一个发布民俗学书评的网站

Karin

一个发布民俗学书评的网站：

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2386/mag.jhtml?issue=1

如：International Folkloristics, Classic Contributions by the Founders of Folklore.
(book review)

Folklore, April, 2001, by Christie Davies

International Folkloristics, Classic Contributions by the Founders of Folklore. Edited by Alan Dundes. Lanham, MD and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. $22-95 (pbk), $52-50 (hbk). ISBN 00-8476-9515-8 (pbk), 00-8476-9541-X (hbk)
Alan Dundes has edited an important book, which will solidly confirm the significance of international folkloristics as an independent, worldwide, scholarly academic discipline. It also places the theoretical highlights of the evolution of folklore in a proper historical context; indeed, Alan Dundes's editorial and biographical notes on each of the essayists are sometimes as long as, and sometimes more interesting and informative than, the original essayists, who range from W. B. Yeats and James Delargy to Max Mtiller and James Frazer, from Arnold Gennep and Kenneth S. Goldstein, to Gramsci and Sigmund Freud, from Reinhold Kohler and Kaarle Krohn to Alex Olrik and Vladimir Propp. It is an essential book for anyone who wants to teach folkloristics.

Throughout Dundes stresses that "the single most important characteristic of international folkloristics is its unswerving commitment to a comparative perspective" (p. 25), with the aim of identifying similarities or distinguishing differences across cultures. Dundes notably praises Reinhold Kohler and Kaarle Krohn as pioneers of this approach but also exposes some of the serious weaknesses in Krohn's method.

Many classic essays have been brought together in Dundes book, such as Axel Olrik's "Epic Laws of Folk Narrative," which may have dated, but is certain to outlast our fading memories of structuralism. "Das Gesetz der Dreizahl" (the rule of three) continues to distinguish folk narrative from literature and from reality and thus incidentally proves that jokes beginning "an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman" are folk narratives.

Alan Dundes throws much light on the splendid contribution to scholarship of the French writer Arnold van Gennep, and not only to folkloristics but to anthropology and sociology, by revealing that he was the bastard son of a Dutch woman whose name he took. Marriage ceremonies are after all the classic rite de passage and we can now see what drew him to this subject. It is distressing to learn from Dundes that the exclusiveness of the equally distinguished Emil Durkheim and his coterie should have kept van Gennep out of French academic life. However good a clique is (and unlike most French academic cliques, Durkheim's was a good clique), when it behaves like this it behaves destructively. Posterity has recognised the merits both of Durkheim and van Gennep.

Dundes is to be congratulated on his choice of essayists and on his clear exposition of their key ideas placed in an illuminating historical and autobiographical context. There are, however, two surprising entries from thinkers better known for their ideological influence, namely Gramsci and Freud. The extract from Gramsci, "Observations on Folklore," does not in any way do justice to the sheer tedium and obsessiveness of the Italian Marxist's work that is conveyed by the endless use of the terms "hegemony" and "subaltern" by his followers, a point indirectly to be inferred from Dundes's wry account. The inclusion of Freud's "Symbolism in Dreams" is also puzzling, given some of Freud's bizarre comments on folklore such as "the sacred number three is symbolic of the whole male genitalia." Only someone completely ignorant of mathematics and of theological controversy could make such a mess of two plus one.

Dundes is willing to admit to some extent the point made by Freud's critics that his psychotherapeutic method simply does not work (Freud's patients got better no faster than if nothing had been done for them), but is unwilling to concede that this undermines Freud's intellectual position. Yet, as with Marxism, if the material basis of the ideas which was stressed by the ideologues themselves as the underpinning of their truth is false, why should we accept that this particular interpretation of symbolism is better than any of the alternatives? A cigar is the symbol of an addictive personality, as we can see from both Freud and William Jefferson Clinton.

Freud's importance rather lies in the folklorists he has inspired, Such as Alan Dundes himself or Elliott Oring. It would have been better if Dundes had included a section from his own Freud-influenced masterpiece, "Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow," even if this might have seemed a little presumptuous. Presumption and Dundes would have been better than Freud and modesty, and indeed better than the selection quoted by Dundes from Geza Ruheim.

In some ways, the most interesting of the essays quoted is that of Kenneth S. Goldstein on "Strategy in Counting Out: An Ethnographic Folklore Field Study," which well illustrates the "potential risks in studying folklore texts alone." Goldstein's demonstration that children believe that counting-out games are a democratic, equal-chance means of selection, but that they are also able to use manipulative strategies to produce particular outcomes, is a model of human behaviour that goes far beyond children's games. Reality is not just a text; it is real. At the same time, it has to be admitted that attempts to study jokes in their social, or at least interpersonal, context have produced results that can only be described as trivial, whereas a comparison of texts between societies has yielded important generalisations. Goldstein's method works best where it is easy to identify direct winners and losers among the participants; usually it is very difficult to do this and observers are tempted to identify those who have won and those who have lost by guesswork and by generalising from a few small and diverse instances.

Alan Dundes's collection is a delight in its variety and yet it is well held together by the erudition and skilled commentaries of the editor. It is an excellent introduction to folklore and folkloristics and their history, which in an age when English has become the dominant, indeed sole, international language will have an appeal in all the many countries from which Dundes has drawn his folklore texts. It is truly a work of international folkloristics.

Christie Davies, University of Reading, UK

COPYRIGHT 2001 Folklore Society
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group

老李探花

International Folkloristics
俺好不容易才买到了这本书！！！这书从美国飞到英国，又从英国飞到中国俺的手里，费了几个月的时间：（

边缘

好东西！！！
谢谢Karin！