Alan Dundes-Folkloristics in The Twenty-First Century (2005)

Folkloristics in the Twenty-First Century (AFS Invited Presidential Plenary Address, 2004) Author(s): Alan Dundes Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 118, No. 470 (Autumn, 2005), pp. 385-408 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of American Folklore Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4137664 . Accessed: 24/09/2012 14:40
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ALAN DUNDES
Folkloristicsin the Twenty-First Century (AFSInvitedPresidentialPlenaryAddress,2004)

The state of folkloristics at the beginning of the twenty-first century is depressingly worrisome. Graduateprograms in folklore around the world have been disestablished or seriously weakened. The once-celebrated program at the University of Copenhagen no longer exists. Folklore programs in Germany have changed their title in an effort to become ethnology-centered (Korff 1996). Even in Helsinki, the veritable Mecca of folklore research, the name of the graduate program at the University of Helsinki has been changed. According to the website, "The Department of Folklore Studies, along with the departments of Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology, belongs administratively to the Faculty of Arts and the Institute of Cultural Research."The latter title sounds suspiciously like "culturalstudies" to me, and cultural studies consists of literary types who would like to be cultural anthropologists. I hate to think of folklorists being grouped with such wannabes! Here in the United States, the situation is even worse. UCLA's doctoral program in folklore and mythology has been subsumed under the rubric of World Arts and Cultures, and the folklore doctorate has been reduced to one of several options in that expansion of what was formerly a department of dance. The doctoral program in folklore and folklife at the University of Pennsylvania has virtually collapsed and may not recover unless there is an infusion of new faculty members. Even Indiana University, the acknowledged bastion and beacon of folklore study in the United States, has seen fit to combine folklore with ethnomusicology into one administrativeunit. As a result, there is no longer a purely separate, independent doctoral program in folklore per se anywhere in the United States, a sad situation in my view. Some may feel that these administrative shifts are nothing more than a reflection of the name-changing discussion arising from those among you who have expressed unhappiness with the term "folklore" as the name of our discipline. Regina Bendix was quite right when she made the astute observation that the very coining of the term "folklore"by William Thoms was itself a case of name changing (from "popular antiquities," the Latinate construction, to the Anglo-Saxon "folklore";1998:235). However, I believe she was sadly mistaken when she claimed that part of the disrepute of the field was caused by using the same term "folklore"for both the subject matter and the name of the discipline. This is, in my opinion, a red herring, a nonproblem that was perfectly well solved by several nineteenth-century folklorists, including
ALAN DUNDES was Professorof Folkloreand Anthropology,Universityof California,Berkeley JournalofAmericanFolklore118(470):385-408 Copyright? 2005 by the Board of Trusteesof the Universityof Illinois
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the subjectmatter, between"folklore," ReinholdK6hler(1887),who distinguished matter. Theterm"folkloristics" and "folkldoristics," the studyof thatsubject goesback informedus, "Ofcoursethe to the 1880sat the veryleast.In 1996,EricMontenyohl The distinctionbeterm 'folldoristics' is quitemodern in comparisonto 'folklore.' termfor eachcame andthe appropriate tweenthe disciplineandthe subjectmaterial to both the subjectand into discussionin the 1980s.Untilthattime,folklorereferred Monthe discipline whichstudiedit-one morereasonforconfusion" (1996:234n2). is referring to BruceJackson's tenyohlprobably equallyuninformednote in JAFin and proposesthatit 1985in whichJackson complainsaboutthe term"folkloristics" be banned,as if anyonecouldpossiblylegislate quotesRogusage.Jackson language er Abrahams's claimthat I inventedthe term as a joke. I certainlydid not. On December7, 1889,AmericanfolkloristCharlesG. Leland(1834-1903), in an address greetingthe newlyformedHungarianFolkloreSociety,spokeof "Die Folkloristik" in history(Leland1890-1892).So folkas one of the most profounddevelopments and it has loristicsis the studyof folklorejust as linguisticsis the studyof language, folklorists arenot aware of American been for morethana century, evenif parochial firstpublishedin 1938,recogthe fact.YuriySokolov'stextbook Russian Folklore, nizesthe distinction, of thebookis entitled"TheNature andthe valuable firstchapter The Sokolovusagewas pointedout of Folkloreand the Problemsof Folkloristics." in her rebuttal A GoodYidnote "Difolkloristik: Kirshenblatt-Gimblett by Barbara in his imthat Ake Hultkrantz, dish Word,"also in JAF(1985). She also remarked as a used "folkloristik" General (1960), portant synonymfor Ethnological Concepts andfolkloristics, Thedistinction betweenfolklore "thescienceof folklore." therefore, it as clearlyas I couldin is hardlya new idea,and I statedor, if you like,"re-stated" in the editedvolume TheStudyof Folklore "What Is Folklore" (1965).I my prefatory this that Ben-Amos or Elliott reiterated neither Dan importantdistincregret Oring tion betweenfolkloristics and folklorein their otherwiseexcellent,spiriteddefense But in contrast,I was pleased of the disciplinein theirrespective1998essaysin JAF. that RobertGeorgesand MichaelOwenJonesentitledtheirusefultextbookFolklorAn Introduction, and "folkistics: and they stressthe distinctionbetween"folklore" did not includethe term loristics" on the veryfirstpage(1985).JanHaroldBrunvand in the firsteditionof his mainstream which Folklore, textbook,TheStudyofAmerican first appearedin 1968,but by the second edition (1978) he decidedto includethe term on the firstpageof the book and it has remainedin latereditions (1986, 1998) but he insistedon placingthe termin quotation as referring to "thestudyof folklore," with it. I have,however, marks,which suggestshe was not altogethercomfortable in recent scholarship, and I noted the increasingusage of the term "folkloristics" believeit bodes well. I am not suggesting thatwe changethe name of the AmericanFolklore Societyto of Raththe America. of America to Society parallel Linguistics Society Folkloristics the is rather academic the critical er, questionremaining why folkloristics, studyof and collegecurricufolklore,a subjectthat shouldbe partof everymajoruniversity lar offerings,is in such obviousdecline.Anotherrelatedsad sign is the unfortunate Folklore the successorto the olderSouthern demiseof the journalSouthern Folklore, in the United and a This was once States, I keep Quarterly. majorfolkloreperiodical
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thatan enterprising folklorist at oneof ourmany southern or hoping great colleges universities willresuscitate I thinkthere thisjournal. arereasons forthedecline, and I alsothink someof theresponsibility forthedecline withthemembership liesinpart of theAmerican I suspect Folklore thatsomeof youmay included). (myself Society think thatI mayhave endorsed thescandalously thatappeared in discouraging essay in Franca of the an October 1997 that made dire that "folklore as Lingua prediction atPennmaywellbe doomed" autonomous Thisessay (Dorfman 1997:8). discipline thatproclaimed thediscipline if not actually of folkloristics as moribund, deceased, wasallthemoreinsulting it wasentitled AllFolks!" because "That's whichis a borfrompopular the "Looney and"Merrie Melodies" Tunes" culture, rowing namely, Thesewords tradition. uttered that BugsBunny Pigsignified by a stuttering Porky the cartoon wasover.(Incidentally the use of a stuttering pig,andotherinsultsto individuals withvarious andother would nolonger disabilities, speech impediments be deemed the use of the as a of But line title the article escorrect.) politically tag the fieldof folklore to an animated I am not cartoon thatis over. equates sentially aware thatanyfolklorist wrotea letterof protest or rebuttal, I triedto do although to saymyresponse, so. (I am sorry "Folkloristics wasnot published Redivivus," by it does on the website Franca, Lingua though appear journal's (www.temple.edu/isllc/ Thelastparagraph "At of myresponse a moment in reads, newfolk/dundes2.html). American whenmulti-cultural is beingcelebrated, thisis precisely history diversity whenenlightened administrators university oughtto be encouraging practitioners of aninternational which back to Herder a discipline andtheGrimms, discipline goes whichhasbeenahead of its timein recognizing the importance in proof folklore invaluable dataforthe discovery of native motingethnicprideandin providing andpatterns of worldview andvalues." Franca didpubcognitive categories Lingua lishseveral shortletters of protest, one from Indiana entitled including University but it wassignedby LizLocke "IsFolklore Finished?" andeightyothergraduate students. No letterfromthe IU faculty and no Nothingfromthe Indiana faculty. letter of protest from AFS. Nota peep! Itseems to methatbothacademic andpublic folklorists in defending sector havea stake ourdiscipline whenit is attacked. Where on this occasion? wastheAFSleadership Is it a caseof the proverb "Silence gives consent"? as a discipline I mightadd is dead? Did,or does,AFSthinkthatfolklore andperhaps in a littlegleefully, thatLingua whichstarted Franca, parenthetically,
1991, ended in 2001; so it turned out that, after all, it was Lingua Franca and not folklore that died a premature death; and I can happily report that the study of folklore successfully defied its gloomy prophecy and lives on. The first, and in my opinion the principal, reason for the decline of folklore programs at universities is the continued lack of innovation in what we might term "grandtheory." In LinguaFrancaparlance, "Folklore is considered undertheorized." Elliott Oring, one of our few folklore theorists, put it equally succinctly as an aside in his article "On the Future of American Folklore Studies: A Response": "Folklore is liminal precisely because it has no theory or methodology that governs its perspective" (1991:80). Any academic discipline worth its salt must have basic theoretical and methodological concepts. Folkloristics has some, to be sure, but most of them were devised in the nineteenth or early twentieth century and have been neither
