clarifying my uses-of-folklore question

[Jules Levin]

On 8/1/2013 9:20 AM, Anne L Lounsbery wrote:
>
> Hello again,
>
> To clarify: I'm not looking for, e.g., a list of authors who have 
> drawn on folklore, but rather for some theoretical reflections on how 
> and why authors in general have used folklore--what the implications 
> are of doing so, which periods have encouraged/discouraged this 
> practice, etc.  I'm teaching Gogol and I know the scholarship on his 
> use (and invention!) of folkloric sources, but right now I'm looking 
> for something a bit different.
>
There is an unusual article by Alfred Senn, not the historian son, but 
the deceased Balticist, that you should try to find.  It was published 
in an obscure journal (at least obscure for Slavicists) in the 40's I 
believe.   In it Senn argues that folklore/folk music, etc., were 
largely the creation of known artists inspired by the romantic movement 
from the 18th century.  Stories written by known persons, e.g., Aesop, 
were retold by ordinary folks to the intellectuals who scoured the 
country trying to "recover" disappearing folk culture.   [The old 
illiterate peasant woman who supplied a Grimm with his folk tales turned 
out to be a very literate middle-class woman in town.]  As for 
traditional European folk music (e.g., the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle) 
turns out to be 18th Century waltzes played in the big estate homes and 
overheard by the peasants, speeded up so much as to be unrecognizable.
It is a short article, and might add a little spice and controversy to a 
general course on folklore, and it is different!
Jules Levin
Los Angeles
  PS I tried to find the reference but could not get past links to his 
prominent historian son with the same name.  I even wanted to send an 
email thru linkedin to the son, but am not willing to pay so much for an 
upgrade.


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