When we first met we talked about his interest in Mormon folklore. He was dissatisfied with earlier works. Either the publications consisted largely of documentation without analysis or, written by outsiders, the interpretations were inadequate and inappropriate. As a practicing Mormon, Bert has an emic or insider view of the traditions. He was a missionary to Finland. He has participated in some of the lore that he reports and analyzes in his publications.

      Two major streams of scholarship appear to have influenced Bert’s interpretation of the traditions presented here. One is a behavioral perspective, which embraces a performance studies approach. When he writes about stories being framed with beginning and closing markers and with a stylized manner of performance (including gestures, rhythmical speech, shifts in intonation, and ceremonial language), he draws upon ideas propounded by Roger Abrahams, Richard Bauman, and others who (like Bert himself) contributed to the analysis of verbal art as performance. When he dwells on "the telling of a story during which the narrator and listener together shape the form and meaning, and on the unique circumstances in which the narrating occurs, he relies largely on the work of Robert A. Georges, who helped develop a behavioral orientation in folkloristics. This perspective eschews the study of texts in favor of concentrating on communication and social experience in the context of specific events. A result is the greater understanding of expressive behavior as, in Bert’s words, an artful rendering of significant human

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