FOLKLORE SECOND EXAM

Myth

Include stories of the folk’s religion. These are sacred stories. They are believed to be true. They often explain the meaning and nature of the cosmos.

Legend

Include stories of the folk’s history. They are often fantastic and are either believed to be true, or they foreground the difficultly of ascertaining “truth”.

Folktale

Include stories of the folk’s fiction.

Bell Witch legend

A famous American legend about a poltergeist that haunted the Bell family in Tennessee during the early 19th century, known for its supernatural occurrences and interactions with the family.

Legend Tripping

Customary trips to horrific, haunted, and/or supernatural sites made - especially - by adolescents as a rite-of-passage.

Active Tradition Bearer

Can recreate the involved forms, actively transmits the forms, and keeps the tradition alive.

Passive Tradition Bearer

Can recall part of a particular form, may have meta-knowledge but does not actively (re)create the forms.

Validating formula

Formulaic aspects of legends that support the stories’ truth values.

Localization

The adaptation of folkloric narratives, customs, and material aspects of culture to a particular place of community.

Two examples of localization in Adams, Tennessee

Mirror summoning’s and the cursed rocks

Religous legend

A narrative that incorporates religious beliefs and themes, often featuring divine figures or miraculous events.

The Little Cajun Saint

is known for offering up her sufferings while sick with lymphatic leukemiato help others and perform miracles.

The Ardoin Folk Shrine

is a site where offerings are made to the Little Cajun Saint, reflecting the blend of folk beliefs and religious practices in Louisiana.

Etiology

The investigation or attribution of the cause or reason for something, often expressed in terms of historical or mythical explanation.

The triviality barrier

refers to the threshold at which a story or event is considered too insignificant to warrant attention or belief, often impacting the legitimacy of folklore.

Brian Sutton-Smith’s 8 Forms of Play

1. Mental or subjective play DAYDREAMING

2. Solitary play

3. Informal social play

4. Performance play and vicarious audience play

5. Celebration and festival play

6. Contests, games, and sports

7. Contests and vicarious play

8. Risky or deep play

What two theories for explaining the cause of risky/deep play were introduced in lecture?

Release valve and community building activity

Folk illusions

instances of play during which specific traditionalized verbal and kinesthetic actions are performed in order to create embodied illusions for one or more of the participants

McGurk Effect

a perceptual illusion that demonstrates how the brain combines visual and auditory information to perceive speech

“Olive Juice” Illusion

I love you

What is Floating Arms?

a sensory illusion where a person feels their arms involuntarily rising after forcefully pressing them against a surface like a door frame or a sustained period, creating the sensation that their arms are floating

What is Twisted Hands?

Twisting arms together and when another person choses their finger, they wont put up the correct one.

What is the Chills?

(3a) agent introduces performance space/time
• (3b) agent and patient assume performance positions
• (3c) agent performs lyrical/kinesthetic actions on the patient
• (3cc) patient perceives agent's actions
• (3d) patient gets the chills
• (3e) Group reacts to the illusion

What levitation/lifting folk illusions did we discuss?

• (4a) Group introduces performance space/time
• (4b) Group assumes performance position
• (4c) directors perform ritualesque/magical verbal components
• (4d) directors lift actor
• (4dd) actor is lifted
• (4e) directors lower actor
• (4ee) actor is lowered
• (4f) Group reacts to the illusion

Ping Pong Illusion

Hitting a fake ball back and fourth while they make a noise.

Dan Ben-Amos’ definition of folklore

Folklore is ARTISTIC communication in small groups

Aesthetic

Of or relating to the perception, appreciation, or criticism of that which is beautiful

Two Approaches to Performance in Folkloristic Theory

a. Performance as performance meant to be value-judged by others

b. performance as the existential fulfillment of humanness in sociocultural and material contexts

Three Major Categories of Folklore

1. Oral

2. Customary

3. Folklife/Material Culture

material+conceptual+traditional

Material culture blends the material, the conceptual, and the cultural

South Louisiana Customary

Cajun Waltz and Zydeco Two Step and Ash Wenesday

South Louisiana Oral

Cajun Folk Tales of the Rougarou

South Louisiana Material

The Crawfish Boil and Fish on Lenten Fridays

Samhain

Marked the end of summer and the end of the year’s “business.”

Liminality

Moments, behaviors, and people which are “neither here nor there.” They are “betwixt and between.”

Dia de Los Muertos

Day of the Dead

cempasúchil

Fall festivals’ calendrical positions associate them with celebration of harvest

Why do we say Halloween is a calendrical custom, aka a harvest festivals?

marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter

Fable

A brief, single episode that, because it employs speaking animals, plants, and inanimate objects, as well as human characters, is said to illustrate metaphorically and satirize/ comment upon the behavior of human beings

Aesop/Vishnu Sharma

Refers to a largely invented narrator, who stands in for the anonymity of oral creation and transmission of fable-like tales.

anthropomorphism

The attribution of human characteristics to non human objects,

Folk idea

traditional notions that a group of people have about the nature of man, of the world, and of man's life in the world

Ballad

Refers to a folk song that tells a story, in comparison to the tradition folk song, which does not contain a narrative but rather consists of a series of floating verses

Libba Cotten

“Freight Train”

Cal and Lou Courville

Cajun dancers that started dancing older in their lives.

Urban legend

A narrative set in a contemporary setting, reported as true individual experience, with traditional variants that indicate its legendary character

Folk illusions online

Forced perspective, sleevefacing, horsemanning,