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norsupplemented. mostgrand in folklore superseded Interestingly enough, theory I wasproposed armchair or not fieldworkers. am of folklorists, by library thinking Frazer's SirJames formulation of theprinciples of sympathetic orMax Mtiller's magic about solar in thetwentieth Even whatlittlegrand speculations mythology. century, andClaude Freud neither of Levi-Strauss, theorydoesexistcomesfromSigmund as whomwould Most on the fieldworkers. are involved fieldworkers, contrary, qualify withlocalcommunities andarenot always withthetheoretical concerned implicationsof thedatatheygather. therootsof thediscipline of folkloristics lie in antiquarianHistorically speaking, or what I term as the for the or the questforthe ism, might quest quaint perhaps In my travels curious. andin this country, to folklore centers overseas I see more oftenthannotwhatI wouldcall"butterfly Itemsof folklore aretreated collecting." asrare to have a stuck them and mountexotica, pin metaphorically speaking, through edin a display archival casesuchthatit is almost to the folklore impossible imagine itemswereeveralive(thatis, performed). Context is typically andit is the ignored, textonlythatis prized Because suchlocalcollectors whoought bythelocalcollector. ideas of atheoretical to have ormethodological nature donot,thefield hasbydefault beenleftto armchair themodern to Frazer. IntheUnited scholars, library analogues theatheoretical of evenarmchair voidis exacerbated orlibrary States, bythepaucity the richness andthe infinite scholars. of ourlibrary resources of Despite capacity information with its of American folklorists databases, technology dazzling array havecontributed littleto folklore andmethod. Almost viable precious theory every theoretical andmethodological in folkloristics hascomefrom concept employed Inonesense, I suppose where a goodidea it doesn't matter comes from. Europe. really isandalways hasbeenaninternational So we use French Folkloristics discipline. gladly folklorist Arnold VanGennep's notionof "rites of passage," Finnish folklorist Kaarle Krohn's folklorist or Swedish Wilhelm Carl von method," "historic-geographic of "active bearer" and"oicotype." Butalltheseconcepts wereforconcepts Sydow's mulated at theendof thenineteenth twentieth or early Where are century century. thenewhypotheses andspeculations aboutfolklore? thatsomeof youfolklorists, thoseimbued with Now,I canjustimagine especially doseof nationalism a healthy andpride,aresaying to yourselves, a minute. "Wait have Americans to theoretical folkloristics. made contributions What about feminist What oral about What about formulaic Well, theory? performance theory? theory?" whatabouttheseso-called Milman theories? andAlbert Lord are Although Parry credit fordeveloping hasshown oralformulaic thattheroots John given theory, Foley of the theorycamefromEuropean whopreceded scholars them(1988:7-15). The
situationis analogousto Francis Child'scanonicalcollectionof Englishand Scottish whichwasincontestably modeledafterthe DanishfolkloristSvendGrundtballads, vig's massivetreatmentof Danishballadsor StithThompson'srevisionof Finnish
folklorist Antti Aarne's tale type index. American folklorists have, for the most part, been followers, not leaders. I have to admit that I fall into this category myself, having been inspired by Russian folkloristVladimir Propp'sMorphologyof theFolktale(1968) and Austrian Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory. As for feminist theory, what precisely is the "theory" in feminist theory? Despite
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theexistence of booksandarticles with"feminist in their titles,onelooksin theory" is.Theideathatwomen's vainfora serious articulation of whatthat"theory" voices beenadversely andwomen's rolesin society have and impacted bymalechauvinism a proper Andwhatof biasis certainly butdoesthattruism constitute true, "theory"? No folklorist woulddenythatfolklore livesonlywhenit is "performance theory"? that andthat involve and performed, folklore performances participants audiences, theissueof competence in performance is a feature to berecorded andanalyzed, but in performance not so-called where is the"theory" I do consider either femtheory? inisttheoryor performance to be "grand As faras I'mconcerned, theory theory." of asperformed, are that we should folklore pretentious they simply study ways saying of women be moresensitive to thedepiction in folkloristic textsand andwe should contexts. datathatwouldotherwise remain Truegrand theoriesallowus to understand if not Here we that some of the older observe enigmatic, indecipherable. may grand continue to yieldinsight. Consider thatone should theories theJewish superstition whilea personis neverhavea buttonsewedon or a garment otherwise repaired if shed little rathat can on Informants, asked, light the possible wearing garment. with Frazer's law tionale the belief. But the of of homeopathic underlying help magis sewed Theonlytimea garment thecustom. whileit ic,we canquiteeasily explain forburial. is wornis whena corpse is beingdressed Hence, sewingon a detached buttonor repairing a tearin a garment is treating the wearer of the garment as a in or the soon that individual die. No and, effect, corpse might signifying forecasting wonder it is considered to be sucha taboo. In maritime thatit is badluckto whistle welearn whileon board folklore, ship.I backin myowndaysin theUnited States chastised canremember being Navy by a forwhistling. should be forbidden on a warrant officer Once whistling ship? Why of "like canhelpus.Whistling, theprinciple like," produces theory given again, grand a model of windstorm. thebasisof Frazer's lawof homeopathic is a There is magic, a evena folkmetaphor storm." wind a "towhistle was up Although clearly necessity in a ship's in daysof sail,too muchwindwasnot a desideratum as it mightresult Thepointhereis thatgrand andsinking. onceformulated, theory, capsizing may to yieldinsight. continue I findthatpsychoanalytic Asmany of youknow, asgrand qualifies theory theory, fathom us to otherwise data. For thereis folkloristic inexplicable example, allowing a Japanese that"pregnant womenshouldneveropenan ovendoor." superstition Informants couldsayonlythatit wasbadluck.Butwiththeknowledge from gained
the symbolic equivalence of oven and womb (as attested in the phrase even in American folklore that a pregnant woman "has a bun in the oven"), we can understand that this is once again an application of Frazer's homeopathic magic. Opening an oven door would be an invitation for a miscarriage to occur. In this case, we have to use both Freud and Frazerto fully explain this superstition. The point is that most collections of superstitions,like the majority of folklore collections--be they proverbs or folktales-offer no explanation whatsoever. Let me give one further illustration of the application of psychoanalytic theory to a puzzling item of folklore. From medieval Spain to modern-day Latin America, one of the most popular
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Morethan 500 versionsof this romanceSpanishballadsis known as "Delgadina." corridohavebeenpublished.FamedSpanish balladscholarRam6nMenendezPidal claimedthatthis Spanishballad"isfoundwherever the Spanishlanguage is spoken" andexpressed hisbeliefthat"'Delgadina' is withouta doubt (Herrera-Sobek 1986:91) the most widelyknownromancein SpainandAmerica" of (106n.11).The summary tells the story of a young woman who resistsher father's the ballad:"'Delgadina' incestuousadvances. Forthis, she is lockedup and denied anythingto drinkwhile she is fed only saltyfoods"(Mariscal Motif T411.1 2000:148, Hay2002:20; Goldberg Fatherdesiresdaughter She The abundant on the balsexually. refuses.). scholarship lad tendsto treatit as a literalreflectionof the horrorsof father-daughter incestand, in particular, of the absolutepower of the fatherin the Hispanicfamilystructure of (Herrera-Sobek 1986),but no one to datehas offereda convincingexplanation this ballad has so centuries of is the just why enjoyed many popularity. Delgadina of the king,and in some versionsshe wearsprovocative youngestof threedaughters dress."In many versionsof the ballad,thereis clothing, includinga "transparent some disputeover who is to blame for the father'sattemptto makeDelgadinahis mistress.Often it is Delgadinawho is blamedby her sistersor her mother.In one the motherresponds, verse,afterDelgadina begshermotherin vainfora jugof water, "GetawayDelgadina, get awayyou evil bitch/ becauseof you hereI am sevenyears a wrongedwife."In anotherversion,a Sephardic one (Aitken1928:46), the mother "Get thee beast! Get thee cruel beast: On thence, Jewish down, replies, thy account these sevenyearsI havelivedunhappyin marriage." It is importantto note thatthis balladis typicallysung by women to other women (Egan 1996).Thus, it is clearly thather fatheris very much a women'ssong (Aitken1928).The daughterfantasizes not happywithhermotherbutwouldprefer herinstead. AsAitkenputsit in her 1928 article,the girl is jealousof her motherand thinks,"Myfatherreallyprefersme to my mother and would like to put me in her place and over my elder sisters" (1928:48). In a parallel(cognate)ballad(of Silvana), it is arranged thatthe mothertakesthe in for bed the with the daughter's place prearranged meeting father-king (Goldberg 2000:100,Motif Q260.1). What I believe we have with this version,what Wendy inver(2000), is what I havetermed"projective Doniger refersto as the "bedtrick" sion"(Dundes 1976,2002). If we perceive this celebrated balladas a thinlydisguised Electral we can seethatit represents wishfulthinkingon the partof the daughstory, ter. She loves her fatherand wants to replaceher mother in the maritalbed. This taboowishis transformed viaprojection intothefather's to seducehis daughattempt
ter. The mother's substituting for the daughter in the parental bed is a perfect inversion of the taboo wish. Instead of the daughter substituting for her mother, the mother substitutes for the daughter,thereby saving the daughter from a taboo incestuous sexual act. The specific reference to the daughter being fed salt cannot help but remind us of AT923, "Love like Salt" (the basis of the King Lear plot), which also involves a king-father's attempt to have incestuous relations with his daughter. This plot is also reminiscent of AT706, "The Maiden without Hands," which occurs in ballad form (Brewster 1972:11-12) and has also been interpreted by me as a striking case of projective inversion (Dundes 1987). One could also mention the tale of Lot's
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whichhis daughters theirdrunken a to salt,after seduce wife,whois turned father, Electral tale. quiteexplicit withtheseinterpretations one agrees or not, one cancertainly seethat Whether theinterpretations without recourse to grand wouldnothavebeenpossible theory, of theconcept inthiscase, andmymodest of projecFreud's addition Oedipal theory tiveinversion. Asforthe reasons forthelong-lived of a father-daughter popularity incest in Hispanic it is worthremembering thatthecentral cultures, plot projection of Catholicism a virgin her consent a involves without heavbeingimpregnated by In sumwithovertones of projective inversion. another Electral enlyfather, fantasy to so in the would like seduce father but that is forbidden, form,"I mary my projectionit is myfather whoseduces withthe me,muchto my mother's consternation, of leaving me guilt-free. It'snot my faultthatmy father psychological advantage desires me."Thepopularity of thisplot in Catholic circles is alsoattested by the her her a Irish of Saint After mother chieftain died, father, pagan legend Dymphna. thewholeworldfora womanto replace hiswifebutwas namedDamon, searched homeandsawthathis daughter wasas unsuccessful untilhe returned Dymphna Hemakes beautiful ashermother. butsheflees.Hecatches with herin advances, up kills The fact that the but when refuses to he her. she surrender, Belgium, daughter diesorhashermasturbatory hands cutoff (inAT706)is a signthatit is,in thefinal wish. forheroriginal incestuous shewhois ultimately Now, punished analysis, being of is not conventhis widelyaccepted type grand by admittedly, particular theory tional butmypointis that,without mainstream thisorother theofolklorists, grand withlittleorno substantive willforever remain asmere texts collectanea folklore ries, content The of as obsessive classicollectors, folklorists stereotype analysis. simply eachandeverytimeyet another collection of is strengthened fiers,andarchivists folklore is unanalyzed published. Andthisbrings meto thesecond reason forthedecline of folkloristics asa major I as is andhonored academic One have the lack noted, reason, respected discipline. of newgrand I believe, is thatweprofessional buta second folklorists reason, theory, In arebadly bad first amateurs who our field a name. the week outnumbered by give
