Older Schedules

Something Slender This Way Comes

Bascom, William. 1953. Four Functions of Folklore. Journal of American Folklore66(262): 333-349. DOI: 10.2307/536411.

Bascom, William. 1965. The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives. Journal of American Folklore 78: 3-20. JSTOR

Littleton, C. Scott. 1965. A Two-Dimensional Scheme for the Classification of Narratives. Journal of American Folklore 78(307): 21-27. DOI: 10.2307/538100. JSTOR

On the matter of analytical versus native categories, I confess I have encountered similar difficulties in my own work. There is a brief discussion in “Talking Shit in Rayne” Project Muse.

Bascom, William. 1953. Four Functions of Folklore. Journal of American Folklore 66(262): 333-349. DOI: 10.2307/536411. JSTOR

Hawes, Besse Lomax. 1974. “Folksongs and Function: Some Thoughts on the American Lullaby.” Journal of American Folklore 87 (344): 140. doi:10.2307/539474. JSTOR

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1975. A Parable in Context: a Social Interactional Analysis of Storytelling Performance. In Performance and Communication, 105-130. Ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth Goldstein. Mouton. doi:10.1515/9783110880229.105.

Turner, Patricia. 1993. I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture. University of California Press.

Some Models of Methods of Description and Analysis

Bauman, Richard. 1972. The La Have Island General Store: Sociability and Verbal Art in a Nova Scotia Community. Journal of American Folklore 85(338): 330-343. JSTOR.

Jason, Heda. 1971. Concerning the “Historical” and “Local” Legends and Their Relatives. Journal of American Folklore 84/331: 134-144. JSTOR.

Seemann, Charlie. 1981. The “Char-Man”: A Local Legend of the Ojai Valley. Western Folklore 40/3: 252-260. JSTOR.

Treasure in America

Hurley, Gerard T. 1951. Buried Treasure Tales in America. Western Folklore 10/3: 197-216. JSTOR.

This essay from Hurley represents folklore scholarship from the late forties. Be aware that there is some outdated language here. The essay itself is only 8 pages long. The rest of the entry is 102 summaries of treasure tales.

Mullen, Patrick B. 1978. The Folk Idea of Unlimited Good in American Buried Treasure Legends. Journal of the Folklore Institute 15/3: 209-220. JSTOR.

Mullen introduces us to the notion of a “folk idea”, something we will explore in the weeks ahead.

Laudun, John. 2013. Locating Louisiana Legends at the Intersection(s) of Land and Water. International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (Lexington, KY).

This is the one time that I will, as a professor, make you read my own writing. I am doing so both because our topic is treasure legends and the paper offered here is on Louisiana treasure legends but also because as something written early in the stages of a research project it has plenty of flaws and gaps.

See the course main page for the essay as well as the accompanying handout.

Ideas and/as Metaphors

Dundes, Alan. 1971. Folk Ideas as Units of Worldview. Journal of American Folklore 84/331: 93-103. JSTOR.

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language. The Journal of Philosophy 77/8: 453-486.DOI: 10.2307/2025464. JSTOR.

Conrad, Peter and Kristin K. Barker. 2010. The Social Construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications. Extra Issue: What Do We Know? Key Findings from 50 Years of Medical Sociology. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 51: S67-S79. JSTOR.

Clowns

Seemann, Charlie. 1981. The “Char-Man”: A Local Legend of the Ojai Valley. Western Folklore40/3: 252-260.

For more on haunted bridges: here in Louisiana is Mary Jane’s Bridge (973thedawg.com/the-haunted-legend-of-acadianas-mary-janes-bridge/) and in Ohio there is The Screaming Bridge of Maud Hughes Road (creepycincinnati.com/2011/11/08/the-screaming-bridge-of-maud-hughes-road/).

Ellis, Bill. 1989. Death by Folklore: Ostension, Contemporary Legend, and Murder. Western Folklore 48(3): 201-20.

Victor, Jeffrey. 1990. Satanic Cult Rumors as Contemporary Legend. *Western Folklore 49/1 (Contemporary Legends in Emergence): 51-81. DOI: 10.2307/1499482.

Explaining the Urban Legend of the Clown Statue (https://www.thoughtco.com/the-clown-statue-3299483)

Snopes entry on clown intruder (www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/statue.asp)

BBC’s “A surprising history of the creepy clown” (www.bbc.com/culture/story/20161019-a-surprising-history-of-the-bad-clown)

Wikipedia entry for “evil clown” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_clown)

Dégh, L., & Vázsonyi, A. 1983. Does the Word “Dog” Bite? Ostensive Action: A Means of Legend-Telling. Journal of Folklore Research 20(1): 5–34.