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- Convenors:
-
Niina Hämäläinen
(Kalevala Society)
Venla Sykäri (Finnish Literature Society)
Lotte Tarkka (University of Helsinki)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Heritage
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 23 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
The panel explores ideologies and practices of documentation and textualization of folklore and their impact on the formation of national elite cultures during the long 19th century. We focus on the sources and traditions excluded from the sphere of cultural heritage and literary canons.
Long Abstract:
The panel explores the processes of documentation and textualization of folklore and their impact on the formation of elite cultures and literatures as well as notions of nationhood during the long 19th century in Europe. We focus on the sources and traditions marginalized in the production of cultural heritage and literary canons by looking at the practices and ideologies of documenting, archiving, editing and publishing folklore.
We argue that these seemingly neutral textual practices build on aesthetic and ideological values have had a decisive role in creating an implicitly unequal, unilateral and biased foundation for official cultural traditions. This was accomplished by denying diverse intersectional marginalized groups access to cultural capital, heritage and related resources. Whereas some genres and groups identified as emblematically vernacular were celebrated as icons of national cultures and heritages, some were disregarded and muted. We ask how, why, and by whom such inclusions and exclusions were executed and encourage speculations on heuristic alternative histories for the potential uses of folklore in society, past and present.
The panel invites papers addressing, for example, 1) the role of (tradition) archives in making some aspects of vernacular culture, groups of people and expressive languages invisible, 2) the aesthetic and ideological premises for the selection and evaluation of appropriate sources for the creation of elite cultures and traditions, 3) the marginalization of certain genres in the history of folklore research, and, 4) the transgressive potential of marginalized vernacular culture in the creation of literatures, heritages and cultural identities.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 23 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
The evaluation of folktale led from contempt and neglect to present-day appreciation, and even cult in Hungarian culture. I present this journey of folktale from scorn to glory and discuss how, upon what presumptions and practices the corpus of folktales was created.
Paper long abstract:
In September 2020 a member of the Hungarian Parliament publicly exterminated a freshly published book of tales. The book contained rewritten versions of folktales to raise awareness of social and gender inequalities. The act of destruction generated a nationwide scandal and debate. A main argument of those who supported the banning of the book was that it desecrates true Hungarian folktale, a container of ancient and timeless truth, moral values and national character. So how did the innocent folktale (as it is often interpreted) get into a political-ideological context and how did it become the basis of aggression?
In Hungarian culture, folktale is the emblematic genre of the traditional vernacular culture named as folklore. The evaluation of folktale from the beginning of the 19th century led from contempt and neglect to present-day appreciation, and even cult. I try to present this journey of folktale from scorn to glory and discuss upon what presumptions and practices the corpus of folktales was created. I investigate those filters that were applied in course of editing and publishing these tales, and also prior to the act of textualization, and which defined the selection of tale-tellers and recording of tales. The corpus was created, the canon was established, highlighting, neglecting, or silencing certain sub-genres and types of tale. By now folktale is generally seen as a sort of natural entity that existed from the beginning of times and can be used as a basis of comparison in evaluating other narrative forms and artistic expressions.
Paper short abstract:
Archived folklore about vernacular healing emphasises magical healing methods over more ordinary ones. Such biases cause challenges in studying mental worlds of the folklore informants. The paper proposes that cognitive science can provide methodological tools for overcoming these challenges.
Paper long abstract:
In the Folklore Archive of the Finnish Literature Society, archived instructions for healing skin burns in domestic ways include, e.g., incantations, complicated ointments and symbolic acts but rarely just putting something cold on the burn. Why?
In this paper, I consider the problems and challenges in studying archived folklore materials that are not collected by a contemporary researcher who studies them in the 2020s. How can a researcher reach the thoughts, ideas and the mental world of the informants behind folklore texts and through the work of collectors?
I demonstrate the biases of folklore materials with a case study on healing instructions for skin burns. Putting something cold on a burn is an effective and simple treatment that surely has been known by the rural people in the late 19th century Finland. Nevertheless, this treatment method is almost completely lacking from the rural healing instructions in the folklore archive. The lack of cold could, of course, be considered as evidence that these people did not use this method in healing burns. However, more likely the collectors have considered this treatment as too ordinary to report, and thus the folklore materials emphasise magical and extraordinary healing methods.
I suggest that although there are biases in folklore materials, there are ways to study the mental worlds of the informants behind the texts. I present examples how cognitive science and studies on intuitive thinking and memory processes can provide useful tools for this kind of analysis.
