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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:
Anti-elitist perspectives potentially reproducing new forms of elitism, which may exclude from the folklore collector's sight present-day vernacularities in cultural production and argumentation.
Paper long abstract:
As a result of reflexive and nationalist-critical discourse, deconstruction, rather than construction, has become the key idea in shaping research in folkloristics and the arguments for its social significance. A critical look at past research practices and their ideological-argumentative premises has prevailed, as well as examining in transnational, cross-border contexts cultural processes that were previously examined in the national and patriotic framework. Nationalizing narratives are now seen as expressions of banal nationalism and as theoretically justified targets of deconstruction, even though the premises in such deconstruction may be more political than theoretical. The risk here is that anti-elitist perspectives may reproduce new forms of elitism which exclude from the folklore collector's sight present-day vernacularities in cultural production and argumentation. Instead of elevating these to the status of a folkloristic object, as the civilized classes of the 19th and early 20th centuries did with the "traditional folk", today's agents of populist nationalism tend to be looked down upon as low class and competent only in qualitatively weak argumentation. Their expressive culture is not even listed or studied, at least conventionally, as internet folklore.
Paper short abstract:
The question of the language hybridity of folklore and folk songs, which interweave Slovenian with neighbouring or Latin languages, was long excluded from the field of Slovenian folklore studies, as it was perceived as a disturbance of "genuine" Slovenian folklore traditions.
Paper long abstract:
During the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the study of folk singing in Central Europe was closely linked to the growing national movements. Therefore, the question of language hybridity in folklore, and especially of folk songs that combine different languages in their texts, was excluded from the framework of Slovenian folklore studies for a long time. Slovenian collectors made an effort to collect "old" narrative songs, not only to document the long history of the nation, but also to oppose the processes of modernization and prevent the disappearance of these songs. When collecting and examining desired types of artefacts, others were left out and, since they were not transcribed, were not included in the emerging canon of Slovenian folk songs. Although some of the non-Slovenian or bilingual songs that interweave Slovenian and German, Italian, Croatian, Hungarian or Latin were recorded, only a few of them were transcribed. The selection of the song recordings has become an important element in the construction of the image of tradition, and foreign or bilingual songs were perceived as a disturbance in the presentation of “genuine” Slovenian folk traditions. Such representation was gradually canonized, it found its way into popular publications and textbooks, became part of official cultural policy and formed the material basis for the heritage making processes. The songs that were not transcribed were not only in greater danger of being forgotten, but also did not have the potential to become a heritage artefact.
Paper short abstract:
Notions of national culture and folklore defined the modern era. I will tackle the question, how nineteenth-century Finnish public discourse debated about oral tradition and its connection with national culture. What kind of ideas, ideologies and aesthetics were attributed to the Finnish folklore?
Paper long abstract:
Notions of national culture, language and folklore have in many ways defined the. This paper will tackle the question, how early nineteenth-century Finnish public discourse debated about oral tradition and its connection with national culture. What kind of ideas, ideologies and aesthetics were attributed to the Finnish folklore? How these definitions were constructed, validated and propagated? The goal is to understand how these ideas and ideologies affected the representation of Finnish folklore, culture and nationality.
The romantic presupposition was that the authentic and original oral poetry could ground Finnish culture. Thus from the beginning of the century nationality was connected with oral poetry, which was represented as a source for an original and authentic ‘Finnishness’. Yet simultaneously, and paradoxically, the oral tradition itself was interpreted and defined by learned academics who operated transnationally. For example an early anthology of Finnish oral poetry was published in Sweden, edited by German scholar with major assistance from various Finnish students. In other words, at same time as these young academics took interest on marginal oral culture, they were also keen to observe and follow the latest philosophical, aesthetical and ethical debates in Europe.
Thus a small educated fraction was in the core of determining how oral culture should be represented. My paper concentrates on these academic and transnational discourses that have since the nineteenth century influenced how oral culture have been understood. The goal is to track down cultural history of various intellectual and transnational influences from the public discourse concerning oral poetry.
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the ideologically charged loop between the written word and orality by analyzing the creation and reception of Karelian oral poems that were excluded from the category of authentic folklore because of their alleged influences from literature, particularly the epic Kalevala.
Paper long abstract:
The creation and reception of literary works based on oral poetry by writers such as Elias Lönnrot is a well researched topic, but the aftermath of the Kalevala in the very communities that produced its sources is understudied. When folklore colletors returned the epic text to its source of origin by acquainting the runosingers with a copy of the printed epic or by reading aloud Lönnrot’s text, a complex process of adaptation started. Influences from the Kalevala changed the local oral poetics and practices of runosinging and introduced novel narratives and plots. Folklore collectors judged the singers who adapted these influences inauthentic.
The interplay between oral and literate cultures is firmly linked to the ideological grounds of the uses and evaluations of oral literatures and folk cultures. The paper 1) takes a grass roots look at the birth and reception of literature-influenced, hybrid oral poems in the runosinging communities, and, 2) assesses the explicit and implicit arguments that led to the stigmatization of an innovative form of oral poetry in the sphere of the elite and the exclusion of a notable corpus of Kalevala-meter poetry from the canonized category of cultural heritage. In the local culture, literacy and a creative strategy of literary production were valued as a powerful cultural resource and a meaningful medium of exchange with the elite, but the elite discourses on authenticity dismissed all expressions of cultural hybridity.
Paper short abstract:
In research of Finnic oral poetry, the main focus has been on epic, mythological and ritual genres. At the level of the whole recorded corpus, what genres and motifs are shared across the Finnic region, and how does this affect our understanding of what is characteristic to this wide oral tradition?
Paper long abstract:
In the research of Finnic oral poetry – often called runosongs or Kalevalaic poetry – the focus has been on epic, mythological and ritual genres. Yet, in respect of the whole Finnic corpus, epics appear to be quite marginal, highlighted due to selective interests of (past) collectors and researchers. The most famous epic songs were mostly recorded from Russian and Finnish Karelia.
All in all, there are over 240 000 digitized runosong texts in Estonian and Finnish archives, representing numerous genres from epic and charms to lyric, ritual poetry, lullabies, etc. The material is too vast to make any encompassing manual analysis of the complex variation of tradition, although this was what the early 20th-century scholars tried, one poetic type at a time, until it was made clear that this geographical-historical approach was not able to do what it aimed at. Since then, research has mostly focused on local traditions, individual singers, performances, and characteristics of the poetic language – building also grounds for new comparative approaches. In the FILTER-project (https://blogs.helsinki.fi/filter-project/), we combine computational and folkloristic, quantitative and qualitative approaches to understand the multilevel variation Finnic oral poetry.
In this paper, we detect and analyse similarities between Estonian, Karelian, Izhorian, Votic and Finnish oral poetry. What kinds of genres, motifs and formulas appear in several regions and languages, and how does this affect our understanding of what is actually characteristic or essential to this wide poetic tradition?