of June 2004, I was invited to participate in an ambitious conference in Atlanta called "MythicJourneys,"designed to honor the centennial of the birth of Joseph Campbell. The event was organized by the Mythic Imagination Institute, supported by the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the Jung Society of Atlanta, and sponsored by a number of groups and corporations, including Borders Books and Music, ParabolaMagazine, and the Krispy Kreme Foundation. Although there were dozens of panels and presentations that were concerned with folklore (though not necessarily myth), there were very few professional folklorists in attendance. The presentersincluded storytellers, artists, filmmakers, Jungian analytical psychologists, and a very few individuals who were self-identified as folklorists. Before leaving for Atlanta, out of curiosity I looked up a number of my fellow panelists and presenters and was quite startled to discover that many of them were faculty members at small colleges who were listed as professors of folklore and who obviously taught courses in what they termed "folklore."The courses were typicallyconcerned with searchingfor Jungianarchetypes in literature, including J. R. R. Tolkien, or exploring manifestations of Campbell's
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that has little if anythingto do with myth properbut is, composite "monomyth" on a combination of legend and folktale.Now there is no way other based rather, a fascistpolice statefor the AmericanFolkloreSocietyto prevent than establishing RobertGeorges wrotean such "folklorists" fromteachingwhatthey call "folklore." at there individuals who his that are many simply essayindicating disgust discovering to be folklorists withoutany formaltrainingor studyof the subdeclarethemselves or mathject (1991:3-4).Canone possiblyimagineanyoneclaimingto be a physicist ematician without ever having had formal training in physics or mathematics? conalsoexpressed thatmanywho aretrainedas folklorists disappointment Georges insteadto claimthat they belong to other academicdisciceal that fact,preferring instances plines.HereI cannotforbearremindingyou of one of the worstrecorded in 1992 It happened to acknowledge his disciplinary affiliation. of a folklorist refusing at UCLA.Exiledpresidentof Haiti,Jean-Bertrand Aristide,who has an interestin was scheduledto speakon campus.DonaldCosentinowas at thattime the folklore, As is customaryon such occasions,a chairof the folkloreand mythologyprogram. officialwas on the stageto welcomethe audiencebeforeturningthe high-ranking Rightbeforethe eventbegan,the gaveloverto Cosentinoto introducethe speaker. "We vice-chancellor to havea headof statehere.Under UCLA whispered Cosentino, I will will I introduceyou as the chairof folkloreand mythology. no circumstances Let'snot embarrass ourselves." Cosenintroduce department. you as fromthe English tino did as instructedand introducedAristidewithout identifyinghimselfas chair of the folkloreand mythologyprogram. Whatbothersme most aboutthis incident is not so much the vice-chancellor's outrageousinsultto our field,but the fact that I can assureyou thathad I Cosentinodid not fightit, insteadcowardly acquiescing. been in sucha position,shortof punchingout the vice-chancellor publiclyon stage, and proudlyannounced I would haveactuallyreportedhis whisperedconversation In otherwords,I wouldhavesought my positionas chairof folkloreand mythology. me and my field. to embarrass the vice-chancellor ratherthan havehim embarrass was the A trulydisgraceful one that incidentin our academic history, veryfirstitem attack(Dorfman1997). mentionedin the LinguaFranca masto the factthatwe seemto be besiegedby popularizer nonfolklorists Related bookas folklorescholars,if one walksinto any of the largecommercial querading andchecksthe "folklore andmythology" storessuchas BarnesandNobleor Borders of Greek find? numerous what does one There are the inevitable sections, anthologies of mythologycontainingmostlyentriesdevotedto Greekand mythsor dictionaries Romanmythology, volumesof folktales fromalloverthe worldretold by editors-the to professional word"retold" shouldbe anathema folklorists-typicallybowdlerized and dumbed-downfor children,and finally,at least a half dozen books by Joseph I recallone incidentseveral Campbell. yearsago in the Barnesand Noblebookstore I checkthe in Berkeley. bookstores, occasionally AlthoughI muchprefersecondhand commercial storesjustto see if thereis a newbook thatI shouldknowabout.On this occasion,I found myselfunableto locatethe folkloreand mythologysection.It had evidentlybeen moved, as bookstoresoften reshuffleshelvesand sections.I finally wentto one of the bookstorepersonnelto be directedto the folkloreand mythology sectionsareclearly labeled: section.Normallyin suchbookstores, religion,sociology,
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Inthiscase, labelwasabsent andso forth. thefolklore andmythology and self-help, in its placewassimply emblazoned in largeboldletters: I was "Joseph Campbell." shocked todiscover thattheentire andmythology hadbeensubsumed folklore section I remember under name. thatat leastnoneof my relieved Campbell's beingalmost books were to befoundin thatsection. sole in thisdisheartenMy point mentioning that incident is to for the study of members of the literate ing public, suggest many folklore means andhiswritings. Yet have folklorists precisely Campbell professional saidverylittleaboutthehugecorpus of Campbelliana. I do not knowif anyof his in JAF. bookswereeverevenreviewed Is thisa caseof "silence many givesassent"? were of more introduced to the matter folklore people Very likely subject bythewritor the PBStelevision seriesof lectures ingsof Campbell by him thanby anyother source. Andyetwe folklorists havesaidlittleor nothingabouthim andhis theories. this:the combination of a lackof newgrand andthe Mythesisis simply theory theeffective failure to counter efforts of numerous anddilettantes whohave amateurs of the fieldof folklore claimed as theirfiefdom hasunderpossession successfully led to a public as a weakacademic a of folkloristic perception discipline, standably too often shared and administrators. perception unfortunately by college university TheAmerican Folklore sinceits inception, hashadas its goalthe profesSociety, sionalization of folkloristics. forumfor of thediscipline should be theprimary JAF theexpression andmethodological andthebookreview of newtheoretical advances section of thejournal should andrebut to analyze folkamateurish critique attempts I amnotblaming loristic data. thepastorpresent forthefailure to do editors of JAF so. Theycanonlypublish articles submitted to themby us folklorists constituting themembership of AFS. Sowemustaccept theblame forthestateof ourdiscipline. it is up to us to fulfill thepromise of ourbeloved fieldto demonAnd,accordingly, strate to allinterested thatfolkloristics is a world-class with parties discipline global its ownvalidtheories andmethods, andwe shouldnotleaveourfieldby default to and amateurs. Fakelore and and we abound folklorismus popularizers everywhere, runtheriskof beingoverwhelmed of unscholarly bythe sheer anthologies quantity of adulterated mixed folklore withcreative writing. At the Mythic conference heldin Junein Atlanta, therewasa splendid Journeys withstunningly associated website brilliant the a map On screen appeared graphics. of theworldandone couldclickon different a from areas and that (peoples) myth would of it.Very narration appear accompanied impressive area/people bya sonorous Butatthebottomof the screen indeed! there werevarious One alternative options.
of the options was "write your own myth." I saw at one point that a number of tenand eleven-year-old children had accepted the challenge and had e-mailed "their own myths" to the website. Nothing irritates me more than when, after I give a lecture on folklore to a group of elementary or secondary school teachers, one enthusiastic teacher comes up afterwardto say that she very much appreciates the importance of myth and that is why she encourages her second-grade class to write myths as an exercise. No wonder such children eventually grow up to be confused about what myths really are and to become fans of Campbell's contention that all of us can be heroes of our own myths.
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I should As apparently no folkloristhas hithertomade any critiqueof Campbell, like to takethis opportunityto do so. Partof the problemstemsfrom the fact that Campbelldoes not reallyknow what a myth is, and he does not reallydistinguishit from folktaleand legend,two genresthat providemost of the illustrative examples in his popularHerowith a Thousand Faces,firstpublishedin 1949.His illustrative includeLittle RedRidingHoodandthe Porcupine examples subtypeof StarHusband, neitherof which any folkloristwould dreamof classifying as myth.Campbelltries to delineatea worldwide heropattern, but he makesno mentionof J.G.von Hahn's initialpioneeringstatement of 1876in whichhe soughtto isolatefeatures of whathe termed the AryanExpulsionand Returnhero pattern (Segal 1990:vii).Nor does Campbellreferto Otto Rank's path-breaking Mythof theBirthof theHerofirstpublishedin 1909or LordRaglan's famouspatternof the herobiography whichappeared as an articlein Folklore in 1934 and shortlythereafterin book form in 1936 (see Dundes 1965). Letme saysomethingmoreaboutTheHerowitha Thousand stillCampbell's Faces, best-knownbook, and his first.Wheredid he get thatresonantcatchytitle?In 1940, (Larsenand Larsen1993:283),who was a deCampbellmet SwamiNikhilananda voted discipleof Ramakrishna. In TheHerowith a Thousand Faces,Campbellcites Swami Nikhilananda's translation of TheGospel [1949] (Campbell ofSriRamakrishna We know that Campbellwas very intriguedby the writingsof Sri 1956:115n.33). Ramakrishna (Larsenand Larsen1993:283-6). In the second volume of The CulturalHeritage Memorial,SwamiNikhilanof India,the Sri Ramakrisna Centenary a 176-pageessayentitled"SriRamakrishna and Spiritual Renaisandacontributed sance" (1936:441-617). We know that Campbellread the 1936 essaybecause he Manas Metaphysician." Considerthe following citedit in his 1960essay,"Primitive
quote from Ramakrishna contained in Nikhilananda's essay: "But he who is called
Krishna is alsocalledShivaandbearsthe namesShakti, andAllahas well-the Jesus,

