Contribution short abstract:

This presentation interrogates the influence of European encounters with non-Europeans in informing the ideas at the base of European folklore studies.

Contribution long abstract:

The development of folklore studies is usually explained in terms of the influence of ideas that championed cultural and linguistic difference within Europe. This paper questions the European origin of these ideas. From the ‘noble savage’ to Herder’s ethnographically informed cultural relativism, knowledge of non-European societies helped to shape them. Descriptions of oral societies, especially of indigenous Americans, influenced the debate about Homer’s poetry and set the scene for the positive reception of Ossian (1760). And in the 19th century comparative philology, especially Indo-European and Finno-Ugric, gave a Eurasian dimension to debates about national origins and strongly influenced folklore research.