Paper short abstract:

The themes and motifs of social distinctions are representations of cultural knowledge that can be studied from reading different folklore and narrative genres across. In my presentation, I revise the social relations inside one class, the rural working class people in 19th century Finland.

Paper long abstract:

In my presentation, I focus on the ways the 19th century common people - those who belonged to the lower strata of Finnish rural society - expressed and manifested social distinctions among their equals. Who were the others inside one social class? This question is based on the premise that no class is ever uniform and without inner tensions and therefore I explore the procedures through which social boundaries were kept alive and the ways how they were contested among the non-elite people. Social and economic conditions have had a great influence on the themes and motifs of folklore and therefore it is important to ask, who are these people marked in the folklore and how social boundaries were kept alive? I look for the answers of the questions above by combining different folklore genres: proverbs, legends, fairytales and personal life histories that have been collected into the Folklore Archive of the Finnish Literature Society. The vantage point of my presentation is in the thematic dimension of folklore and narrative genres. Genres are not proportional and therefore I will look how different genres dictate the limits of communication and what kinds of working arrangements different genres have in cultural communication.