one Rama with a thousand names... The substance is one under different names"
wasa trulyvoraciousreaderanda (1936;emphasisadded).Weknow thatCampbell much of what he read.We shallneverknow for certain,but masterof assimilating the passage bearsan eerieresemblance to Campbell's title.Wehaveonlyto substitute for"names" andwe get "theone herowitha thousand "hero" for "Rama" and"faces" In anycase,the Campbell faces." Note, I am arguing here,not plagiarism. inspiration classichasbeen called"asweepingand engrossing of study the heromyth"(Ellwood 1999:143).But the narratives analyzedby Campbellare not myths at all; they are folktalesand legends.
In his discussion of "The Magic Flight,"which is strictly a folktale motif, Campbell includes the narrative of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece ([1949] 1956:203-4), but this has nothing whatever to do with myth proper. Rather it is a hero legend. There is nothing in the narrativereferringto the creation of the world or humankind. In view of Campbell's abiding interest in the "quest"theme, it is not surprising that he frequently cites Arthurian material ([1949] 1956:330), a subject he studied for his master's thesis at Columbia University (Larsenand Larsen 1991:75), including mention of the search for the Holy Grail.But such Arthurian stories are definitely legends, not myths. In CreativeMythology, the fourth volume of Campbell's tetralogy The
in theTwenty-First Dundes, Folkloristics Century
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Masks of God, he retells Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristanand Wolfram von Eschen-
bach'sParzifal. Thesearesignificant but by no majormedievalliterarymasterpieces,