Paper short abstract:
Emotions are considered as one of the most elemental characters of laments. Earlier research of laments has mostly focused on other aspects than emotion. I discuss how the marginalization and the text-oriented documentation have influenced the research of laments.
Paper long abstract:
Emotions are considered as one of the most elemental characters of laments. Already at the beginning of the 19th century Elias Lönnrot describes how dreadful it was to hear or experience when a woman bursting into loud crying while he was trying to collect some lament texts. The same Lönnrot’s texts reveal practices and ideologies of documenting; what kind of performances and which genres of oral poetry were the suitable ones for scholars, who were gathering material with elite ideas of nationhood. Even though Lönnrot and others documented laments, the genre with its obscure texts, crying voice and emotionality did not respond to their interests. Furthermore, the tone of Lönnrot’s description draws an image of an odd, uncontrollable, even terrifying performance. Even if plain texts might have been accepted as such, the performance proved to be too much.
In this presentation, I discuss how on one hand, the marginalization, and on the other hand, the text-oriented documentation have influenced the research of laments. I approach the emotions of archived lament performances with source critical viewpoint. I focus on the aspects that need to be considered in analysing and interpreting emotions and affective processes of laments. In addition to varying research interests, the atmosphere of the recording situation, the relationship between the collector and the lamenter, lamenter’s motivations to perform as well as the social and cultural norms with mythic beliefs have influence in that, what type of lament performance is documented on the recordings.
Paper short abstract:
Ballads are the main genre of oral song in Europe, but Finns today hardly know of their popularity in 19th century Finland. One reason is that episodes from the early, non-rhymed ballad stratum were decontextualized by Elias Lönnrot and became only known as components of the new Kalevala (1949).
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on the invisibility of ballads in the Finnish cultural heritage. While ballads form the core genre of early modern and even contemporary European narrative oral singing, they are rarely recognized by Finns as having been popular in the 19th century Finland. The major reason is the higher prestige always given to the archaic alliterative, iterative Finnish runosong tradition over newer rhymed forms, but other factors also exist.
Before entering Finland from Scandinavia in their characteristic rhymed meters and regular stanzaic form, the European ballad themes had already found their way in the runosong tradition. This singing culture was still lively in eastern Finland and Karelia, when Elias Lönnrot, the creator of the Kalevala (1835; 1849), collected folk poetry. Lönnrot noticed that ballads were extremely popular: rhymed versions in the whole country and non-rhymed in the eastern runosong area.
Lönnrot published songs from the old ballad-stratum in a volume on lyric poetry and songs, the Kanteletar (1840, 1841). He later used episodes from these ballads to expand the new Kalevala (1849). The episodes were decontextualized and, as analyzed in this paper, lost their identity as ballads in the recontextualizing processes.
The lyric Kanteletar never received similar recognition as cultural heritage as the Kalevala did. While Lönnrot thus did not disregard the ballad-based stratum of the runosong tradition, the results of his editorial practices and transmission of ballad episodes embedded within the Kalevala became more enduring than the publication of the songs in their own right.
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses the shade part of nationally valued oral tradition. It highlights folklore as a struggle of cultural recognition and access to the canon. The example material consists of popular rhymed folk songs used by writers but narrowly published by folklore editors in 19th century Finland.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, following Bendix (1997, 59), we argue that publishing folklore in books has ensured selected part of the oral tradition as valued and recognized. However, utilizing folklore within literature has not gained any acknowledgement to the tradition. To elucidate our argument, we focus on rhymed folk songs of 19th century publications and literature.
Rhymed folk songs, especially the rhymed couplets, consisting of one stanza length units with two rhymed lines, were mainly sung in the contexts of dancing and games, and addressed themes such as love, often in openly erotic or satiric way. Popular among peasants, rhymed songs were documented and transmitted widely in a literary form, in chapbooks and broadsides, but they were never presented in nationally acknowledged publications of folk poetry.
While being overlooked by folklore editors and publishers, Finnish writers of the late 19th century began to utilize rhymed folk songs in their writings. The widespread utilization of rhyming folk songs in literature, and the apparent popularity of this kind of literature, substantiate for its part the cultural importance of this singing tradition. However, despite - or maybe because of - their popularity and literary spreading, rhymed folk songs have not been recognised as highly valued folklore.
The remaining question is: how and to what extent the rhymed folk songs, if acknowledged and canonized, would have changed ideals and knowledge of oral tradition?
Literature
Bendix, Regina 1997. In Search of Authenticity. The Formation of Folklore Studies. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press.