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Full Description
This lively reader traces the search for American tradition and national identity through folklore and folklife from the 19th century to the present. Through an engaging set of essays, Folk Nation shows how American thinkers and leaders have used folklore to express the meaning of their country. Simon Bronner has carefully selected statements by public intellectuals and popular writers as well as by scholars, all chosen for their readability and significance as provocative texts during their time. The common thread running throughout is the value of folklore in expressing or denying an American national tradition. This text raises timely issues about the character of American culture and the direction of American society. The essays show the development of views of American nationalism, multiculturalism, and commercialism. Provocative topics include debates over the relationship between popular culture and folk culture, the uniqueness of an American literature and arts based on folk sources, the fabrication of folk heroes such as Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan as propaganda for patriotism and nationalism, the romanticizations of vernacular culture by popularizers such as Walt Disney and Ben Botkin, the use of folklore for ethnocentric purposes, and the political deployment of folklore by conservatives as emblems of "traditional values" and civil virtues and by liberals as emblems of multiculturalism and tolerance of alternative lifestyles. The book also traces the controversy over who conveyed the myth of "America." Was it the nation's poets and artists, its academics, its politicians and leaders, its communities and local educational institutions, its theme parks and festivals, its movie moguls and entertainers? Folk Nation shows how the process of defining the American mystique through folklore was at the core of debates among writers and thinkers about the value of Davey Crockett, John Henry, quilts, cowboys, and immigrants as symbols of America.
Contents
Chapter 1 Preface Part 2 Part I Chapter 3 In Search of American Tradition Chapter 4 Suggestions for Further Reading Part 5 Part II Chapter 6 The Field of American Folklore (1888-89) Chapter 7 The Black Folklore Movement at Hampton Institute (1893-94) Chapter 8 Quilts as Emblems of Women's Tradition (1894) Chapter 9 American Folk Song (1915) Chapter 10 "American" Folklore (1930) Chapter 11 American Folklore (1949) Chapter 12 The Folk Idea in American Life (1930) Chapter 13 Folk Art: Its Place in the American Tradition (1932) Chapter 14 Folk Arts: Immigrant Gifts to American Life (1932) Chapter 15 American Folksongs of Protest (1953) Chapter 16 Folklore and American Regionalism (1966) Chapter 17 Border Identity: Culture Conflict and Convergence Along the Lower Rio Grande (1978) Chapter 18 Life Styles and Legends (1971) Chapter 19 Another America: Toward a Behavioral History Based on Folkloristics (1982) Chapter 20 American Folklife: A Commonwealth of Cultures (1991) (with text of the Folklife Preservation Act, 1976) Chapter 21 Folklife in Contemporary Multicultural Society (1990) Chapter 22 Children and Colors: American Folk and Popular Cultures in America's Future (1994)