stretch of the folkloristic imagination could either one be considered a myth. Camp-
bell suggeststhat Wolframutilized"an altogethersecularmythology"(1968:476), but myth is sacred,not secular.At best these texts might be construedas literary Yetboth involvequestsspecifically with the Holy Grail. associated legends. Campbell alsoconsiders ThomasMannandJames asmythmakers. One canonlyconclude Joyce that Creative does not dealwith "myth" in the stricttechnicalsenseat all. Mythology it is a volumeof essentially that Rather, literarycriticism.Considering wide-ranging is clear about what a his not no wonder followers are Campbell myth is, myriad one unfortunately shared equallyconfused.Thisloose definitionof "myth," by many writerson the subject,would seem to confirmGregory Hansen'scriticismthat definitions of folklore (and that would include myth) have been stretched so far as to include everything. Some writers of books on myths include "B"movies and novels
underthe rubricof myth.As Hansenwordsit, "Theproblemis that if everything is

now 'folklore,' then nothing is 'folklore'" (1997:99). Campbell's adaptation of folklorist Van Gennep's rites of passage pattern, applied to narratives, was certainly insightful, but the universalist assumption based on an unproven assumption of psychic unity-namely, that all peoples possess the same mythic structure-is not. In CreativeMythology,the fourth volume of the teratology TheMasks of God, Campbell himself refers to The Hero as follows: "In The Hero with a ThousandFaces I have shown that myths and wonder tales ... belong to a general type which I have called 'The Adventure of the Hero,' that has not changed in essential form through the documented history of mankind" (1968:480). It has long been a popular fantasy among amateur students of myth that all peoples share the same stories. This is clearly an example of wishful thinking. Campbell referred to the hero pattern as a universal monomyth, borrowing this vacuous portmanteau neologism from Joyce's Finnegan's Wake (Campbell [1949] 1956:30n.35). On the universality issue, the empirical facts suggest otherwise. There is not one single myth that is universal, a statement that runs counter to Campbell's view. He was invited to contribute to a special issue of Daedalus devoted to "Myth and Mythmaking" in 1959, an issue that also contained contributions by Mircea Eliade, Clyde Kluckhohn, and RichardDorson. Campbell began his essay,"The Historical Development of Mythology," which was based on his introduction to his then forthcoming Masks of God series with the following statement: "The comparative study of the mythologies of the world compels us to view the cultural history of mankind as a unit; for we find that such themes as the Fire-theft, Deluge, Land of the Dead, Virgin Birth, and Resurrected Hero have a world-wide distribution, appearing everywhere in new combinations, while remaining, like the elements of a kaleidoscope, only a few and always the same" (1959:232; emphasis added). Even a beginning student of folklore could dispute this kind of argument by assertion. It is easy to make ex cathedra pronouncements about universals, but it is quite difficult to document them. Takethe virgin birth, for example. If we look in the Motif-Index, we find Motif T547, Birth from Virgin, with just three citations listed for the motif. One refers to European saints, another to a classical Greek myth, and one to a South American Indian
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source.Period.I am not awareof anyvirginbirthstoriesin Africa. None arecitedin the Motif-Indexfor Siberia,Polynesia,or Melanesia. We have dozensof mythsreported from aboriginalAustraliaand New Guinea,but evidentlyno virgin birth storiesthere.So canwe acceptCampbell's assertionon faiththatthe virginbirthhas In TheHerowitha Thousand a worldwidedistribution? has a whole Faces, Campbell section devotedto the virginbirth ([1949] 1956:297-314),but the one Africantext citedtellsof the firstmanhavingintercourse withhis wivesanddaughters to produce childrenand animals,hardlya convincingexampleof a virgin birth. In his list of alsomentionsthe deluge.In my editedvolume,TheFloodMyth, universals, Campbell one can easilyascertain thatthis mythis essentially absentfromsub-Saharan Africa (1988). Campbellplays fast and loose with folkloredatato illustratehis so-called hero Forexample, in the sectionentitled"TheBellyof the Whale," cites pattern. Campbell the story of Jonah,and I am surethat westernethnocentricreadersnod theirhead in approvalas this narrativeof the Old Testament would seem to be a perfectexthe creature is not really identified asa whale). ampleof thistheme(thoughtechnically cite as a "The then on to second illustrative little German example Campbell goes wolf' Red was swallowed a This of narrative, ([1949] 1956:91). girl, RidingHood, by TaleType333, about course,is not a myth,but a folktale,namelyAarne-Thompson a girl,which makesit about a heroine,not a hero. Does Campbell's patternapply the or to Lefkowitz And to female of the males 1990:430)? (cf. species only equally the allegedswallower is not a whalebut a wolf.But,more important, we know that, in the oralversionof this girl-centered folktale(as opposedto the literaryrewritings andthe Brothers Perrault Grimm),the girlis not swallowed by malessuchas Charles the at all. Instead she a clever wolf ruseby pretending to needto by escapesthrough outside to defecate. because Red Hood is a not a So heroine, hero, and go Riding becauseshe was not swallowed and Japanese, by the wolf (or tigressin the Korean, Chineseversions),it would seem, then, that this tale is not reallythe best possible evidence for the existence of an element of a supposed universalmythic pattern entitled"Inthe Bellyof the Whale." to haveno doubtabouttheexistence Campbell Despitethelackof evidence, appears of folkloreuniversals. In this respect,he is a throwback to nineteenth-century theories of psychicunity.Most folklorists of parallels is would agreethatthe occurrence due to monogenesisanddiffusionrather thanpolygenesis, but this is not Campbell's position. His method, if we can even bear to call it such,is largelybased on Adolf notionof "Elementargedanke," Bastian's unsubstantiated or elementary ideas,a clearcut intellectualprecursorto CarlJung'sconcept of archetype,both of which are andToms1990:68). adoptedby Campbell(1972:44,1968:653; Campbell uncritically In his "Biosand Mythos:Prolegomena to a Scienceof Mythology," writtenfor Geza Rtheim's 1951festschrift, makesthis unequivocal statement: it "However, Campbell is of firstimportancenot to lose sight of the fact that the mythologicalarchetypes of... culturespheresandare (Bastian's Ideas)cut acrossthe boundaries Elementary not confined to any one or two, but are variouslyrepresentedin all" (1951:333). Campbelleventually, by his own admission,cameto preferJungto Freud,although Faces(Campbell he usedboth in TheHerowitha Thousand andToms1990:121).And
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he seems to have accepted the idea of Jung's "collective unconscious." "Mythology," according to Campbell, "is the expression of the collective unconscious."In marked contrast to Jung, however, he does occasionally accept the fact that diffusion can account for the occurrence of cross-cultural correspondences in myths (1990:123). Still, it is Campbell's insistence on the existence of archetypes that I find most disturbing. Consider this passage from Myths to Live By: "All my life, as a student of mythologies, I have been working with these archetypes, and I can tell you they do exist and are the same all over the world" (1972:216; emphasis in original). Jung claimed that there were panhuman, precultural autochthonous images that were supposedly part of a collective, as opposed to a personal unconscious substratum common to all humans, and that these manifestations of the instincts were to be found in dreams and folk narratives. There were only a limited number of these archetypes: the great mother, wise old man, the child, fourness, and so forth. Just as professional folklorists have tended to ignore Campbell and failed to criticize his oeuvre, they have similarly refrained from criticizing Jung and his notion of archetypes. Yet,in sections of bookstores nominally containing books on folklore, we find almost as many Jungianstudies of folkloristic subjects as there are books by Campbell. Why has there been no critique by folklorists of the concept of archetype? I believe there is no single idea promulgated by amateurs that has done more harm to serious folklore study than the notion of archetype. I find it invariably cited by ignorant students, as well as equally uninformed members of the general public in the "q and a" period whenever I have occasion to give a public lecture on folklore. The problem with archetype, aside from the unwarranted assumption of psychic unity and universalism, is a practical one of simple identification of such, as is all too clear in the classic essay by Jung on the child archetype. Quoting Jung, the childappears Oftenthe childis formedafterthe Christian model.... Sometimes in the cup of a flower, or out of a goldenegg,or asthe centreof a mandala. In dreams it often appearsas a dreamer's son or daughteror as a boy, youth, or young girl, it seemsto be of exoticorigin,Indianor Chinese,with a duskyskin,or occasionally more surrounded cosmically, by starsor with a starrycoronet,or as the appearing witch's child with Seen as a specialinstance son or the daemonic attributes. king's of "thetreasure variableand ashardto attainmotif" the child motif is extremely sumesall mannersof shapes,such as the jewel,the pearl,the flower,the chalice,the the goldenball and so on. It can be interchanged with golden egg, the quaternary, these and similarimagesalmostwithoutlimit. The criticalmethodological question is How can one possibly recognize this archetype when it appears in so many guises? How do we know when we come upon a "golden egg" in a folktale that it is a manifestation of the child archetype? Here one must recall Jung's own methodological dictum: archetypes are by definition unknowable. One can only approach them asymptotically or tangentially.Jung reiteratesthis point again and again. So, if archetypes are unknowable, how can we know them? One additional theoretical difficulty is that these supposed archetypes are allegedly panhuman and precultural. Because they are precultural, they are only marginally affected by cultural conditioning. One can easily understand why cultural anthropologists,
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whose primary working definitional and operational concept is "culture,"would not be much interested in a theory that postulated preculturalentities, whether stemming from sociobiology or from Jungian dogma. Incidentally, I blame Freud, in part, for Jung's postulation of the existence of archetypes in a collective unconscious. One of Freud's most grievous errors was his belief that Haeckel's biological discovery that "ontogeny recapitulatesphylogeny"applied equallyto mental products. In an attempt to explain the multiple existences of certain recurringfantasies-for example, seduction by an adult, observation of parental intercourse, and the threat of castration-he offered the following speculation: and the material for them?Therecan Whencecomesthe need for these phantasies but it has stillto be explained be no doubtthattheirsourceslie in the instincts; why the samephantasies with the samecontentarecreated on everyoccasion.I am preparedwith an answerwhich I know will seem daringto you. I believethat these as I shouldlike to call them, and no doubt a few othersas well primalphantasies, In them the individual are a phylogenetic endowment. reaches beyondhis own exinto at where his own has been too perience primevalexperience points experience It seem to me that all the that are told to us to-day rudimentary. quitepossible things in analysis asphantasy-the seduction of children, theinflaming of sexual excitement the threat of castration or rather castration itby observingparentalintercourse, self-were oncerealoccurrences in the primeval timesof thehumanfamilyandthat childrenin their phantasiesaresimplyfilling in the gaps in individualtruth with truth.(1916:370-1,1987) prehistoric This is an unequivocal, if dubious, statement. If an individual lacks a symbol or fantasy in his or her own life, that symbol or fantasy will be provided through the ontogenetic recapitulation of phylogeny. Probably the most famous, or infamous, example of Freud'sapplication of this principle is the conclusion of Totemand Taboo (1946). After acknowledging that the mere thought of killing his father on the part of a son could cause guilt, in the end Freud decided that it was an actual historical act of patricide arising from the primal horde's band brothers uniting to kill their father that accounted for the Oedipus complex and totemism and taboo. This, according to Freud, is because supposedly primitive man, unlike modern man, is not inhibited and accordingly "the thought is directly converted into the deed." The last lines of Totem and Tabooare a direct result of Freud's phylogenetic bias: "For that reason I think we may well assume in the case we are discussing, though without vouching for the absolute certainty of the decision, that 'In the beginning was the deed'" (1938:930). Freud's phylogenetic inheritance fantasy is clearlycomparable to Jung's"collective unconscious." The error in part consists of trying to make psychology into history. Freud's whole theoretical basis for psychoanalysis was essentially the same as nineteenth-century folklore theory, specifically,the doctrine of survivals stemming from unilinear evolutionary theory. Adult neurotic symptoms were in essence survivals from a traumatic situation that had occurred in infancy or early childhood. To understand or explain the apparentlyirrationalsymptoms, the analysthad to reconstruct the fuller picture from early childhood by means of free associations and dream
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content. Thisis clearly to whatAndrew described as "themethodof parallel Lang Folklore." in and "Here is a formof remarks, Lang, comparing archaeology folklore, Folklore whichcollects andcompares butimmaterial thesimilar relics of old study, thesurviving andstories, theideas whicharein ourtimebutnot races, superstitions of it"([1884] Thetheory wasbased on thenineteenth-century 2005:11). child-savage As barbarism en routeto civilization, so children equation. savages passed through adolescence enroute to adulthood. Tounderstand adult folklore (that passed through in civilization), one needsto findthe fullerformexisting is, survivals presamong societies. In Lang's "The methodis whenan words, (or primitive) ent-day savage irrational and in anomalous custom is found to lookfora apparently anycountry, where a similar is found, andwhere thepractice is no longer irracountry practice tionalandanomalous, but in harmony withthe manners andideasof the people whomit prevails. theseeming then,is to compare among meaning.... Ourmethod, lesscustoms andmanners of civilized races withthe similar customs andmanners whichexistamong andstillretain theuncivilized theirmeaning" (1884:21). Finally, "Folklore in themidstof a civilized thesavage ideas concludes, race, Lang represents, out of whichcivilisation hasbeenevolved" alsosawa parallel between (25).Freud andphylogeny. Inhisforeword to the German edition of Captain G. John ontogeny Bourke's Rites whichhe wroteat the request of Viennese Scatalogic ofAllNations, folklorist Friedrich Freud in hastravelled Krauss, wrote,"Thescienceof folklore otherpathsbutnonetheless it hasarrived at the sameresults as psychoanalytic inItshows ushowimperfectly various havesucceeded in repressvestigations. peoples andhowthetreatment tendencies of theexcremental functions ingtheirscatalogic on various levels of civilization theinfantile of human life.Itdemapproaches stage to us theperdurance onstrates of theprimitive, intertrulyineradicable coprophilic ests... in usages withpopular connected cult acts and the custom, magical practice, art" Thismayalsoilluminate Freud's witharchaefascination (1934:ix). therapeutic which alsodemonstrated thegoverning intellectual ofthenineteenth ology, paradigm of thepast. A shard, reconstruction likea superstition ora neurotic century, namely, a was survival from the but a that survival could aid in the reconstrucsymptom, past, tion of thatpast. Allthisis not to excuse of the collective butonlyto unconscious, concept Jung's showthatFreud's have been or one of thesources thought might directly indirectly of thismystical idea.There is yetanother theoretical with the ardifficulty Jungian andthisconcerns theunconcealed Christian content of somearchetypes. I chetype, havealready referred to Jung's mention of the Christian to the connection specific
childarchetype. Muchmore disturbing, is Jung'sclaimthat JesusChristis however,
an archetype. In his essay "Aion,"Jungasks, "Isthe selfa symbol of Christ, or is Christ a symbol of the self?"His answer: "In the present study I have affirmed the latter alternative.I have tried to show how the traditional Christ-image concentrates upon itself the characteristics of an archetype-the archetype of the self" (1958:36). I am not putting words in Jung's mouth. He adds in an italicized sentence, "Christ exemplifies the archetype of the self,"and a footnote invites the reader"Cf.my observations on Christ as archetype in 'A Psychological Approach or the Dogma of the Trinity'" (1958:36). If we keep in mind that archetypes are assumed to be panhuman, that
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would constitute a most egregious example of extreme ethnocentrism, not to mention arroganceand hubris or orientalism-namely, to assume that all peoples have a builtin archetypal Christian part of their consciousness regardless of their cultural and racial heritage. Jung states, "The primitive mentality does not invent myths, it experiences them" (1958:117). Presumablythat would also apply to Christian archetypes. Actually, it was precisely Jung's Christian bias that made him so attractive to Freud as a possible successor in order to make psychoanalysis more acceptable to a nonJewish public, but the extension of that bias into myth as a form of folklore is simply not intellectually defensible or tenable. The Jungian underpinnings of Campbell's approach to folklore put the approach outside the limits of academic folkloristics. The universalistic premise of psychic unity, coupled with the claim that archetypes are inherited, leaves little room for the influence of cultural relativism and the formation of oicotypes. The inheritance issue is a controversial one. Listen to what Jung himself says about it. In the preface to Psycheand Symbol,published in 1958, not long before Jung died in 1961, he said the following: Mind is not born as a tabularasa.Likethe body it has its pre-established individual in forms of behavior. become manifest the definiteness, namely They ever-recurring of psychicfunctioning.[Just]as the weaver birdwill buildits nest infallibly patterns in its accustomedform. [Thistype of theory invariably makesreferenceto wellknown naturalinstinctualbehavior:birds are not taughthow to make nests nor The archetypes beaversto build dams,therebyarguingby falseanalogy.] areby no means uselessarchaicsurvivalsor relics.They areliving entitieswhich cause the of numinousideasor dominantrepresentations....It is important praeformation to bearin mind thatmy conceptof the "archetypes" hasbeen frequently misunderstood as a kind of philosophicalspeculation.[Pleasepay attentionto how Jung this apparent In reality clarifies theybelongto the realmof the misunderstanding.] activitiesof the instinctsandin thatsensetheyrepresent inheritedformsof psychic behaviour. (1958:xv-xvi) It is hard to believe that anyone could accept such a mystical notion as a viable concept in folklore research,but Campbell did. What are we to make of the coffee-table books full of images of alleged archetypes? Of course, it is possible to produce images of mothers from different cultures, but this does not constitute hard evidence of the existence of a Great Mother archetype-only that all cultures have mothers and images of them, but hardly the same image. Even the Christian images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary differ radically within western cultures, typically taking on the physical racial features of the painters of the images or their patrons. If infantile conditioning is critical with respect to man-God relations as Freud argued in The Futureofan Illusion (1928), then to the extent that infantile conditioning varies from culture to culture, so man-God relations will vary accordingly, and thus there are different myths in different cultures. The constants are not archetypes, but human relationships. There are parent-child relationships in all cultures, and hence there are parent-child struggles in folklore around the world. When Campbell wrote his 1944 commentary on the Grimm tales for Pantheon, he
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did his homework. He cited tale types, The Motif-Index, and all the scholarly apparatus contained in the writings of folklorists of that time. He even mentioned the historic-geographic method, a.k.a. the Finnish method, as the preferred form of the comparative method employed by folklorists to trace the development and diffusion of a particular folk narrative, but he claimed in a footnote that Franz Boas was a practitioner of the method. During his Columbia years, Campbell actually studied with Boas and, in any case, should have known that Boas never once used the Finnish method. But Campbell's "little bit of knowledge" points to one of our problems. Folklorists have had some success in publicizing the results of our efforts for the past two centuries such that members of other disciplines, after a minimum of reading, believe they are qualified to speak authoritatively about folkloristic matters. It seems that the world is full of self-proclaimed experts in folklore and a few, such as Campbell, have been accepted as such by the general public (and public television, in the case of Campbell). I cannot tell you how many students as well as applicants to the folklore program at Berkeley include in their statements of interest that they have read and enjoyed Campbell's writings. I suppose, in that sense, we owe him a lot for getting people interested in our discipline. The problem is that so many have read only Campbell and know little else about folkloristics. There are, in my opinion, two other factors that contribute to the low level of folkloristics in the academy: (1) the loss of previous knowledge and (2) intimidation by informants. The loss of previously known facts is perhaps partly attributable to the veritable explosion of knowledge in virtually all fields. It has become increasingly difficult to keep up with all that is written in folkloristics and the myriad journals and monograph series around the world. Bibliographies, computer databases, and search engines help, to some extent, but there are still too many instances of reinventing the wheel. The issue of information retrieval is exacerbated by the growing number of amateurspurporting to representour field. They are blissfully ignorant of earlier studies of their subject matter. I have already mentioned Campbell's failure to referenceeither Otto Rank or Lord Raglan'searlierdelineations of the hero pattern, and there are countless other examples. In the mid-1940s, classicist Rhys Carpenter gave the prestigious Sather Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley,published later as Folktale,Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics (1946). In a book with that title one would think there might have been at least a mention of AT1137, The Ogre Blinded (Polyphemos), or the motif in which Odysseus put an oar on his shoulder and walked inland in search of a community that did not know what it was (Hansen 1990, 2002:371-8). But no such references are to be found. Instead, we find a poorly argued proposition that the Odyssey contains the framework of the folktale of the bear's son, a hypothesis Carpenter proposed after reading the scholarship (by Friedrich Panzer and others maintaining that Beowulf was derived from that tale type. We have had the Tale Type Index since 1910 and TheMotif-Index since 1932. Not only could a classicist in 1946 get away with not citing such obvious folktale elements in the Odyssey, but, even worse, a major press could publish a book without having obtained competent prepublication reviews by folktale specialists. One has only to compare the Carpenter book with Bill Hansen's recently published magnificent Ariadne'sThread:A Guide to
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between Literature International Tales (2002) to see the difference found in Classical and a folklore classicist of as someone with research a classicist knowledge by posing folklorist. who is an authenticfull-fledged Let me cite anotherexampleof "lostknowledge."In 1955, RayWilliamFrantz completeda doctoraldissertationat the Universityof Illinois entitled ThePlaceof numberof studFolklore in theCreative ArtofMarkTwain, justone of a considerable ies of Twain's interestin and use of folklorein his classicwritings.Frantz published in Huckleberry Finn"(1956). "TheRoleof Folklore some of his findingsin his article, in the Works His workwassimilarto thatof VictorRoyceWest,who wrote"Folklore of of MarkTwain" in 1930,drawingfrom his 1928master'sthesisat the University Twain's Nebraska. Theseand othervariousattempts(cf.Jones1984)to demonstrate definiteinterestin folklorecouldhavebeen stronglyenhancedby simplyexamining the membership of the AmericanFolkloreSocietyduringits earlyyears.In the very we findincludedon a list of the "Memfirstissueof theJournal Folklore, ofAmerican Connecticut. one S. L.Clemensof Hartford, bersof the American Folk-Lore Society" FolkloreSociety,but he reNot only was Twaina chartermemberof the American listsin volumes to the membership maineda memberforat leastfiveyearsaccording for its initial five one throughfive.This meansthathe received JAF yearsof publication, and we maylogicallyassumethat he maywell havereadsome of its contents. In any case,giventhe fact that Frantzand none of the manyothercriticswho have been concernedwith Twain'spossibleinterestin folklorehaveever mentionedhis in AFS,we canpoint to this omissionas a primafacieinstanceof a "loss membership of knowledge." This kind of factualinformationlike tale types such as 1137,Polyto any true scholar,and part of our taskas phemus,compriseknowledgeavailable of the existence andour colleagues is our students to remind folklorists professional assertion I would also classifyas "lostknowledge" of suchknowledge. Montenyohl's is a modernterm. that "folkloristics" so But if "lostknowledge" is an impedimentto makingadvancesin folkloristics, informants." Two both also is what I would call "intimidation folklorists, major by scholarswhom I personallyadmirevery much and whose publicationsconstitute of a policythatinsists arebothadvocates hallmarks of the highest-quality scholarship, One of thesegreat thatmightpossiblyoffendanyinformant. on not writinganything arehis friendsandhe wouldn'tdreamof saying insiststhathis informants folklorists He expresses his satisfacin printthattheymightfindinsultingor offensive. anything tion in a sentencein perhapshis magnumopus:"Oneproblemdown.I had written and lost no friends"(Glassie1982:33).I understandthat the rapportachievedin Butgiving in firm,if not lifelong,warmfriendships. oftenresults successful fieldwork
informants drafts of articles and monographs to vet with the right of veto power or, at the very least, the right to exercise censorship, I find unacceptable. Folkloristics, like any branch of learning, should not devolve into a popularity contest. What if doctors felt it was morally reprehensible to ever tell a patient of a serious disease that requiredimmediate remedial action?This would surelynot be in the patient's ultimate best interest. Although there is no need to deliberately offend an informant, there is a need to make the best possible and most enlightening analysis of any data elicited from that informant. If folkloristsare afraidof saying anything their informants might
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not like, the field will never become more than mountains of unanalyzed texts accumulating in folklore archives. Sometimes the issues involve more serious ethical questions as is the case with our second major folklorist. In this instance, the folklorist collected Navaho folklore for several decades, his expertise so extensive that he was invited to be the sole non-Navajo speaker in a lecture series for a purely Navajo audience. This was surely a great compliment to this folklorist. After lecturing on Coyote stories to this audience, he was startled by a question posed by an elderly singer: "Areyou ready to lose a member of your family?" It turned out that there was a level of meaning of the Coyote stories that the folklorist had not been aware of, a level that had to do with witchcraft, and the questioner was trying to warn the folklorist that he was on the edge of potentially dangerous territory with his research. The folklorist took the warning to heart. In an essay written on this incident, he remarked, "Justas a folklorist needs to know where to begin, so one needs to recognize where to stop and I have decided to stop here" (Toelken 1987:400). He continued, "Rather, as far as discussion of the Coyote tales is concerned, I intend to avoid the information myself, as unscientific and as unscholarly as that may seen. Indeed, in that regard, this is an un-scholarly non-essay, an un-report on what I am not going to be doing with texts recorded over the past twenty-five years" (400). The story is even worse. It is one thing to voluntarily desist from studying one's field data; it is quite another to destroy that data. In this case, the folklorist had a problem once his principal informant died. He knew that the Navajo feel obliged to avoid any interaction with the dead, which includes listening to the recordedvoice of someone deceased. In consultation with his deceased informant's widow, the folklorist boxed up sixty-plus hours of original field recording tapes (as well as copies he had used in classes and lectures) and sent them to the widow by registered mail, knowing full well she would be obliged to destroy them. In his essay on the subject in JAF,he describes how he came to make this painful decision (1998). My view is that not only has he deprived the academic world of data that may not be able to be replicated, but also that the Navajo themselves have lost a precious resource. We know that many Native Americans have been grateful for earlier work by folklorists and anthropologists in preserving parts of their culture that have unfortunately faded away with the decimation of their populations and their acculturation into mainstream American culture. This is no doubt an extreme example of informant intimidation, but I fear for our field of folkloristics if our very best scholars are timid about analyzing their data or, worse yet, impelled to destroy that data. The field cannot possibly advance if data is destroyed or if we are afraid to analyze it fully for fear of offending someone, either an informant or a colleague. I have had several personal brushes with would-be intimidation. The first occurred in the late 1960s. I had completed a coauthored study of Turkish verbal dueling. Realizing that some of the data included material that would be considered obscene by most middle-class Americans, I was uncertain where to submit it. I decided to submit it to South FolkloreQuarterly and I wrote a cover letter to the editor Butler Waugh, who has a doctorate in folklore from Indiana, explaining that I would understand if he could not accept the paper for publication. I was surprised and delighted to hear from him that he liked the paper and accepted it for publication. Six
404
I received an unexpected or so monthsafterthe paperhadbeen accepted, letterfrom Kirkland. of EdwinCapers had moved from the Waugh University Floridato Florida wasthe temporary International in Miami,and Kirkland University actingeditorof but it turnedout thatSFQwould SFQ.Theletterinformedme thathe wasverysorry, not be ableor willingto publishmy Turkish verbalduelingpaperafterall.Thereason the was not about of or the accuracy of the reportage of given cogency my argument I the data,but that the articlemight offendthe regentsof the University of Florida. did not feelthis was a legitimatereasonfor the paper'srejection, when the especially official editor of the journalhad previouslyacceptedit. I wrote a strong letterof not askingforreconsideration, but complaining thatthiswasnot protestto Kirkland, a valid reasonfor rejectingthe paper.Some of the oldermembersof the American this incidentbecausemy revengeconsistedof sendFolkloreSocietymayremember a of letter to ing copy my everymajorfolkloristI knewon the groundsthatI wanted fromSFQmightbe nullifiedat a later to let my colleagues know that an acceptance date.Needlessto say,I bitterlyresentedthis gutlessand spinelesseditorialdecision, althoughI waslaterpleasedthatthe paperin questiondid appearin JAFin 1970. A secondencounterwith intimidationor censorship resultedfromthe lasttime I had occasionto addressthis society.It was my presidential addressdeliveredmore thantwentyyearsagoat the annualAFSmeetingsin Pittsburgh in 1980.Because such addresses in I sent the final to are JAF, presidential routinelypublished manuscript the editorfor consideration. Because the presentation was quitelong,he quiterightI receiveda rejectionletter. ly sent it on to the AFSpublicationseditor.Eventually, The reasonfor the rejectionwas not becauseof poor writing,faultyargument,or insufficientdata,but rather, thatthe research wasan insultto AFSmembersof German-American descent.I found this reasoningabsurdand insulting,as I am myself an Americanof partlyGermandescent,but I did realizethatthe name of the publicationseditorsuggested that she herselfwas of German-American Whethheritage. er the editoractuallysent it out for review,I haveno way of knowing.The point is this is not an intellectuthat,even if the workwas insultingto German-Americans, valid reason not to a or well-researched As most of ally publish paper monograph. you know, the book was published,but not until 1984. The AFSrejection surely contributed to the four-year delayin publication. I might also mention en passantthat I haveactuallyhad essaysrejectedfromnot one but two different on the groundsthatthe contributions festschrifts wouldoffend I readersin a particular part of the world. Forthe Ortutayfestschriftin Hungary, submittedmy comparison of ethnicjokesaboutJewsand PolishAmericans. Eventually, I was informed by the editors that there was a pact among membersof the
Eastern bloc not to insult fellow members. Hence, it was against Hungarian law to publish any jokes making fun of Polish people. The editors, however, said that, if I wanted to revise my submission, the jokes about Jewscould remain. Considering that the whole point of my essay was to compare the two sets of stereotypes, there was no way I could remove all the Polish jokes. And, of course, I was personally outraged at the suggestion that it was perfectly all right for the anti-Jewish jokes to be published. I might observe that it is not easy or common to be rejected from festschriftvolumes, but I have managed it twice. The second occasion involved my essay on East Euro-
405
pean political jokes being rejectedfrom the Felix Oinas festschriftbecause prospective readers in the Soviet Union might be offended by it. This was very similar to what happened when I submitted an earlier essay on Romanian jokes to the East European Quarterly.The editor of that journal rejected the essay after admitting that he knew most of the jokes and knew they were traditional but feared subscriptions to the journal from Eastern Europe would be cancelled if the essay appeared in the journal. The rejection from the Oinas festschrift made me especially sad because, as a former student of his, I was quite devoted to the late Oinas and I was pretty sure that he personally would have been pleased to have my essay included. As a matter of principle, I decided to decline the invitation to submit a substitute "nonoffensive" essay in its place. My latest encounter with would-be intimidation occurred in one of my most recent research efforts, in which I applied a folkloristic theory, oral-formulaic to be precise, to the Qur'an. I was advised by colleagues both here and abroad not to carry out the study. It was not safe to do so, I was told repeatedly. Upon reading my completed application of oral formulaic theory to the Qur'an (Dundes 2003), one trusted colleague eventually confessed that, of course, I was absolutely right in my analysis but it was just not politically correct to have done it. In the Islamic world, applying any theory previously employed in the analysis of secular data to the Qur'an would be an enterprise deemed blasphemous, and in the West scholars could in theory have carried out the research but would not dream of doing so for fear of offending their colleagues in the Arab world. As a result, neither the Arab scholars could make this effort nor would the western scholars choose to do so. Censorship is one thing, but self-censorship is in my view a form of academic cowardice.Accordingly, I have spent much of my career resisting attempts at intimidation that might lead to self-censorship. In this instance, it was left for a non-Islamic folklorist to carry out this modest project. In my career,I have never been afraid of offending either informants or colleagues. Whether the group in question consists of football players, Germans, or Orthodox Jews,it makes no difference. My credo remains: Folklore is to be analyzed as best I am able, and the chips will fall where they may. On the day when I become afraid of making an analysis that some may find distasteful or offensive, I shall know that I am on my deathbed. I hope that this survey of "gloom and doom" is not taken by younger folklorists as discouragement. Yes, the decline of folklore programs is worrisome, the inroads made by amateurs and popularizers are to be condemned, and the loss of knowledge and intimidation by informants is to be decried, but all is not lost. There is as much folklore in the world as ever,and the challenge of collecting and analyzing has never been more exciting. When my wife Carolyn and I visited the Baltics this past summer, I was greatly encouraged to see the tremendous folkloristic energy at Estonia's University of Tartu. I believe Estonia is well on the way to rivaling its neighbor Finland as the prime mover of folklore scholarship in the world today. And Latvia and Lithuania are also major players in contemporary international folkloristic of the twentyfirst century. I find the enthusiasm for folklore and the high level of folklore scholarship in these countries very encouraging. In my four-volume set Concepts:Folklore, just published (2005), I have not hesitated to draw upon the superior folklore schol-
406
is certainly not deadin those arshipfromthe Balticsas well as Finland.Folkloristics areasof the globe. RichardDorson ended his classicAmerican Folklore with the sentence,"Theidea that folkloreis dyingout is itselfa kind of folklore" Now,I do not actu(1959:278). in of his or of the word "folklore" the latterpart of that use, misuse, ally approve sentence-it indulgesin the all too prevalentstereotype meaningof folkloreas falto folkloristics lacy or error-but I do thinkthe sentimentmaybe just as applicable as it continuesto be to folklore. Barbara anotherof our small Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, band of folkloretheorists,seemsto echo Dorson'ssentimentwhen she says,in another of the many essaysconcernedwith questioningthe name of our discipline, "Oursis a disciplinepredicated on a vanishingsubject" Dan Ben-Amos, (1996:249). A anothermajortheorist,is even more pessimisticin his importantessay,"Toward Definition of Folklorein Context,"when he asserts,"If the initial assumptionof is basedon the disappearance of its subjectmatter, thereis no way folkloreresearch to preventthe sciencefrom followingthe sameroad"(1972:14),in retrospect a sad of has what at the of But folklore not is prophecy happened University Pennsylvania. on the to alive in folklore continues be and well the modern vanishing; contrary, world, due in part to increasedtransmissionvia e-mail and the Internet.And,as I haveindicated, the ideathatfolkloristics as a disciplineis dyingout is simplynot true either.Toparaphrase MarkTwain, charter memberof theAmerican Folklore Society, of death have been So as folkloristics' "Reports greatly exaggerated." my lasthurrah, let me concludewith:hurrahforfolklore, hurrahfor folkloristics, andhurrahforthe AmericanFolklore Society.
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Alan Dundes-Folkloristics in The Twenty-First Century (2005)

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Folkloristics in the Twenty-First Century (AFS Invited Presidential Plenary Address, 2004) Author(s): Alan Dundes Reviewed work(s):

Folkloristicsin the Twenty-First Century (AFSInvitedPresidentialPlenaryAddress,2004)

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

in theTwenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

in the Twenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

in the Twenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

in the Twenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

Krishna is alsocalledShivaandbearsthe namesShakti, andAllahas well-the Jesus,

in theTwenty-First Dundes, Folkloristics Century

bach'sParzifal. Thesearesignificant but by no majormedievalliterarymasterpieces,

underthe rubricof myth.As Hansenwordsit, "Theproblemis that if everything is

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

in the Twenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

in theTwenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

118 (2005) Folklore Journal ofAmerican

in the Twenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

118 (2005) Folklore Journal ofAmerican

in theTwenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

in the Twenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

in the Twenty-First Dundes,Folkloristics Century

Folklore 118 (2005) Journal ofAmerican

A GoodYiddish Barbara Word. 1985.Difolkloristik: Folklore Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Journal ofAmerican

. 1996.TopicDrift:Negotiatingthe Gapbetweenthe Field and Our Name.Journal of Folklore

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